Key Quote
“"his father before him, and his father too"”
Louisa Adjoa Parker · The Jewellery Maker
Focus: “father”
The repetition of 'father' creates a chain of generational continuity — the craft passes down through blood, yet so does the poverty that accompanies it.
Technique 1 — REPETITION & GENERATIONAL CONTINUITY
Parker uses repetition — 'his father before him, and his father too' — to emphasise the unbroken chain of skill passed from generation to generation. The technique creates a sense of timelessness: this craft has existed for so long that its origins are lost. However, the repetition also carries a darker implication — not just skill but poverty is inherited. Each generation learns the craft, produces beauty, and remains poor, suggesting that generational talent offers no escape from structural inequality.
The anaphoric (repeated) structure mirrors the repetitive nature of the craft itself — the same movements, the same materials, the same results, generation after generation. Parker creates a tension between the beauty of this continuity (tradition, heritage, mastery) and its injustice (exploitation, stasis, entrapment). The reader is invited to admire the jewellery while questioning the system that ensures its maker can never afford to wear it.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The poem presents a devastating portrait of stagnation across generations. Despite the maker's extraordinary skill, his social and economic position never changes — he creates objects of immense beauty and value that are enjoyed exclusively by people wealthier than himself. The generational repetition ('his father before him') reveals that this is not a temporary condition but a systemic trap: the economic structures that exploit the maker have persisted for generations and show no sign of changing. Parker suggests that talent alone cannot overcome the inequalities of class and global economics.
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Technique 2 — CONTRAST & SENSORY IMAGERY
Parker constructs a sharp contrast between the maker's humble circumstances and the luxury he produces. The sensory details of his craft — the gleam of metal, the precision of setting stones — stand in stark opposition to the simplicity of his own life. This ironic juxtaposition reveals the fundamental injustice of the global luxury market: the hands that create beauty live in conditions that deny it.
The enjambment throughout the poem — lines flowing into one another without pause — mirrors the smooth, continuous movement of skilled hands at work. Parker's form enacts the content: just as the jewellery is crafted with seamless precision, so the poem itself moves with effortless fluidity. Yet this formal beauty also serves a critical purpose: it makes the reader complicit in aestheticising the maker's labour, enjoying the beauty of the poem just as wealthy women enjoy the beauty of the jewellery, without confronting the human cost.
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Context (AO3)
GLOBAL WEALTH DISPARITY
The poem reflects the globalised economy in which luxury goods are produced by workers in developing countries for consumers in wealthy nations. The jewellery maker represents millions of artisans worldwide whose skill generates enormous profits they will never share. Parker draws attention to the invisible labour behind consumer goods — the human stories concealed by brand names and price tags.
GHANAIAN & ENGLISH HERITAGE
Louisa Adjoa Parker is of English and Ghanaian heritage. Ghana has a rich tradition of gold craftsmanship dating back centuries, yet the country was exploited by European colonial powers for its mineral wealth. The poem can be read as an exploration of how colonial economic structures persist in the modern world — African artisans still create wealth that flows outward to former colonial powers, a form of neo-colonialism (new forms of colonial exploitation).
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WOW — MARX'S THEORY OF ALIENATED LABOUR
Parker's poem is a vivid illustration of Karl Marx's theory of alienated labour. Marx argued that under capitalism, workers are separated from the products of their work: they create objects they cannot afford to own, for people they will never meet, in a process they do not control. The jewellery maker experiences all four dimensions of Marx's alienation: from the product (he cannot wear the jewellery), from the process (he works to survive, not for fulfilment), from his fellow humans (he is invisible to the consumers), and from his own human potential (his extraordinary skill brings no personal advancement). Parker updates Marx's 19th-century theory for the age of globalisation, showing that the exploitation he described has not disappeared but has been outsourced — moved to countries where it is less visible to Western consumers but no less devastating to the workers who experience it.
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