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Queen of Knives - a Close Reading

In: Novels

Submitted By Jrochockey
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It Might Have Gone Something Like This In “Queen of Knives”, Neil Gaiman exemplifies how unreliable our narrator is in dealing with death and derangement. Through this naïve narration, we are presented with a story in which the narrator; a young boy at that time, recalls how a magician vanishes his grandmother during a magic show. Upon closer analysis we will see that Gaiman actually implies that the grandmother has died causing the grandfather to go crazy from the death of his wife. In order for our narrator to cope with traumatic experience of losing a loved one and witnessing his grandfather lose his mind he blends the story with memories. The poem is set up as a flashback which further gives credibility to our narrator’s erroneous memory. My analysis will scrutinize the diction used throughout the poem as well as the crucial symbolism in order to uncover the hidden meaning behind the text. When someone reads “Queen of Knives” for the first time it is likely that they will ponder the outcome with confusion. They may also conclude that the grandfather murdered the grandmother or that she ran off with the magician. It is understandable to arrive at this conclusion when the literal meaning of the passage points to such answers, but once we examine how dynamic this piece of literature is we can conclude much deeper meanings. Gaiman himself stated that this poem was like his other work “Mr. Punch;” a story in which a young boy’s grandfather went mad. The songs Daisy Bell and You Made Me Love You also play important roles in the poem. The first being a song about courting and promising love and the latter a song about wanting true love again. These songs are metaphors for the grandmother’s feelings towards her husband. After studying the full lyrics it can be derived that she no longer feels the carefree love of when she was young but still wants to. This is what

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