Assisi By Norman Mccaig

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Critical Evaluation-Assisi

A poem that I have been studying recently is Assisi by Norman McCaig, which I found very interesting to read because it made a statement which relates to our world today even though the poem was wrote about thirty or forty years ago. The poem has lots of ideas including effective figures of speech, good choice of words, important images and irony. The statement that McCaig makes is, where ever there is great wealth it always exists along side great poverty.

The poem is set in Assisi in Italy around the 1970’s were all the rich tourists are coming in hundreds from all different countries far and wide to see the frescoes painted by Giotto in Assisi’s huge cathedral. McCaig mainly focuses on the dwarf outside …show more content…

McCaig also refers to the dwarf as a “ruined temple”. By saying this he creates a huge contrast between the dwarf and the cathedral, he also uses irony to compare the dwarf to St. Francis were he …show more content…

In stanza 3 there is an extended metaphor comparing the tourists to hens:

“A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,

fluttered after him as he scattered

the grain of the word.”

McCaig uses this metaphor to show that the tourists are rushing after the priest because he is spreading the word of God, he compares the tourists to hens who are following the farmer as if he is scattering grain. This also shows that the tourists did not pay much attention to Giotto’s frescoes which told stories of God. This leads to the tourists devaluing the life and work of Christ. I think that McCaig has made a very clear image of the tourists and that he makes very good use of the metaphor by extending

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