February: the lonely month

Throughout the whole poem of "February", it has a very negative tone and negative approach to life except for the last 6 lines or so. The author achieves this through diction and pretty much the main idea of the poem. She does this through diction, first of all, by giving words that seem to have a negative feel or attitude. For example, the first line, "Winter. Time to eat fat." show a negative attitude. First of all, winter is usually seen as a dreary and cold time of year and eating fat is what people do when they don't take care of themselvs or are just depressed. Also, "pollution pours out of our chimneys" is a negative way of saying how the smoke escapes our chimneys. All these negative words and phrases represent how the speaker has a negative approach to this time of year and of a lot of people such as men probably because of valentine's day and the speaker is lonely. However, towards the end of the poem, she gets a more optimistic view as she tells the cat to go out and stop whining in which she is really talking to herself.