Original King Kong
What type of creature is King Kong?
A gian gorilla
What is the name of the collection Queen Kong appears in?
The World's Wife
What is a dramatic monologue?
A poem spoken entirely by one character directly to the reader
What is the main theme of Queen Kong?
Power/love/obsession
Complete the quote: "I wear him now around my _____"
Neck
What famous building does King Kong climb?
The Empire State Building
What does Duffy do to the King Kong story in her poem?
She reverses the genders
What literary device is used in "a concrete rainforest of light"?
Metaphor/imagery
What does the size difference between Queen Kong and the man represent?
Power imbalance
What is the tone at the start of the poem?
Romantic/Tender
What happens to King Kong at the end of the original story?
He dies
What type of poem is Queen Kong?
A dramatic monologue
What type of imagery runs throughout the whole poem?
Animal imagery
Is Queen Kong presented as a sympathetic or sinister character?
Both. Duffy makes this ambiguous deliberately
How does the tone shift by the end of the poem?
It becomes dark, possessive, and disturbing
What is the relationship between King Kong and the woman in the original?
He obsesses over/captures her. She is powerless
What is the overall purpose of The World's Wife as a collection?
To give voice to silenced or overlooked women in history and myth
What does the phrase "the grape of his flesh" suggest about how Queen Kong sees the man?
She objectifies and dehumanises him. He is something to be consumed
What does the ending (turning the man into a necklace) suggest about Queen Kong's idea of love?
She confuses love with ownership and total possession
What does Queen Kong mean when she describes the man as "small"?
He is physically smaller, but it also reflects how little agency and power he has
How does the original King Kong story reflect wider societal attitudes towards gender?
It normalises male dominance and female passivity
What does writing from the perspective of Queen Kong allow Duffy to do that a third-person narrator couldn't?
It forces the reader to be uncomfortably close to her distorted view of love. There is no distance or judgement
How does Duffy's use of an unreliable narrator affect the reader's interpretation of the poem?
It makes the reader question whether what Queen Kong calls love is really obsession
How does the gender reversal force the reader to reconsider how power works in romantic relationships?
By making the dominant figure female, Duffy exposes how behaviours normalised in men (obsession, possession, control) become obviously disturbing when a woman does them
Choose any quote from the poem and explain how it reveals something about Queen Kong's character.
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