(Note that analyses can vary widely, hence these annotations must only be used in conjunction with your own analyses).
Annotations of The Gun by Vicki Feaver
Summary of the poem:
Title: Specific, like it has feelings or has significant importance.
Tone: 2nd-person POV, but switches to 1st POV in the last stanza.
Summary: The poem opens up with a dramatic first line that clearly foreshadows what will follow, as a house is a sanctuary. Persona and speaker seem to be separate entities. At first, the speaker is addressing the persona who has brought the gun in — the excessive detail of the gun may connote fear and fascination. The language quickly becomes grotesque, and suggests that the persona gains pleasure from it. In the last stanza, the shift in pronouns signal a darker turn, as the speaker joins the persona in his pleasures.
Structure: short, choppy sentences. Enjambments in stanzas, generally regular stanza lengths — perhaps reflects the mechanical nature of the object.
Themes: Violence, pleasure,
Devices used: enjambment, foreshadowing, contrast, simile
Links to other poems: Lammas Hireling, Eat Me (obsession, violent sexuality), The War Correspondent (effects of conflict)
A Levels Revision 