Analysis Of Manifesto The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front

1220 Words3 Pages

Manifesto of a Manifesto Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front,” is a well-known poem of his from 1972. While Wendell’s poem presents some fine points, he forgets to elaborate on his points, and he doesn’t make a clear thesis of what he is trying to say. There are several lines that could relate to a central thesis of living happy, free with nature, and with no worries of the future, but he is frequently changing thoughts lessen the effect of his words on readers. An example of this can be seen in lines 31 and 32 from Wendell Berry’s poem states as followed. “Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?”(Berry par. 4) People ponder if …show more content…

They hold so many thoughts and relate well with each other. A thesis can be made from just using these lines, but these lines are not alone in this poem. Wendell includes several of other thoughts in his writing. Most of these ideas don’t fit together nicely like those above. In fact, they tend to contradict each other. One moment he is saying, “Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die,” (Berry par. 1) and it will be like a window in the mind where your future is told. But then he goes on later to say the above lines of enjoying your time and not worry of the future. Why would he tell you one thing and then go back on what he said and meant. He says your future will be known if you look for it. Yet on the other hand, he says not to worry about it and just live for a happy today. While the last part is a pleasant enough thought to have it still the opposite of each other. This confuses the reader and draws them away from the main idea. Wendell goes back and forth on these matters and several others. If he would have focused on the above lines and the thesis that is formed then he wouldn’t be so confusing on the message he is sending to readers. This doesn’t mean he did a mediocre job writing the poem and it is well known due to it being

Open Document