Adams Indifference

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Nearly four centuries after the invention of the sonnet, Oscar Fay Adams was born. He stepped into his career at the brink of the American civil war, a time when typically cold Victorian era romances were set in stark contrast to the passions of Warhawks. It was in this era when Adams wrote his sonnet: “Indifference”, which explores the emotional turmoil and bitterness a man endures as he struggles to move on from a failed relationship . Adams utilizes the speaker's story in order to dramatize the plight of an individual trying and failing to reconcile holding on to the joy that passionate love brings with the intense pain it bestows in conjunction with this joy . Adams employs various poetic devices in order to present a new view of indifference, …show more content…

He does so ,primarily, by examining the attitude of the speaker: a man who is unlucky in love and overcome with cynicism because of his experiences. The speaker’s defining characteristics are exemplified by the first line of the poem: “What is indifference, do you ask of me?”(line 1). The speaker is in a dialogue with another individual, who is implied to be the woman who snubbed him given his contemptuous tone. Having the dialogue be between him and his former object of affection provides an opportunity for The speaker’s pressing the question back at his former lover with the phrase “ do you ask of me?” is challenging the tone, which reveals haughtiness-the speaker sees himself as well-acquainted with indifference( more than he would like to be) and The speaker sees this individual as insensitive to ask the question, given her unspecified, but assuming injurious actions towards him. The second line, which reads: “O well I know the meaning of the phrase”( line 1-2) further elucidates the speaker’s attitude. The phrase “ O Well”, carries a weighty, long-suffering tone. In spelling “Oh” in it’s more dramatic form “ OF”, the speaker evokes images of Shakespeare's character, Ophelia, crying out: “O woe is me” in Hamlet. This archaic spelling characterizing the speaker might be dismissed as melodramatic, but nonetheless, establishes just how upset he is with his old lover and how robust the bitterness is that consumes

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