Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot are most likely the 2 moodiest poets we're forced to read throughout highschool. The true shame of the impression this leaves is that, when read correctly, they're actually stuffed with the life-affirming stuff that makes good poetry so endlessly readable. To prove a degree, let's check out two of their most morose works.
Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night time" is a villanelle (see additionally: ridiculously controlled poem) that urges us to withstand mortality, even till our dying breath. The poem's construction has an inside stress that compliments its literal message; whereas the steady one-two beat mimics the onslaught of time, the harsh vowels and jarring consonants struggle the poem's stream, obeying the narrator's command to not go down and not using a fight.
The word "rage," which sums up the entire message of the poem, seems eight instances throughout simply nineteen lines - which is a form of defiance in itself, because the phrase is harsh and awkward to pronounce. (Just say it out loud: RAYdjuh.) Extra importantly, it is also the primary word in the poem to interrupt the pattern of emphasizing each second syllable, thereby flipping a literary birdie to the implied tick-tock of time. Take a look at the primary stanza:
Do NOT go GEN-tle IN-to THAT good EVENING,
Outdated AGE ought to BURN and RAVE at SHUT of DAY;
*RAGE*, RAGE a-GAINST the DY-ing OF the GENTLE.
The discord caused by repeating "rage" draws all the eye away from the top of the road, putting the spotlight on the battle reasonably than the defeat. In contrast, it is no accident that the softest sounding phrase within the poem is "the dying of the sunshine," since loss of life is, after all, what threatens to take the all fight out of us. In the final stanza, we uncover that the narrator is particularly addressing his dying father, which explains the poem's urgency and pushes the argument past the hypothetical.
T. S. Eliot's Love Music of J. Alfred Prufrock can be about death, however in contrast to Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Evening, it has the distracted, ambling verse of a man making an attempt to convince himself that life is not a race. Though the poem's structural irregularity resists the overall temporal flow, it's extra an act of denial than bravery; Prufrock deliberates obsessively, and earlier than long, certain parts of his pondering begin to repeat. "There will likely be time," he likes to inform himself, not realizing that this recurring affirmation turns into the ticking clock of his personal mortality.
After running the reader in ambiguous, indecisive circles, Prufrock involves the miserable conclusion that he should not "disturb the universe" by being taking any possibilities. In the meanwhile of his give up, he switches into probably the most regular, structured stanza of the entire poem, which begins with "No! I'm not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be." Prufrock then describes himself as a middling pawn who'll leave behind no legacy, which is why we aren't stunned that he is instantly finally fallen into step with the rhythm of time - and the inevitability of defeat.
Unlike the "grave males" of Thomas's poem, Prufrock would not "see with blinding sight" when confronted with his own transience. As an alternative, he shies away from society as a result of its judgments "fix you in a formulated phrase" - only to repair himself in essentially the most rigorously formulated phrases in the poem when he decides to submit to previous age. Whereas Dylan Thomas yells unrepentantly in our faces, T.S. Eliot simply demonstrates why it’s better to go out with a bang than a whimper.
Post a Comment