At first glance, the poem Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy appears to be a simple poem with a simple concept: love, at least in the speaker's eyes, is like an onion. The poem tells the story of the speaker giving her significant other an onion for Valentine's Day and shows her justifying her gift, how she truly embodies the love between her and her lover. The speaker also criticizes the stereotypical gifts usually given during Valentine's Day, saying that, unlike an onion, it does not show the complexity or sincerity of love. In Valentine, Duffy brings out the layering of love (pun not intended) in the eyes of the speaker and how she attributes the properties of an onion to those of the love between her and her lover using structures and metaphors. To illustrate what love means to the speaker, Duffy uses multidimensional metaphors that support and accompany his basic metaphor: how love is like an onion. Duffy's first use of the metaphor, surprisingly, is not the main one that love is like an onion, but rather states that his gift is not one of the stereotypical gifts given on Valentine's Day: "Not a red rose or a heart of satin." (Duffy 1). The speaker finds fault with these stereotypical metaphors for love, contrasting them with the onion and showing how they do not symbolize what love really is: "Not a pretty card or a kissogram./I'll ​​give you an onion." (Duffy 12,13). To help justify the speaker's gift, Duffy incorporates metaphors to explain why an onion is the perfect symbol of love. For example, in the second stanza, Duffy compares the onion both physically and metaphorically to the moon: “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper./It promises light” (Duffy 3.4). Physically, they are both spherical and only show their bright centers when something... in the center of the card... carries a lot of weight with it. The use and repetition of structural devices not only helps the speaker explain to his love why he chose an onion as a gift, but also makes the poem as a whole much more compelling and interesting to read. The complexity of Carol Ann Duffy's poem Valentine is not hidden in its essence, the comparison of love to an onion, but in the way it illustrates and supports its metaphors. Through the use of both literary and structural devices, Duffy explores the meaning of love through the lens of the speaker, who, on Valentine's Day, is trying to convey the true meaning of love through his favorite symbol: a onion. Although its structure may seem unorthodox to some, its use of both long, metaphorical sentences and short, stock sentences make the poem sweet and pleasant to read on the one hand and unnerving and sad on the other...