Angela & Uncle Jerry analyse illicit affairs from folklore, examining how Taylor Swift constructs a poem about the lifecycle of an affair through imperative instructions, drug metaphors, and ambiguous address.
Key Insights
Uncle Jerry argues that illicit affairs reads best as a poem rather than a song, finding it perfectly placed within folklore's narrative architecture. The ambiguity of the second-person address (self-instruction, instructions to a lover, confession to a friend) is identified as one of the poem's most engaging elements, deliberately left unresolved. The song drains all romance and glamour from the affair from its opening lines, using imperative verbs and concealment imagery to present the affair as a procedural checklist rather than an exciting transgression. Uncle Jerry identifies a controlling drug metaphor (conceit) that runs through the entire poem, from the word 'high' through diminishing satisfaction to the willingness to ruin oneself. The final paradox, that the person who made the speaker feel uniquely alive is the same person she is willing to destroy herself for, is singled out as the poem's most powerful moment.
Literary Analysis
Uncle Jerry reads the poem through several literary and critical frameworks. He connects the directional imagery ('keep your eyes down') to the Book of Jonah's descent pattern, where downward movement foreshadows a journey toward destruction. Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' is identified as a functional allusion: the road in the poem represents a decision from which there is no return, mirroring the irreversibility of beginning an affair. The concept of 'le petit mort' (the little death) is raised in connection with the line 'it dies and it dies and it dies a million little times,' linking the sexual and the destructive registers of the affair. Roland Barthes's 'The Pleasure of the Text' is cited extensively as a framework for understanding the reader's engagement with the poem, particularly Barthes's idea that the best texts invite a radical, ecstatic loss of self. Uncle Jerry also reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 138 as a counterpoint to the poem: where Shakespeare's lovers agree to lie to each other as a form of mutual love, the lies in illicit affairs are destructive rather than bonding. The bridge's synesthetic metaphor ('you showed me colours you know I can't see with anyone else') is identified as a key device, and the change from 'longing stares' in the first chorus to 'stolen stares' in the second is highlighted as evidence that the chorus is not mere repetition but shifts in tone from attractive to criminal. Mercury retrograde is proposed as an astrological reference embedded in the word 'mercurial,' connecting to the communication breakdown theme of the preceding line.
Concepts Explored
Literary Devices
References
Literary Quotes Referenced
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 138
People & Figures Mentioned
Connections Across the Work
Shared themes appear across the archive
Motifs traced in this song
Recommended Reading
- The Pleasure of the Text; The Road Not Taken; The Book of Jonah; Sonnet 138
In the Archive
In the archive:
illicit affairsView song →7 themes traced
11 motifs traced
35 literary devices explored
1 literary reference noted