Category: Poetry

Municipal Gum by Oodgeroo Noonuccal poem analysis

“Castrated, broken, a thing wronged”

The famous Oodgeroo Noonuccal, once known as (until 1988) Kath Walker mentioned this in her poem, Municipal Gum. Where she would then go on to raise awareness of the tremendous discrimination by white Australians against Aborigines up until the 1960s. Oodgeroo is of aboriginal descent making this topic ‘hit heart’ as she also lived through this time period, therefore allowing her a firsthand perspective as to what happened. She then went on to translate her experience and knowledge into poems; amongst her many other passions that she perused such as she was a political activist, artist, and educator.

The poem portrays the European-influenced changes in society and their mentality to control whatever they please. Noonuccal used various writing techniques to apprehend the readers into understanding the struggle that once was. She uses similes, metaphors, symbolisms, personification, imagery, and a list too long to cover within this analysis. One of the many is she uses metaphor in the lights of a gum tree which is taken into modern society represented as “city street” This is referring to the aboriginal children taken away from their homes into an environment to which they are unfamiliar and overall don’t belong. The metaphor further relates to the indigenous people in that the gum tree cannot speak and cannot choose its outcome. To them, everything is predestined.

Diving into the poetic ploys used throughout the poem, Noonuccal uses a vast variety of techniques that are quite advanced pieces of literature, so advanced that, to the untrained eye the lyrics per se do not make sense. In the first half of the poem, Oodgeroo Danny is Gay explores the changes in society and indirectly calls out the displacement of the Aboriginal people from their land. This is seen with her choice of words such as “Gumtree in the city street” and “Hard bitumen around your feet,” Instead of simply shoving information into the reader’s face in the sense of a monologue, Oodgeroo positions the reader into an uncomfortable position so to speak, in doing so the reader begins to adjust their perspective and sympathize with Oodgeroo.

Later in the poem, Oodgeroo uses the word Castrated, the google definition states it is to remove the testicles of a male animal or man. However, in this context, castration symbolizes how Oodgeroo feels the Europeans have treated Indigenous Australians and their land. Castration also refers to what is done is done and whatever happens now can no longer influence what was. Other examples of symbolism can be seen in the title ‘Municipal Gum’. Municipality relates to a town or district and Gum obviously refers to the gum tree mentioned in the first line implying that the tree belongs to the community, moreover, is the community.

Arguably, the most powerful quote throughout the entire poem is the rhetorical question asked at the very end; “O fellow citizen, What have they done to us?”. These final words are the conclusion of the implications that emerged throughout the poem. Rhetorical questions are used to provoke thought and to stimulate a pre-determined response. In addition to this, Oodgeroo uses this method to involve the reader not only with asking the question but also with selecting the word us as the final word. Moreover, if the reader is following the words and is immersed in the poem in a sense prevents them from answering, due to the whole ‘art form’ of the rhetorical question.

In conclusion, Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poem, Municipal Gum expresses a personal and powerful message about the discrimination and suffering the Aboriginals of the stolen generation experienced. Noonuccal’s use of clever words, personification, metaphors, and many other techniques invited readers to not only educate themselves about the Aboriginal heritage but also sympathize with those affected.

Up until about year ago, I really felt like I needed some sort of permission to read poetry and its bizarre because I never felt the same way when it came to reading books. Books just felt like a ‘free-range forest’ that I could wonder in at any time… camp out… have some fun… go home… keep camping whatever! However, as I became familiar and started studying T.S Eliot’s poetry, I started to get excited by this medium and felt as if I could really recognise the hidden messages in poetry. Since then, I started learning about poets writing in this day and age, which has been really helpful in finding voices that I can relate to and exploring ideas and emotions through poetry at a time and level that I understand.

As a HSC student I came to the realisation that poetry is really important, because like any other form of art, it is an outlet for creative expression. This particular form of literature acts as a nexus of communication, enabling us to relay our emotions to the world and relate through the mutuality of shared experiences. So why poetry? According to Scott Griffin, “poetry is the essence of language and the language is the mirror of our soul.” Even though T.S. Eliot’s poems at first seem like a bunch of meaningless words, when we look at them more closely you may come to see that poetry delivers a full range of human experiences. Although poetry does not appeal to every individual, many students use poetry as a form of therapy, escape, and entertainment. This is somewhat significant, as some students realise that poetry provides them with value and joy, in the way that painting will provide that for others or even dancing. Therefore, during my study of T.S Eliot’s poems I recognised how poems belonged to the collective in a way that acted as a binding possession that connected us all.

Even if poetry simply looks like a bunch of words to you, it is a unique way of expressing very real and powerful personal experiences in a concentrated form. It is something you and I can connect with when we are in the process of deconstructing a poem word by word. Even short, light-hearted poems can explore the poet’s world in deep ways that maintain a semblance of excitement about language and its possibilities. Poetry can provide this amazingly immersive insight into other people’s lives, minds, and cultures. Like all literature, poetry does not exist in a vacuum and we can connect with poems written centuries ago, as they discuss pertinent ideas about human emotions.

On the other hand, poetry can also be therapeutic and expressive, allowing us to gain insight into the emotional turmoil within the individual’s and accordingly sympathise at their lowest lows. Writing poetry is a crafty act, with authors considering the placement of each word within each line, something to remember whenever you are overwhelmed by the swarm of words of a poem “attacking you in your HSC”. Thus, as you start appreciating the style and form of poetry and get to the stage of writing your own poem, you have a better understanding of the best words to use and in which order to use them in. Therefore, the element of craftsmanship in the creation of poetry drives a sense of ownership and personalisation, enabling HSC students to find a strong connection with T.S Eliot’s poems. Poetry in contemporary society has become a broad term that encompasses a range of communication styles that stem from the source of creativity. Whether you write poetry with a rhyming or non-rhyming scheme, it eventually becomes a shorthand method to express emotion or tell a story based on historical accounts. It is one of the most unique artforms in the sense that the writer can choose his or her rhyming style, length and the type of language to be used in a particular piece. As an HSC student, like you, T.S Eliot was daunting at first, but by realising just how powerful words and poems can be, I came to appreciate all the intense experiences and emotions that Eliot explored.

Poetry also acts as the artistic communication of intimacy, by exploring the evolution of feelings to the internal and external effects of human nature. It’s sad to see the decline of interest in poetry, however hopefully by including Eliot’s and other modern poems in the HSC, we as young adults gain a renewed interest in this form of modern literature. Before studying Eliot’s poems, I would often draft my poetry using colloquial language, however by appreciating published poets I realised how I could spin and refine my poetry to allow it to articulate my emotive expression. This idea is reflected in a lot of what TS Eliot wrote in the 19th century. He suggested that when someone wrote poetry in form and meter, you are integrating yourself within the communion of all poets who have come before you, and all those who will come after.

Modernist poetry is underscored by the purposeful roots of the era. The instincts and motivations of the form were dictated by the pursuit of subversion from tradition and convention. TS Eliot wrote a book called Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century, which described how modern poets felt obliged to abandon metred rhyme because they wanted to create a poetry that was capable of giving representation to contemporary life. Through that motive, much of the popular poetry of their day had retreated into artificial representations of nature poetry that lacked any of Wordsworth’s insight into the moral imagination of poetry. In my opinion, I feel as if the encapsulation of the degradation and sordidness of humanity by contemporary poets makes it especially poignant in this day and age. Thus, making it essential that HSC students simultaneously register the passing and usually sorted realities of our age.

In conclusion, when you come to realise that poems are simply not just a random collection of words, but instead a beautiful and powerful depiction of a poet’s innermost thoughts, you will come to better appreciate the poems you encounter in HSC English, making your entire year twelve english experience much more enjoyable. Poetry acts as a kind of everyday magic that anyone can practice and just slightly changes the world around you and all you need is a pen or keyboard. We all need to read poetry and when we come across a beautiful line, to commit it to memory and read it out loud. In my opinion, this is the best way to truly understand a poem and this one act can help enhance a student’s studying of T.S Eliot’s poetry.

Introduction

The Wasteland is a text attacking the division of gender. There are five couples Eliot refers to in this poem; Marie and her cousin, the hyacinth girl and hyacinth boy, the bourgeois woman and her silent counterpart, the young man carbuncular and the typist, and finally Philomel and her husband. Eliot also refers to Tiresias who is not exactly a character but more of a spectator to all the stories and his equal, Madame Sosostris who is teller of the future. Critics who have discussed gender in The Waste Land include Phillip Sicker who expresses the idea of a female archetype in T.S Elliot’s The Waste land by emphasizing the importance of the three-woman condensed into the idea of one known as the ‘Belladonna’. Astrid Ennslin emphasized gender relationships in The Wasteland are based off mythic allusions, and Andrej Zavrl highlights on the idea of male hysteria and unruly desires. Through different scenarios the five couples showcase everything represented by women is completed by a man and everything represented by men is completed by woman. By writing The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot highlighted that the poem emphasizes a somber and gloomy time in which both men and women were negatively affected both sexually and spiritually.

Marie and the cousin

In the poem “Burial of the Dead”, the first couple is Marie and her cousin, and the poem opens with a reversal of the seasons in order to interpret life and death. This was done to emphasize Spring is the season of rebirth, and the rejuvenation of nature while the Winter season is cold and symbolizes death and hibernation. The change in months awakens memories for the narrator hidden deep inside. Eliot is juxtaposing the innocence of the childhood memories with the ugly things going on during pre – war Europe. Marie’s cousin is the one to save her from her fears when he is “taking her out on a sled” (Eliot 14) they go down the mountains, “in the mountains, there you feel free” (15) Marie trusted her cousin enough to “hold on tight” (16) and by trusting him she reaches a sense of freedom. Philip Sicker references how Marie is “mingling with memory and desire” (Sicker 2) which can be understood to be the theme of the entire poem. Marie is referenced to being like the hyacinth girl because she “unquestionably anticipates her” (2) because just like the hyacinth girl, Marie “stands sexually willing and eager with her hair wet and her arms full of flowers” (2). The memory of Marie and her childhood story is what became the faint memory of “lost sexual health which resides in cultural consciousness” (2). There are many Russian references in this poem thought to be about Marie Larisch who knew and met T.S. Eliot, had a interview with him about her past and Eliot chose to write about parts of her story in his poem. Marie is used emphasize the importance of memories and how this one memory was such a big part of her life especially thinking back to it when she was older.

The Hyacinth girl and the Hyacinth boy

A scene referencing ‘the hyacinth garden’ highlights a girl reminiscing to a boy, when a year ago “you gave me hyacinths” (Eliot 35) which symbolize sadness and sorrow; she references her and the young mans trip to the garden in the rain and how she thinks about the memory enriched in her mind because she treasures that night. Unfortunately for her he has no feeling from the night with her which is the opposite of what she wanted to hear. The boy gave the girl hyacinths because he wanted to end the relationship respectfully and the best way he possibly could. Giving her these flowers was his way of subtly explaining to her he has no feelings for her. The boy himself does not have any words to her the reader can see, but it is understood by the hyacinth girl he had nothing good to say when the poem says “ looking into the heart of light, the silence” (Eliot 42) it is emphasized the boy seems to care for her in regards to hurting her heart, he wants to keep this memory positive in respect to her feelings. In the traditional sense, the idea of ‘silence’ has been something women should follow because it meant they were inferior of men. In the poem we find the opposite where the boy chooses not to speak, because someone needed to stay silent and it was the male instead of the female. In the Wasteland “gender relationships are grounded in mythic allusions” (Ensslin 3) the memories and feelings this young woman was having was more of an allusion than reality. Her memories and thoughts seem to be sorrowful and upsetting while the young man whom she is referring to is deceiving by not speaking back to her. The last two lines of the poem “looking into the heart of light, the silence/ Waste and empty is the sea” (Eliot 41-42) encompass a lot of emotion and feeling because the boy is looking into the light which is supposed to be something brightening the path showing what way is needed to go, the ‘heart of light’ could mean ‘love’ and because he stays silent there is no love there, it has disappeared. The ‘heart of light’ and the ‘heart of love’ is empty and this could be argued as being like The Wasteland because no matter how strong or important love is, it has no place in the world when war is taking place.

The bourgeois woman and the silent counterpart

In the poem “A Game of Chess” a woman and her husband are having relationship issues, the women is referred to as “the bourgeois woman” and man himself has no voice and no power in the story. It can be understood Eliot wanted to highlight the female image with an insufficient male voice. The bourgeois woman is dependent on the voiceless male and like many women, she is moved by jewels and perfumes “in vials of ivory and colored glass/ powdered, or liquid – troubled, confused/ And drowned the sense in odors…” (Eliot 86 – 89). The perfumes represent not being able to trust own senses and obtaining an altered reality because “strange synthetic perfumes” (Eliot 87) explain the belief of an allusion. Man can develop certain scents, and this can be the same for everyone because it can be destroyed, and it can emphasize the destruction in men by the way women react to it.

The bourgeois woman appears to be traumatized after her monologue because “her nerves are bad tonight” and she never seems to know “what he is thinking about” (Eliot 111). It is justified this couple has communication problems and they have never solved them so it can be understood even though they are together they do not have a serious relationship and they relate more as friend than lovers. The woman continuously tries to communicate with her lover, but he decides to stay silent which after a certain point the woman starts threatening to “rush out as I am, walk the street/ With my hair down” (Eliot 132-133). She is emphasizing her physical and mental state being caused by his actions. Their relationship does not seem to be working and he does not understand her or take her seriously. The relationship is continuously stuck in a loop, stuck in the same spot every time, which she tries to argue by saying “what shall we do tomorrow/ What shall we ever do” (Eliot 133-134) because she wants things to change and get better but he refuses to answer and acknowledge the problem. The female characters Eliot chose are still “humble in spirit” (Ennslin 10) and they represent what a true woman should be even though in his earlier works Eliot regularly saw women as “threatening figures who torment and castrate men” (Zavrl 2). The game of chess is argued to be a metaphor for the relationship because it is a game of two people and men and women are understood to be on equal sides and they need to figure out what is best for the both. The title is meant to emphasize the male and female friendship and being forced to live the way nature intended by playing by the rules.

Philomel and her husband

The next part of the poem focuses on Philomel and her husband and the traditional gender roles The Wasteland faces in many of the characters. There is a lack of communication between Philomel and her husband Albert because he is absent in their conversations. Albert wants to find another woman to be with. Philomel’s friend tries to imply Albert “can’t bear to look at Lil” (Eliot 146) because she is not pretty enough for him and he is losing interest and if she does not do anything about it then “there are others that will” (Eliot 149). It can be understood the friend is someone who believes a woman needs a man in order to be happy. Philomel is ‘the nightingale’ because she “fills the air with inviolable voice” (Sicker 5) because ever since she took the abortion pills she has never been the same and her body is exhausted and it has been nothing but a victim to her husbands requests. She was “poisoned with abortion pills, not only as a violated and abandoned virgin” (Sicker 8) but also by being pulled by her husbands’ lust. Philomels friend does not seem to support her marriage when she says “what you get married for if you don’t want children” (Eliot 164) and in doing so Philomel realizes she cannot have both marriage and freedom because she cannot have a husband and have her body to herself. While Philomel “adorns her wall and is a pathetic victim” she is also “Cirque, a temptress or sorceress who fills her chamber with strange potions and intoxicating perfumes” (Sicker 7). Each woman Eliot references is both “Victim and seductress” (8) and the poem “is about a sexual failure which signifies a modern failure” (1) which is associated with the “archetypal male, the Fisher King” (1). The Fisher King is referenced in the poem as many different avatars and eventually serves a purpose for the women. Philomel does not feel comfortable with the way her life has been going and she wants things to change whether it be with her husband or not.

The typist and the young man carbuncular

In the poem “The Fire Sermon” there is another couple who has a sexual encounter but has no communication with each other. Both are described by their occupations and not their names. The young man carbuncular is “a small agent’s clerk” which can be argued as ironic because of the way he is dedicated to his job but seems to only live at the typist’s house on certain occasions. The typist herself is the symbol of a sexual experience because she continuously repeats this task but there is no source or beginning of it. The typist’s firnification with young man carbuncular is nothing but “a series of mechanical gestures and dull responses; she does not even appear to possess a real sexual appetite” (Sicker 10). It can be implicated Eliot “has radically simplified and consolidated his female archetype, stripped her of motive, memory and desire until she is definable only as a mechanical impulse” (Sicker 10) and it is what can be understood as being the typist because after a certain point she had no feelings or emotions anymore and just kept the young man carbuncular because he was free and he was around. The mechanical behavior especially regarding the sex and relationships between both sexes can be understood to be present for both and always will be. Eliot seems to enjoy using a female voice and keeping the male silent even though it is not normal in many literary works.

The union of the sexes – Tiresias

The most important person in the whole poem is Tiresias, he is discussed as being the union of the sexes. Tiresias is “the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest… all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem” (Eliot 218). The plural of both men and women is condensed into a single woman and a single man and both are unified in Tiresias. In Eliot’s steps to reduce certain ideas from his poem he “merged the archetypal male and female, the self – castrating Fisher King and the masturbating belladonna, in the figure of double sexed Tiresias” (Sicker 11). Eliot did not want to give one gender priority over the other one and instead universalized the two and formed Tiresias who was both genders and his portrayal of one or the other never occurred and instead was blurred. Tiresias never had a voice in any of the poems because he was more of an onlooker, he wandered the world of the living and the world of the dead in order to try and understand how to help the gender issues. The Wasteland deals with the “notions of gender and sexuality and particularly the expression of desire” (Zavrl 2) and the way it is solved the best way is to have a person who is gender neutral help. By avoiding the dilemma of having powerful women and the way Eliot wanted to represent men, Eliot prefers not to “attach gender to bodies at all” (3) and this helps in avoiding the issues of the sexual differences between either gender especially when trying to make gender ambiguous. In The Fire Sermon Tiresias is both male and female and he is caught between two lives, “old man with wrinkled female breasts” (Eliot 219) he spent years as a female and he spent years as a female and he can understood what it means to live like both. He had been regenerated and he had been reborn by living two lives. Like Tiresias, everyone should develop some part of personality of both genders inside of them so it can be understood on how to live both genders.

Madame Sosotri and Tiresias

Even though Tiresias’s job was to unite the sexes, his female counterpart is understood to be Madame Sosotri and just like him she can tell the future and knows when all of the characters in The Wasteland are going to be destroyed and ultimately knows all of their fates before they do. Through the poem, Eliot shifts from gender to gender in order to emphasize both genders can perform the acts of the other. Tiresias and Madame Sosotri work together, so because Tiresias is blind, Madame Sosotri can use her tarot card readings and they can help one another. If something were to happen to the other, they can work together because they come together as one and they gain the strength needed to complete one another. If every woman is ideally one woman and woman is inside Tiresias, then it can mean Madame Sosotri is the only woman and this logic can be applied to every other couple this poem talks about. This can be the same with man because Tiresias is simply one man, he is every man in the poem; the hyacinth boy, the bourgeois woman’s husband, the young man carbuncular etc. the men in The Wasteland follow basic male instincts and are unable to communicate with one another. Madame Sosotri’s foretelling of the future emphasize the change in the genders and the symbolism by this is seen when she says “here is the one – eyed merchant, and this card/ Which is blank, is something he carries on his back/ Which I am forbidden to see” (Eliot 52-44). The blankness of the card symbolizes a door opening to the future for the couples in The Wasteland and letting them choose what happens in their lives because right now their future is unknown. The blank card is the perfect thing to show how no one knows what is going to happen in the future.

Conclusion

It can be emphasized through this paper Eliot never wanted to mistreat the female sex, he wanted to explain how both genders can become one and work together. He wanted to highlight the themes of resurrection and rebirth through the stories of the five couples. The traditional gender roles of the male and female are always being subject to judgement by the other gender and through communication all of the couples work on understanding the other and not automatically assuming the worst based on societies ‘rules. Both genders share the same problem with the lack of communication and through examination and understanding, both man and woman try to understand one another and the idea of being one.

Works Cited

1. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965. The Waste Land: and Other Poems. London:
2. Faber and Faber, 1999.
3. Ennslin, Astrid. “Women in Wasteland – Gendered deserts in T.S. Eliot and Shelley Jackson.” Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, no. 3, 2005, 1-13
4. Sicker, Philip. “The Belladonna: Eliot’s Female Archetype in The Waste Land.” Twentieth
5. Century Literature, vol. 30, no. 4, 1984, pp. 420–431.
6. Zavrl, Andrej. “Sexing The Waste Land : Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.” Acta Neophilologica, vol. 38, no. 1-2, 2005, pp. 71–82.

Edgar Allan Poe is known as a major figure in literature and gothic poems and stories. He is one of the most consequential writers with a dark and miserable life. He was born on January 19, 1809, and most of his writing was reflected in his own reality of life. He was one of the first writers to try to make a professional living as an author. Edgar Allan Poe’s past life mirrors themes such as Loneliness and Grief, which is reflected in his poem, “The Raven”.

Loneliness plays a big part in “The Raven” and Poe’s life. In “The Raven”, it states, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’ Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—” (Poe 1). This quote supports my theme simply because the weather is cold and gloomy, and it’s a winter day in December. He refers to that day as a “Bleak December” showing the lack of life and happiness after he lost his love, Lenore. In Poe’s life, loneliness was a big factor, “Poe was very isolated as a child because of his parent’s deaths. The death of his parents was a major influence and impact on the way Poe writes. This is seen in the poem “The Raven” because of the tone and the many symbols that refer back to Poe’s sad life. While Poe led a rough and troubled life because of his childhood isolation, he expressed his feelings on the subject in some of the greatest works of art in history.” (The Edgar Allan Poe Story Of Isolation 16) In his childhood years, he showed loneliness just like how the main characters showed boredom and abandonment after his love died just like his parents. Edgar Allan Poe had so many depressing moments in his life with so many deaths and loneliness.

Grief plays such a big role in “The Raven” and in his real life. “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angel’s name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” (Poe 16) In the passage, you can tell he still misses Lenore and still has pain from losing someone he loves. He believes that the Raven came as a messenger for the dead. The raven is a never-ending reminder that Lenore died. The Raven represents his grief for Lenore. In Poe’s life, he went through many deaths which led to his grief. “His later life included surviving the early death, at age 24, of his beloved wife Virginia.” (Potempa 3) Additionally, he lost his parents at a very young age right after his dad abandoned his mother. It is said that “Edgar and Virginia were married in 1836. She was only 13 years old and he was 27 years old. In 1842, Virginia became sick with tuberculosis. She died of the disease on January 30, 1847, at the age of 24.” (Virginia Clemm Poe 2) His parents and wife dying is what started his grief at a young age. He was only six when his parents died and twenty-seven when his wife died. Poe had a very hard life but reflected that in many different stories and poems.

Edgar Allan Poe’s had a depressing life filled with loneliness and grief reflects in his poems and short stories. Losing his parents and the love of his life at a young age was brought onto his very popular poems and short stories like “The Raven” showing the loneliness and the grief of losing Lenore in the book. Sadly, Edgar Allan Poe was only forty when he died. Some theories of how he died included grief and suicide which plays a big part in his health and mental issues since he was young. He will always be remembered as one of the most influential writers of the 19th century.

In his sonnet, William Shakespeare discusses a man, possessing characteristics associated with nature, and how said nature and its seasons of summer/spring are perennial, as well as elaborating on the splendor of art and flora. The theme is the timelessness of love and admiration. How change is an inevitable prospect, yet, it does not hinder the poet’s veneration for their subject of love. He explicitly expresses this notion through the manipulation and application of figurative language, poetic devices, and imagery.

Love and admiration are palpable emotions expansively elaborated in the sonnet. William Shakespeare smolders the subject with admiration, saying, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate”, inquiring whether a comparison of this subject to a ‘summer’s day’, is appropriate, or even worthy of an analogy, as the poet’s subject possesses attributes that transcend that of nature.

The use of metaphors is a discerning and perceptible technique integrated into which the author purposefully manipulates this feature to orchestrate the audience’s consideration of the sentiment of the poem. For example, in the line “But thy eternal summer shall not fade”, he cultivates the use of a metaphor that does inveterate the main human subject, and summer will habitually stay young and everlasting, and the timelessness of love is perpetual, despite emotional destruction by nature and the inevitable change of season.

A marvelous further use of personification is evident in line 4: “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date”. Physically, summer cannot ‘lease’ time, objects, or tangible substances, yet it’s inferred that he feels as though the time summer has chartered, is too brief, and he qualms that there will be detrimental effects succeeding the aftermath of summer. In line 11, “Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade”, the poet establishes his notion that the sonnet itself is an assurance that this person’s magnificence will be unrelenting, and their beauty defies even the claws of death. Assonance and repetition are noteworthy attributes within most lines, which contribute to the constitution and soundscape: shake/May, eye/shines, fair from fair, chance/nature/changing, remaining consistent, and ensuring engagement and diversity within the devices utilized.

The intensity of spring and summer can be felt, and the environment associated with these seasons, yet discontented with the conclusion of the mellow, and heartfelt season. The imagery bequeaths a delightful sentiment, one robust, passionate, and eternal. William Shakespeare certainly accomplished his goal of embracing and elaborating on his admiration and love for the subject of his affection. Undeniably, he sought to articulate this powerful sentiment and invoke these feelings within the audience. This concentrated excitement is to be perceived as exhilarating or heartfelt and mellow.

For my poetry analysis, I will be looking at the poem ‘The Self-Unseeing’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘I Am’ by John Clare. Both share quite a depressing theme, which I will be focusing on through different literary techniques. Hardy writes about missing his childhood, while Clare talks about looking forward to his death so he can return to a peaceful state. Both poems feature 3 stanzas and a similar rhyme scheme of ‘ABAB’.

Background

‘The Self-Unseeing’, a part of Hardy’s second volume of poems released in 1901, is a reminiscence of Hardy’s past, where he spent his childhood in a family home with his mother and father who have now passed away. The poem has a thematic message to remind the audience to not take what we have for granted. Throughout the entire poem, Hardy is seemingly revisiting his home from his youth, describing and comparing the present time to the past that he experienced with his parents. In doing so, the tone he uses is miserable and makes the reader feel as if he suffers from severe guilt and regret for not truly appreciating his youth.

Looking at the poem ‘I Am’ requires more context to coherently understand the theme and message behind it. ‘I Am’, written by John Clare during the mid-1840s, encompasses the time he spent at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he stayed due to his suffering mental illness. During this time, he felt isolated from family and friends. It is apparent that Clare suffers from a lack of purpose in life, resulting in the desire for his life to end, so he can abide by whom he believes his “Creator, God”.

Analysis

In ‘The Self-Unseeing’, Thomas Hardy uses descriptive imagery to describe how his old home has aged and become worn down. He remembers that his parents used to walk through what he calls “the old door”, but are now not around to do so. Hardy speaks about who is believed to be his mother and father sitting around by the fire, while “he who plays” is bowing it higher and higher. He highlights that his mother was “smiling” into the fire, indicating that the period he is discussing was pleasant, strengthening his emotion towards his past being irretrievable, and regretting that he took it for granted. To convey that his father was playing a musical instrument the audience, he uses allusion, as not many readers will necessarily know what “bowing” means. Essentially, a bow is a stick used to move across a stringed instrument to create sound. In the last stanza, the author speaks about how he danced “childlike”, to the man bowing as if he was in a dream. He remembers how many blessings occurred on that day and how his life at that point was full of freedom, innocence, and that “everything glowed with a gleam” as he was happy and content. However, he believes that he stayed too content, as he states that “we were looking away”, meaning that none of them fully appreciated and cherished those moments together.

Now moving on to the poem ‘I Am’ by John Clare. The metric line that Clare uses in this poem is an iambic pentameter. This was intentionally done to coincide with the title ‘I am’ because it sounds like ‘iam’ in iambic. However, Clare didn’t use the iambic pentameter throughout the whole poem as in the first line, it’s broken up by a caesura after he states, “I am”. Considering that a break in the iambic pentameter only occurs once throughout this poem, Clare must have intended it to have a strong meaning. The way in which Claire expresses this phrase is quite confident. After the caesura, this confidence quickly dissipates as he states: “Yet what I am, no one cares or knows… my friends forsake me like a memory lost”. This use of alliteration is used to emphasize the provoking feeling of abandonment within Clare. He also states that he is the self-consumer of his woes. This is likely conveying that he finds comfort and satisfaction in times of self-pity. At the end of this first stanza and the beginning of the second, he uses an anaphora when he states that he lives “like vapours tossed” to connect and describe where his life has led to, which he believes is into nothingness. He later states that even those that he loves the most are distant from him, as he describes his life as a shipwreck without any sense of happiness or joy. He uses intangible words. In the final stanza, Clare intelligently uses sibilance to end the poem, as many words incorporating an S sound create a sense of peace, where he states he looks forward to abiding with his creator, God. The rhyme scheme changes from ‘ABAB’ to ‘ABABCC’ to further break the last stanza up from the rest of the poem, highlighting his longing for his death.

Conclusion

Both poems include many different literary techniques such as descriptive imagery, caesuras, anaphora, sibilance, and many more to convey a depressing theme. Both authors seemingly have had troubled lives, almost as if these poems were a cry for help.

Through the exploration of T.S Eliot’s ‘Prelude’s’ (1911), ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925) and ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (‘Prufrock’ 1915), the audience is exposed to the isolation, depersonalisation and corruption of society that Eliot endures by his ‘single voice’ of apprehension, engaging with our own uncertainties. Eliot’s poems endure the hardship of people being hungry for any form of spiritual experience in which through the exploration of the five poems, becomes increasingly obvious. His poetry is set in the brutal onset of The Great War, encircling the soulless mechanisation and industrialisation of a modern world. The critic, Potter Woodbery, echoes that it is precisely because of Eliot’s fragmented, “modern metaphors and similes”, that allows responders to gain a “fuller and closer examination” of his poems (WUTOSAMA, 2016). Although his early poems do not give a clear idea about his beliefs, they show the shaping and incorporation of multiple themes (MAHFOUD, 2009). Eliot uses the method of observing places and people, as well as experimenting with poetic forms in order to convey his spiritual views (MAHFOUD, 2009) which become increasingly evident in these five poems; ‘The Journey of Magi’, ‘The Hollow Men’, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘Prelude’s’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’. All five poems delve into the eternal aspects of a corrupted society as well as isolation and the depersonalisation of individuals. The audience is presented the textual integrity conveyed in these five distinct poems as Eliot consistently critiques modernity, the corruption caused by liberalism and the individuals struggle against diffidence and loneliness (Condliffe, 2018). Very evident to the audience, through Eliot’s use of intertextuality and form, that we see just how these convey and reinforce meaning throughout his texts. These are evidently present in his interpolation of folk songs; such as in ‘Prufrock’ and ‘The Hollow Men’ (Condliffe, 2018). Eliot’s use of abundant universal themes, regarding human concerns such as, the human condition, allows the audience to get an insight into the canonical status of his poems (Condliffe, 2018)..

A growing sense of corruption within society pervades in the works of modernist writer, T.S. Eliot, and his five poems. Society becomes increasingly hungry for spiritual experience in Eliot’s poems, and it is sufficient to say that the analogy of corruption of society is extremely evident. It explores the ongoing predicament of a world increasingly complicit in its determination to head towards self-destruction (Google Classroom, lecture four). In ‘Prufrock’, Eliot’s protagonist lacks stability. Perhaps he was not trying to create a character but a mood (a representation of many characters within his collection of poems) or of society that was constructing and reconstructing individuals in such a way as to negate any sense of reality and remove any form of spiritual experience. The epigraph at the beginning of ‘Prufrock’, alludes to Dante’s Inferno, which symbolises Prufrock’s entrapment in a hellish corrupt environment, reinforced with the structural downward movement of the poem from the “sky” to the “silent seas”, symbolic of society’s descent into hell. The final stanza in ‘The Hollow Men’ implies these men are dead, and if we (the audience) read the poem as inclusive of us, then essentially, we are already encountering the spiritual death that comes with subscribing to the corruption of a world where love, compassion, kindness, respect and connection has been lost. This stanza is also linked to Dante’s epigraph in ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ as the voices of this poem, like that of Guido, resonate with guilt and fear, lacking in the moral fibre, the humanity that has ultimately left them void of substance. Like ‘Prufrock’, ‘Prelude’s’ deals with modernity, and represents the angst and tensions of society that shifts and turns in its acceptance and awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of competing notions of existence. The poem echoes Prufrock’s inarticulate life and inability to convey his truths. The “muddy feet” are both literal and figurative, reflecting echoes of life, fragmented as they are, not bodies or people, just faint echoes of humanity ‘that press’, or rush, ‘To early coffee-stands’. In this stanza (stanza 2), this persona is presenting the workers’ daily struggle. All lines except the final line are enjambed. The use of enjambment breaks to continuity of the lines but are fragmented when spoken. The rhyme is unnatural too, together the audience is shown profound insights into the textual integrity of the poem (Condliffe, 2018). Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’, connotes to the spiritual loss in which his society endures, suggesting a world of devoid, a world pure confinement and anticipation for some form of spiritual experience. Individual metaphors can be gleaned from lines eight, nine and ten – “grass”, “rats”, “cellar”. The sentience here creates archetypal imagery of aridity, of the spirit and of the soul. The couplet referencing the formlessness of the entities reinforces their powerlessness, yet this too is ironic for “they”, as the subjects of the poem, have become voices of a generation, a memory embedded with the loss of integrity, power and betrayal we are all subject to as we conform to the status quo (Google Classroom, Lecture four).

A prominent theme in Eliot’s works is isolation. The five poems use extensive forms of fragmentation to show the isolation and helplessness felt by the speaker caught between two different worlds in which they belong to neither (GradeSaver, 2018). The poem ‘Prelude’s’ revolves around the narrator’s nocturnal walk, passing a succession of street lamps. He seems to be colonized by their commands to consider the sordid images in the streets and the distorted images thrown up by his memory. In other words, the morbid images of the Paris night reflect the modern world that has only despair and misery to offer to men. That the narrator is controlled by an external world signifies his lack of individuality and consequently his loss of identity as he suffers a life full of isolation and emptiness. Here, Eliot I believe was influenced by the Bergsonian philosophy that asserted that, “the individual consciousness is limited to those aspects of the universe that affect the individual,” resulting in the emanation of fragmentary thoughts and memories – thoughts that are dominated and controlled by the street lamps (BITE, 2013, Pg.4). Similarly, in ‘Prufrock’, the theme of isolation further represents itself when Prufrock asks, “Do I dare?” (Ln 38). This line alone represents the fear that the character has towards the society due to his status as a social outcast. Consequently, Prufrock seems to be afraid of the people and resorts to recollect similar voices he has perceived as the people he has seen crowd (ACW, 2011). Philosopher Henri Bergson observes that “We cannot think of ourselves, we can only live, we cannot even conceive of ourselves as having a single clear identity; our being can only be found amidst the shifting currents of our most immediate experience”, depicting the modern reality, its rootlessness and its dissatisfactions. Set in the squalor of the urban metropolis, the literature of modernism manifests the breakdown of social norms and cultural strictures, the rejection of history, substituting it with a mythic past, “borrowed without chronology,” and the growing sense of alienation and isolation in a world wherein daily existence is synonymous with “living death” (BITE, 2013, pg. 1).

Whilst Eliot illustrates the physical and spiritual depersonalisation of individuals within the societies depicted in his poems, the need for human interaction and some form of spiritual experience becomes progressively prominent. Critic G.S Fraser states, “Our world, and our place in it, is increasingly hard to understand and the sense of difficulty has been increasing for more than a hundred years”. Instead of starting off with a preconceived notion of life or a rehearsed response to it, Eliot explores the dull sluggish struggle of everyday existence, depersonalising individuals by talking about bodily members such as feet, hands, eyes and fingers, something that was practiced in his five poems; ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘Prelude’s’, ‘Rhapsody on a Windy night’, ‘The Hollow Men’ and ‘Journey of the Magi’ (BITE, 2013, pg. 2). ‘Prelude’s’ reflects a sense of nothingness in the urban landscape. Eliot explores how modern society has depersonalised individuals as they are constantly struggling with everyday existence, and hungry for some form of spiritual experience. The men of Eliot’s poem, ‘Prelude’s’, are never accused of doing anything that should be resulting in this crime. They are faceless and hollow, eyes that watch but cannot see because they have done nothing, just existed and paradoxically, become non-existent in their demise. The synecdoche’s used throughout Eliot’s poetry are a representation of the personalisation of humans within his society and emphasises the attachment of the observer. The oppressing allusion to ‘eyes’ in ‘The Hollow Men’, infers the lack of insight and fragmentation. The metaphorical “kingdom” (Ln. 20) can be either a heaven or a hell as either requires a form of redemption, a movement through purgatory, implying that these esoteric figures are locked in a darkness of their own making (Google Classroom, Lecture four). In Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, there is a reference to “one-night cheap hotels”, an allusion to prostitution or destitution. The allusion is further enhanced by the idea that one has “restless nights” in such establishments, metaphorically referencing the conscious as disturbed. If the audience sees this as a tangible geographical space, they could argue that those who inhabit such spaces do so for an escape that will bring them no moral peace (Google Classroom, Lecture one). Through the fragmentation and juxtaposing of individuals in this poem, we begin to see that Eliot set the scene of a sick world in which is ironic to his own life, a place where humans are not equipped to any form of spiritual experience within their society.

Thus, Eliot’s poems provide us with an effective platform for assessing the emptiness and despondency of a war devastated world, something that has ruined the human will to live. Motifs of isolation, depersonalisation and the evident corruption of society shown within Eliot’s poems, provides the audience with a deeper understanding of the poetry, in a complex era, Eliot had to reflect. Eliot remains the quintessential poet of the English language precisely because his poetry endures through his impersonal way, that of a fearful, disillusioned modernist, seeking truth in an alienated, and desolated world (WUTOSAMA, 2016). The audience is shown that the textual integrity of Eliot’s poems remains incredibly apparent, as his works all convey universal themes whether this be relationships, modernity, isolation, gender, personal struggle and more. Eliot’s profound but unsettling interrogation of ideas of tradition throughout his poetry inform the audience of the corrupt, and desolate society in which he occupied at the time.

Modernism is a movement in literature which lasted from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. This specific era marked landmark progress in science and technology, globalization and industrialization. Even though these are all indicatives of modernism, the modernist writers, nevertheless, diverted their interest into otherwise. Their central objective was to highlight the potential inconsistency underneath the surface advancement. They observed that with the increased dependance on science and technology, and the gradual removal of the individual from rural community into urban isolation, the individual and society were at odds with one another. furthermore, they also witnessed that the destruction caused by the World War I left the civilization dismissed rather than improved.

Free Verse

The modernists notably diverged from the strict meter formulated by the Romantic school of poetry. They preferred free verse which in a way follows neither a rhyme scheme and nor a consistent meter. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is also composed in free verse. However, the thing is that the poem does not fully follow the free verse, it sticks to some formal rhymes as well.

Stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness is a vey popular mode of narration in the modern era. The modernist writers used this technique to baffle the audience, by leaving things unclear or unexplained. That is the reason works narrated by this technique are often difficult to follow. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock also employs the stream of consciousness technique to present the inner thoughts or agony of a unstable, isolated, uncertain, and sarcastic man named Prufrock.

Alienation

Alienation is one of the central themes in the modern era. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is also determined around this theme. The poet investigates alienation through the title character Prufrock, who is actually paralyzed by indecision and worry about his appearance to others, especially to women. Prufrock thinks that his paralysis has stemmed from the silent criticism of those around him, and so he also thinks that he will be free of his paralyzing fear once he isolates himself from others. He starts the poem with an epigraph which is drwan from the 27 canto of Dante’s Inferno to suggest the theme of secrecy.

Allusion

Now, most of the modernist works are filled with allusions, an expression which allowed the writers to summarize the entire theme, feeling, mood and plot of the other stories, with just one phrase or word. Eliot also used allusions extravagantly in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which heightened the symbolic as well as the ironic mode of expression. For example:

The very title of the poem repeats the Rudyard Kipling’s Love Song of Har Dyal, although in a rather ironic way. On the other hand, Kipling’s poem is a typical love song which is expressing an Englishman’s passion and love for his Indian lover, Eliot’s poem is a mockery of the love song, displaying the protagonist’s many failed attempts at courting women.

Eliot alludes to Lazarus in the line 94-95, a biblical character who was actually sent to the Hell but he really wanted to come back to the earth in order to tell his friend about his experiences in the Hell. Moreover, Prufrock in the line 111-119 considers himself to be prince Hamlet, but soon after that he says that he doesn not even have the potentialities of Hamlet and that he is more of the character of Polonius rather than the Hamlet.

Will the war on masculinity only fire back?

The problem with the term toxic masculinity by Jacinta Petrohilos

Toxic masculinity has become a very over used term in modern day society, the application of the term “toxic” traits target things such as aggression and sexist behaviours but we only ever associate these terms with males. We are now in the era where masculinity is raised to praise what is wrong with men and to address how to change them. But have we ever stopped to think that these are learnt behaviours.

The concept of toxic masculinity has not only been a modern day so called problem, but these types of behaviours have been shown not only today but in times such as The Elizabethan era and The Victorian era. For example William Shakespeare had a very good reputation for writing some of the most well-known poem and plays in history most are still studied today, but many of these plays have toxic masculinity incorporated in them and nobody has a problem with this? Yet we victimise males today with having these “toxic” behaviours.

A very popular play that Shakespeare wrote is a very good example of these toxic behaviours. The play “Macbeth” dramatizes effect of power and the destructive physical and psychological effects of civil drive on those who seek power in their favour. In the beginning of this play the main character Macbeth has a strong conscience and is not won over by evil easily. His ambition however, suppresses his good qualities and eventually become his flaw.

But power then becomes his main focus with help from his wife, he becomes violent and begins to show his ruthless side by killing the current king to gain the thrown, his wife being the main integrator pressures him into becoming more of a man she pressures him to do this by using his weak traits against him and with playing mind games with him begins to question him “are you afraid to act the way you desire” Lady Macbeth [1.7.3] She pressures him to act more like a “man” if he wants what he desires. He begins to kill more and more people and becomes the villain of the play as people begin turn against him.

But both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and wracked with guilt and become insane and are both lead to a miserable death. This play demonstrates how with the encouragement from others new behaviours can be learnt and in this case Macbeth had built up a more of a masculine side. So how is this behaviour different from our modern day male behaviour today? Macbeth wasn’t always the bad guy he was pressured into being more “masculine” and yet we fight the fact that “toxic” masculine traits are just a normal behaviour from men in this era. We don’t take into encounter that these traits have been learnt or

Even forces upon men, because it’s just “normal” for them to act like this. But Shakespeare wasn’t the only poet to incorporate this type of toxic masculinity into his play and poems. Robert Browning also done this is a poem My Last Duchess, this poem explores the negative impacts of the power a man could have over a women in this era. The Duke is a man of important stature and therefore is as symbol of power. He speaks with a man to negotiate the marriage of his counts daughter, but shows a painting in his house. The painting of the Dukes wife who has passed.

The Duke explains to the man, that his wife had a flirtatious personality and he felt he could not control her and explains that she is to easily impress (A heart- how shall I say? –too soon made glad, too easily impressed; she liked whatever she looked on) Browning, 1842 the duke was filled with jealousy which he could not control and he gave away that he snapped and killed her, with expressing that the duke gave the commands and as a result all smiles stopped together (This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together) Browning, 1842. This is a vague allusion to her death.

This poem shows that a man thinks he has the right to act in such a way towards a women just because he’s jealous, but there has been no negative feedback on how a man should act this was or it is to be expect from him to this play only how “creative and unique” Gradesaver, 2018 the poem is and it is still being studied in schools along with Macbeth. But we wonder why men in this time have such “toxic masculinity”, well if we ever stopped to think that plays and poems like this have negative impact on men such as they learn from these behaviours, especially if children in schools are learning about this type of toxic behaviours.

But not only this have had we expected men to act in such a way that you could classify as perfect, but when they slip up they need to learn “respect” or we classify their bad behaviour as expected, But yet they show no change, well maybe if we took into consideration that the behaviour like this is learnt through studied poems and plays or even the very own TV shows, movies and video games in particular that are being produced today, a report shows that “Some research finds that violent video game use is correlated with, and may cause, increases in aggression and decreases in prosocial behaviour and that it is a cause of social development, and a variety of stereotyping and sexual morality issues. ” Wikipedia,2019

So how do we stop this kind of Toxic behaviour we find in men? Well the answer is simple we stop teaching it to them, we stop making them study poems with toxic masculinity in it and then telling them it was normal behaviour in those times and we stop releasing Tv shows, movies and violent video games with this kind of behaviour in it because

if we want men to change we need to change the way they see and learn things first.

Bibliography

1. Salter, M. (2019 , febuary 27). The Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity. Retrieved from the atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/toxic-masculinity-history/583411/
2. saver, G. (2019 ). Robert Browning: Poems. Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/robert-browning-poems/study-guide/summary-my-last-duchess
3. wikpedia. (2019 ). Retrieved from Video game controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversies
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversies
5. https://www.gradesaver.com/robert-browning-poems/study-guide/summary-my-last-duchess
6. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/toxic-masculinity-history/583411/

The short poem, “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning is one of his finest works that portrays the motions of love and hate, as well as passion and control. The thrilling love story is about a man who is greatly obsessed with his lover named Porphyria and all he really wants his to keep her all to himself. But the only way he feels he can keep her is by killing her. Browning’s poem shows the theme of love, social classes, and power. The short poem starts off with the speaker describing the setting as gloomy and dark. It has been raining throughout the night which puts the speaker into a depressing mood. This description helps the audience understand the overall tone for the rest of the poem. In the next couple of lines, the reader gets an insight of what the speaker is feeling at the moment. While the storm rages outside of the cottage, he starts to depict his own feelings and explains how he is “heartbroken.”

All of a sudden, the tone and mood change as soon as Porphyria walks in. “When glided in the porphyria; straight she shut the cold out and the storm, and kneeled and made the cheerless grate blaze up and all the cottage warm…” (Lines 6-9) Whatever he was feeling before in suddenly gone. Now, the reader quickly understands why he was so heartbroken; because of her absence. The fire that she built to warm the cottage also represents what she does to his soul whenever she is around. The readers start to understand the amount of love he has for Porphyria and how she holds a very special place in his heart. As we go further in the story, we get to know more about Porphyria’s character. Porphyria starts to undress herself which symbolizes her revealing her feelings toward the speaker. She then starts to confess her feelings to him and how much she loves him.

The reader starts to notice that she is not holding herself back from confessing her true feelings and is completely offering herself to him. One might even say that she is truly in “love”. “…she too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor, to set its struggling passion free from pride, and vainer ties dissever, and give herself to me forever.” (lines 21-25) We slowly see what seemed like love shift to the pressure of giving into what society thinks about them being together. The speaker asserts that her love for him is too weak to stand against through all the societal pressures of them being together. Even though she confessed the way she felt about him, he still felt as if she was not fully committed to him which made him even more skeptical. In the Victorian era, society was divided into three parts: upper class, middle class, and the working class.

The upper class was seen to be in a powerful position and was not allowed to be associated with the lower class or else they would be judged. Besides from being judged, most individuals were made to think that societal gains are what really matter in a relationship. In this case, Porphyria was ready to fight against all these societal norms. This reminds me a lot of the short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” because of how the king of bohemia could not be with a woman he once loved because she was in a lower class. I believe the reason why most individuals marry within the same social class is because they want to avoid the pressures and judgement that come from society. The speaker knew this moment of pure bliss he felt would not last, for it is only a matter of time before society gets in the way of their love. “Be sure I looked up at her eyes happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me…” (135)

Despite the differences they have with wealth and class, she sees him much higher than all that. Now the speaker knows that she is being genuine, and he cannot stop but blush at the idea of her truly being in love with him. Within the next couple of lines, the reader starts to notice something off with the speaker. “I found a thing to do, and all he hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her.” (Lines 37-41) This became a shocker for the audience because the first thing that comes to mind is that he would either accept Porphyria’s love or reject it. The reader starts to get the idea that the speaker is deeply disturbed and might even be suffering with a mental illness. The speaker tries to assure the audience that she died painlessly. “…in the eyes of Porphyria and the duchess, neither of whom will recognize the speakers as they desire, and this makes the determined to punish the female object and control her gaze by possessing her.” (Efird, 2010) In this article, there is a comparison between two of Robert Browning’s works; “Porphyria’s Lover” and My Last Duchess”.

The author states that in both poems, the male figure is obsessive over the woman and is dismayed that she does not feel the same way as he does. Both have decided the best way to punish the woman is by killing them. Even though I agree with the authors point of view of Porphyria’s Lover, I also believe that the reason why he chose to kill her is because he wanted to treasure that moment forever. For that moment, her feelings were genuine toward him and he knew it. The only way she would not leave him is if he kills her. Soon after, the speaker props her head back against his shoulder and acts as if nothing has happened. He completely admires her even though she is dead. Not only does he convince himself that he did the right thing, he also tries to persuade the audience that this is what she truly wanted. Everything she once worried about was simply gone; he gave himself to her instead. Evidently, the reader can no longer trust in the speaker because he is simply delusional. As we approach the end of the poem, the speaker believes that Porphyria’s wish after all did come true. He describes how he has been spending the rest of the night with her dead corpse. At last, the two can be together forever without any disturbances from anyone.

“The narrator actually believes that The Creator refuses to punish him because he has saved his own soul, as well as Porphyria’s, by dispatching one of hell’s voracious minions.” (Burduck, 2002) In this article, the author believes that the reason why the speaker killed Porphyria is because he was sure that she was a vampire. He mentions how Browning’s poem includes some procedures to abolish vampires. One of the “methods” that was used to slay vampires is by killing them with a part of its own body. Which in this case, he used her long blonde hair to choke her. Although this is an interesting argument for this situation, I would have to disagree. I believe that the reason he killed her is because he wanted to be in full control of her actions and every move. At the end, he mentions that “God has not said a word.” (Line 60) The speaker clearly believes that he did absolutely nothing wrong and that is why God has not punished him for it. The short poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning is truly an emotional rollercoaster. This short poem portrays love, social classes, and power. Browning’s poem emphasizes the Victorian era of social classes. Back then it was seen shameful to be seen with someone who was from a lower class. What seemed to be a scandalous love story, ended up in tragedy.