Genetics - CCEAThemes

Interpreting and analysing a poem is not necessarily a matter of finding the right answer.

Poems are complex creations and are open to many different interpretations. Your interpretation is as valid as anyone else's - as long as you can back it up with suitable evidence from the text.

Genetics could be interpreted as exploring any - or all - of the following themes.

Identity

One theme of this poem is the role that genetics plays in shaping our identity.

Morrissey uses her hands as a symbol of her parents’ relationship, the relationship which created her and established her identity in her formative years.

The mark her parents have left on who she is can be seen literally in her hands. She writes that “My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms”, showing how these parts of her body are physically similar to theirs.

Family

As well as the imagery of her parents’ marriage in her hands, there is the suggestion of a future family in the poem when she addresses her husband. She invites him to “bequeath your palms" and to "take up the skin’s demands/ for mirroring in bodies of the future.”

The poem shifts from referring to her past - and the things she inherited from her parents and their families - to moving to the future where she and her husband will combine in the next generation and be part of their identity.

Time and place

Morrissey refers to her parents as having been “repelled to separate lands,/ to separate hemispheres” and how they “sleep with other lovers”.

She writes that there is “nothing left of their togetherness” in a physical way because conflict, time and distance separate what was once a loving relationship.

However, she recognises that “in me they touch where fingers link to palms”, showing that the identity we get from our parents continues past other boundaries.