Not My Best Side

“Explain how the poem “not my best side” portrayal of its characters, leads to archetypes being gone against.”
This poem is inter-textual in a sense that it is based on the painting “St. George and the Dragon”. It takes a humorous role in portraying each of the characters found in the painting and goes against theirs common archetypes of a dragon, princess and knight. This poem is a parody on the archetypes that the characters of the painting should have, it goes against them completely in a humorous way and using each of the three stanzas from either the dragon’s, princess’ or knight’s perspective, to go against their respective archetypes.
In the first stanza, the dragon is portrayed as narcissistic only caring about it appeared, even to the point where he “was sorry for the bad publicity”. The repetition of the title showed that the dragon was really concerned about not being portrayed on his “best side”. The enjambment of the dragon’s explanation of not having the “chance to/ Pose properly” added emphasis to the dragon’s vanity, not being able to have his best position captured by the artist, resulting in his unhappiness. Initially, he was not that affected by not having “two feet” drawn by the artist as they are not that important “to a monster”, once again this enjambment bolds the dragon’s self-praise and his pride. Another enjambment that once again highlights the dragon’s vanity is how the dragons explains he would “have liked a little more blood/ to show they were taking (him) seriously”. Lastly, he is particularly against the idea of being “on a string” as this showed the dragon being tame which is what the dragon would never want to be seen as.
Through the dragon’s perspective shown in the first stanza, many archetypes are gone against. The archetype of a dragon being ferocious and ruthless is destroyed when this particular dragon is seen as being more concerned with its looks. Also, it hints of the archetypes of a beautiful princess and a brave