In the poem Drunk, Carol Ann Duffy uses the metaphor of a drunken escapade to

explore her views on relationships and the negative aspects of love. The title
conveys clearly how Duffy wants to convey love as something that disorientates
and distracts you from rational thinking, as the connotation of drunk on love is
introduced. The short sentence that begins the poem with the adverb Suddenly
engages the reader with immediacy. The immediacy also conveys how quickly
Duffy believes love can turn and change you for the worse. The fact that the rain,
usually a symbol of depression and solitude - but here hilarious, displays how
being in love can trick you into seeing negative things positively, and how being
drunk on love causes you to justify negative relationships inwardly. The moon a
symbol of love and romance wobbles, conveying the fragility of relationships,
and how love can blind you and change the way you see the world, just like
drunkenness. The setting of the sun in the first stanza also displays how the light
in Duffys world is wavering, and at its end, as this is used by Duffy to suggest
that the euphoria felt in a relationship is never long-lasting, but its end always
inevitable. The first stanza perfectly conveys Duffys warning to the reader about
love and its perils.
The second stanza establishes Duffys cynical message in What a laugh. The
short, sarcastic sentence displays Duffys cynicism towards menial, meaningless
love, and how bitterly she feels towards it. The short sentence also displays the
false, forced happiness experienced by Duffy in her relationships, as she shows
how society expects women to be in every relationship. Unseen frogs also
portrays Duffys cynicism towards men, as it alludes to the fairytale of the
princess and the frog, displaying how women attach themselves to abusive
relationships hoping that they have found their prince. The onomatopoeia
belch shows the vulgarity of these men, the negative way Duffy feels towards
them, and how society disregard their negative aspects, but still treats them as
princes.
The third stanza solidifies Duffys dismissal of shallow love that society expects.
The verbs strange and cheap display Duffys negativity towards meaningless
and shallow love, and the unnatural way it makes people behave. The contrast of
the darkening trees to the romantic imagery of the strange perfumes act as
a warning to the reader of this type of love. The foreboding in the trees warn of
the way rape culture is viewed in a society that forces women into abusive
relationships, as the strange perfumes can be seen as chloroform or other date
rape drugs used on women and men, seen as acceptable or inevitable in our
culture. This romanticisation of this danger also displays the fact that the
dangerous sides of relationships and rape culture remain unseen, like the
belching frogs, and that love can make you vulnerable by blinding you to this
danger, as well as the way society does.
The enjarbment in Cheap red wine and the whole world a mouth emphasises
the way society sexualises women, and treats them objectively as sexual organs,
as our patriarchal society revolves around this subjugation of women. Another
reading can be that women in society are told to view their partner as their
whole world and to be contented with being a wife or girlfriend, and seek
nothing else. In give me a double, a kiss we see that Duffy compares the
intoxication caused by alcohol to love, in order to make sure that the reader
understands that love, and lust can make (especially women) extremely
vulnerable and blind them to the dangers of the opposite sex and society, which
is Duffys main message in the poem.