My literary analysis of the poem “Warning”.

“Warning” is a poem written by Jenny Joseph.

Reading the title alone, I expect the poem to be about something you should be aware of and look out for.

The text is arranged into 4 stanzas: the first one is the longest one out of the entire extract, being it composed of 11 lines. The second and third one are both quatrains (stanzas of 4 lines each), while the last one is a tercept (stanza composed of 3 lines).

We understand the gender and age range of the speaking voice straightaway with the expression used “When I am an old woman” in line 1, meaning that whoever is speaking is a lady who is not old yet. She tells you that when she will be old she will let herself finally go wearing strange outfits, wasting her pension money and doing annoying things. This will all be excused by the fact that when you are old nobodyn bothers you. But, she explains, when you are young you’re not excused from doing all of these things yet: because of this matter, the woman questions herself if she should start deluding society’s expectations right at the moment so that they won’t act shocked in the future.

The structure of the poem does not show any sign of a regular rhyme scheme and there are no dialogues involved, even though the entire piece of writing seems like the narrator is personally speaking to you (even submitting questions and using “You” a lot of times, involving the reader). The poem is characterized by an ironic and thoughtful tone, concerning the good about aging and the bad about not being old enough to be excused from doing some specific actions.

The recurrent use of the letter “s” in expressions like “I shall” empathize the idea of thinking and daydreaming that the narrator wants to convey: aging is just a long distant dream presently.

At the moment, the lady is stuck in her youth and would rather be older so that she wouldn’t feel frustrated but free.