The poem takes place primarily in the kitchen of the speaker’s home, which symbolically represents the only role the speaker is allowed to inhabit in real-life. She is ultimately a fairly powerless instrument of her husband’s hatred and violence. What little agency the speaker possesses is ineffectual for its lack of reality—and ultimately proves dangerous because it gives her husband the reason he needs to enact violence on others. No matter how many times the speaker attempts to use fantasy to distract herself from her guilt, fear, and hatred, she is unable to escape “the kitchen” that represents her real-life role as a 1950s woman, housewife, and mother.

The color red appears in multiple forms within the poem. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker states, “It had the beat inevitable. It had the blood. / A wildness cut up, and tied in little bunches” (Lines 2-3). The “it” here is meant to be the murder of Emmett Till, the act that the speaker tries to replace in her mind with the events of a romantic ballad. Her husband’s mouth, an instrumental extension of his violence and the violence of white, patriarchal society is also described as being red: “His mouth, wet and red, / So very, very, very red” (Lines 121-22).