Bell Theory
The poem “Bell Theory", written by Emily Jungmin Yoon is portraying her dissatisfaction with how she been treated in the United States. She is basically stereotyped daily and made fun of for mispronunciations of words. She uses poetic devices such as imagery, repetition, and metaphors to symbolize her disapproval and emphasize her melodramatic chaotic life. Jungmin also used things such as real life references for example tensions between Japan and Korea to depict how stereotypes are not only a thing between Americans and Asians but between Asians themselves as well. The crux of the poem is that no matter how closely related you are people will always find a way to differentiate themselves and call themselves superior.
Towards the beginning of the poem, the author Jungmin used an aggrieved and ambivalent tone throughout the story to make the reader have sympathy for the speaker. She successfully creates this tone by using words such as sinking, wrong, clumsy, alien. These words from the poem are very relatable to people in real life when they are in a dark spot in their life, thus making them feel sympathy for the speaker in the poem. By creating this common place between the reader and
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the speaker Jungmin is effectively helping to get the central idea of the poem across. However, towards the end, the tone does change. The tone goes from an aggrieved tone to more of an empathetic tone. It states “Years ago, 1923 Japan, the phrase jūgoen gojissen was used to set apart Koreans: say 15 yen 50 sen.” She says this because she couldn't understand why the Americans treated Asians this way but she later realized that it happened between her cultures as well, in her case the Japanese and the Koreans. Poetic devices included in the poem are imagery; repetition, metaphors and more. The poetic device that is most commonly used is imagery. Jungmin uses the vivid description such as “(I touched the globe moving in my throat, a hemisphere sinking.)” when she uses imagery she is effectively making the reader feel for her making the poem more impacting than if it was not relatable. When the reader knows what she is feeling when she gets bullied they put themselves in the same position to when they felt the same way as to how she is feeling. Another poetic device the author used is repetition, she repeated the word “bells” multiple times throughout the poem in order to emphasize the important. Not only does it mean bells but she uses it to describe other words such as azaleas. “Golden bells means azaleas which are a pink flower found in Asia and western Europe. When she speaks about bells she is also talking at the noise people make when they talk and even calls the uvula “the bell. And also the similar way of saying bell to “belle” which is what one of her classmates called her on purpose to mock her Korean name. The last poetic device she used is metaphors, she uses metaphors to compare her life to animals. She is basically saying that the American treat animals better than they treat other human beings simply for being another race. They also get treated poorly for the stereotype of Asian eating dogs and because American's love dogs so much they give Asians a hard time for it. “Which separates us from animals. Kring looked at me and said Just curious, do you eat dogs? and I wanted to end my small life.” All in all no matter the circumstances people all over the world will be ignorant.
It is inevitable to get someone not to base a race off of things such as first impressions or even television. You should always learn to shake things off. Throughout the story, the speaker realizes that stereotyping occurs in more than just America. It happens in her own home in Japan. Where they use “yen and sen” to be able to tell them apart. Once she realizes that it is something that it is not a personal attack towards Asians she began to feel a bit more relaxed and began to lie about going to library “I’m going to the library, I lied, years ago, on a field lined with forsythia.” Meaning she is using words she commonly mispronounced as she is feeling more comfortable with who she
is.
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The most obvious literary device used to lighten the tone is rhyming. When the story is approaching its climax, the man in the ocean hears the sick man say “I suddenly feel quite ill” (Milligan 14), he replies that the sick man should “breathe deeply and lie quiet still” (Milligan 15). Ordinarily a man who feels he is about to pass away from his sickness is no joking matter, however the rhyming takes off a most of the pressure and tension that the reader would normally feel in this situation. Milligan also uses alliteration to soften the emotional impact of the normally downcast lines in his poem. The man who is drowning asks the man on shore to help, however the man says that he has to wait for his doctor to arrive. The person in the sea questions how long until the doctor comes, the sickly man tells him soon, but “till then try staying afloat” (Milligan 10). When reading that specific line of the poem, the reader shifts his focus to the alliteration instead of the deeper meaning of the same line. If there wasn’t an alliteration in the line, then the attention would be to the fact that if the man in the sea cannot calm himself down and stay afloat for a few more minutes, his death is almost guaranteed. Without these poetic devices the poem’s tone and mood would drastically change from lighthearted