Thom Gunn’s In the Tank - A Manifestation of the Human Consciousness
A thorough analysis of subject material and literary style exhibits the complexity of establishing a strong thematic base, which does not deter from the ebb and flow of a poetic medium . In Thom Gunn’s In the Tank, a felon is overwhelmed by emotion at the state of his existence in prison. In what appears to be a moment’s reflection, Thom Gunn’s narrator in In the Tank reveals an abundance of sentiment pertaining to his environment. From meticulous description of the prison environment, to the exasperated feeling of loneliness and dejection, Gunn lures an audience into a seeming first-hand account of prison-life.
However, a broader subject matter lay hidden in his prose. The prison environment is indicative of the prisoner’s mental state, just as the narrator’s role in the commentary is pivotal in understanding the innerworkings of the incarcerated man’s condition.
The title of the poem acts as an initial introduction to the tone and language used by Thom Gunn, and gives many hints into the complexity of subject matter. A “tank,” is an informal term for prison. The implication that Gunn suggests from the title is that the poem bases itself on a first hand-narrative of some aspect of prison life, recounted by a person with personal experience of life ‘in the tank.’ The tone of the poem is established by Gunn before any material is even considered. An informal sense of expertise is entrusted in the narrator, due to the fact that he (presuming that the narrator is a man, like the subject of the poem) has a unique perspective in which to operate. The audience yields to the narrator’s insight and accepts his dialogue as factual, since it is an implie...
... middle of paper ...
...on and personification of the impact that the ‘tank’ has had on his life.
Due to the narrator’s understanding of prison life, and the subtle implication of a controlled environmental situation, In the Tank provides a psychological account of how the human spirit is demoralized. The “man’s” name is never give, since Tank is not a poem about an individual in person, but how a collective consciousness performs under the scrutiny of not only prison officials, but the darkness itself. The institution shapes the convict, and even his mind-set, since the description of the cell matches the fundamental properties of a “box.” The subliminal aspects of In the Tank are evident in the “man’s” unfortunate conformity to the norms of the prison.
Works Cited
Gunn, Thom. “In the Tank.” Contained in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, 2nd ed. New York, New York: 1988
All in all, Kerman’s year sentence in jail opened her eyes to some of the many problems within the federal prison system. She witnessed favoritism, abuse, health violations, etc. that helped her realize that she never wanted to go back to prison, despite all the true friendships she made. Through her use of rhetoric, mainly ethos, Kerman showed her audience a firsthand account of what an actual prison sentence is like. She also explored the idea of how one bad decision can change a person’s life forever.
One of the ways the author does this is by using enjambment to make the title and the first line of the poem flow into one single line. This symbolizes how when you are in jail there is no real beginning; one day flows to the next. His extensive use of figurative language, allows for the reader to paint a picture in his or her mind. “... to a dark stage, I lie there awake in my prison bunk.” This line can be interpreted literally and figuratively; he is really in prison in his bunk or it feels so much like a dream that it is as if he were on a stage. However, his diction shows that he has does this often. “...through illimitable tun...
After reading Newjack, I clearly appreciate the difficulty, the chaos and the stress of an officers' job. I am less sure how they manage to do it, and I wonder at what cost to their sense of self it has on them. By contrast, with a few well-chosen stories, Conover humanizes individual prisoners: one who has lines from Anne Frank's diary tattooed on his back; a prisoner on the serving line who tries to sneak extra food to his friends; a young, emotionally needy prisoner grasping for attention from anyone, even an officer. As a result, the prisoners are often drawn “with more humanity” than the staff.
Newjack is Ted Conover’s personal memoir as a correctional officer in one of New York’s famous maximum security prisons: Sing Sing. The job of a correctional officer consists of long days locking and unlocking cells, moving prisoners to and from various locations while the prisoners beg, aggravate and abuse them. After a short time at the academy and a brief period of on-the-job training, Conover found himself working, often alone and always unarmed, in galleries housing sixty or more inmates. He heard of many stories that happen in prison. Stories include inmates beating inmates and burning their cell house, an inmate who was beaten by correctional officers after striking an officer in the head with a broom handle. Surprisingly, there are even some instances where there are voluntary sexual encounters between female staff and inmates. It is really a welcoming job for the “newjacks” and for the readers. On top of that, supervisors do not mentor or guide new officers and officers on one shift push problems off onto the next. Conover sees and realizes that correctional workers are very flexible characters, neither good nor bad, but must cope with stress and problems in a well-organized manner. As Conover points out, that at Sing Sing is against the possibility of staff getting to know prisoners. It is ridiculous to see that there are problems that prison administrators clearly could have solved but do not, instead, they care more about the inmates and officer’s relationship. In particular, enticements for better supervision and more support for effective staff are clearly needed.
In writing the book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover undergoes a transformation as a correctional officer in order to expose the problems within our prison systems. The reader learns a lot about what is taking place in prisons right now and what it is like to be a guard, but in sum what one must foremost take into account is that this is not how prisons how they have to be. There are social, political, and economic realities that have constructed this system and in order to dispel them it is more beneficial to understand these factors rather than one man’s experience in a place of power at one prison.
Many young criminals are less likely to become career criminals if punished through public embarrassment than through prison. Prison can be a sign of manliness or a “status symbol” (Jacoby 197). He says “prison is a graduate school for criminals”, providing evidence that criminals want to be convicted and be in prison, to strengthen their status (Jacoby 197). Jacoby knows how to properly get his view across to the reader, by saying that prison is not as effective now, as it used to be.... ... middle of paper ...
“If I only knew then, what I know now” is a quote often said by your elders. That quote is very meaningful to the incarcerated men in Letters To My Younger Self. The men in this anthology of writings all have their regrets and wishes. Powerlessness and empowerment/leadership are themes that we can strongly connect with those entries of the inmates. Throughout this anthology, a few entries that I found most intriguing were The Lost Boy, , and A Dark Hearts whisper. In these entries, I found that from behavioral standpoint the environment the inmates were brought up in are what help exemplify the themes of powerlessness and empowerment/leadership.
In Julia Alvarez’s poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries”, Alvarez skillfully employs poetic devices such as imagery and personification to let the reader view the power of literature through the eyes of a young, poverty stricken, estranged woman, inspiring her love for poetry. Alvarez’s use of imagery paints a vivid picture of the setting and the narrator’s actions for the reader throughout her significant experience; all through the eyes of an alienated female. The use of personification and author’s tone brings “The Blue Estuaries” to life for the reader-just as it had appeared to the narrator.
Although prisons have the primary objective of rehabilitation, prisoners will likely go through many other troubling emotions before reaching a point of reformation. Being ostracized from society, it is not uncommon to experience despair, depression, and hopelessness. Be that as it may, through reading various prison writings, it can be seen that inmates can find hope in the smallest things. As represented in “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane”, the author, Etheridge Knight, as well as other black inmates look up to Hard Rock, an inmate who is all but dutiful in a world where white people are placed at the top of the totem pole. However, after Hard Rock goes through a lobotomy-esque procedure, the motif
The main themes of the poem are rebellion, oppression, and imprisonment. The theme of imprisonment is evident in Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane poem. Hard Rock was a tough inmate, silenced by lobotomy. Hard Rock was a hero to the other prisoners, and this made the authority to take actions against him in order to tend his defiance. The punishment given to him was unjust because, it altered his body and movements, in addition to shortening his life. Authorities are used to oppressing the people who voice out what they believe is not right.
Heathcliff's love for Catherine transcends the normal physical "true love" into spiritual love. He can withstand anything against him to be with her. After Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights, he flogged Heathcliff like a slave. Although Heathcliff could have simply run away, his decision to endure the physical pains shows his unrelenting devotion to Catherine. Fortunately, Catherine feels as deeply for Heathcliff as he does for her, explaining to Nelly that "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…" Their love for each other is so passionate that they can not possibly live apart. At Catherine's death, Heathcliff hopes that she will not rest, but will haunt him until he dies. This absurdity contradicts the traditional norm that one should pray that the dead rest in peace. Near the end of the novel, we learn that Catherine has haunted Heathcliff, allowing him only fleeting glances of her. This shows that despite their physical separation, nothing can part them spiritually. When Heathcliff dies and unites with Catherine once again, the neighbors see them haunt the moors. We finally see the power of their love; Not only does this love transcend physical barriers, it transcends time as well...
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King is both a wonderful film and a brilliantly written short story. There are many themes represented in each form of The Shawshank Redemption. The one major theme that interests me in both the film and the story is freedom. Freedom serves a large purpose for both the story's writer and the filmmaker. Both use similar examples to signify freedom, not only in the jail, but also in a larger context about life. There are many events and examples in both the film and the short story that signifies the theme of freedom. The one main difference is when the film uses the director’s technique to portray a feel of freedom for the inmates. The overall three issues used in this essay are all linked to the feeling of the inmates feeling the sense of freedom with the prison walls.
Frost, Robert. New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frost's Poems. New York: Washington Square Press, 1971.
In the media, prisons have always been depicted as a horrible place. The film, The Shawshank Redemption, is a prime example that supports the media 's suggestions about prison life. In the film we are familiarized with Andy Dufresne, who is a banker that is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. While trying to both remain discreet and find his prison identity, he assists Ellis Boyd 'Red ' Redding, a peddler, and Brooks Hatlen. In his attempt to fit into the rough prison subculture, Andy strategically starts a business relationship with the captain Captain Bryon Hadley and Samuel Norton. The film gives an insider 's look at various aspects of prison life. These aspects include prison culture; explicitly, guard subculture and inmate subculture.
When discussing the different aspects of New Criticism in Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into The Good Night”, the impression that comes to mind is death. The use of imagery was a necessity for Dylan Thomas to express the different techniques of writing which involved a mixture of surrealistic and metaphysical tones. His ability to change a words meaning to incorporate symbolism is noticeable in circle of unity from life to death and renewed life.