Eating Walnuts Poem Analysis

505 Words2 Pages

If you change the way you look at things, do the things you look at change? Jennifer Keith and Herbert Guitang relate their poems to the topic of perspective. The significance of the poem “Eating Walnuts” by Jennifer Keith is discovering an alternative for opening walnuts. In comparison to “The Third Eye” by Herbert Guitang, illustrating the ability of the third eye to reveal reality. The poems “Eating Walnuts” and “The Third Eye” have a primary theme, but differ in language. The narrator of “The Third Eye” views the world, with “real and pure living people” (Guitang 7). It is not until “the third eye” is used , where the narrator “can see beyond the real people” (Guitang 11; 3). The eye displays “the lost and bad spirits” and most importantly, the “pure heart” (Guitang 6; 14). The heart reveals “honest friendship..[and] The heart connotates what is real and genuine, in contrast to the “meat” of “Eating Walnuts” being the brain, signifying intellect (Keith 18). The heart and brain on a figurative level reveal the truth, our heart. The usage of consonance differ in the two poems. In “Eating Walnuts”, some examples include “years”, “seams”, “hemispheres” (Keith 2;3;4). Whereas “The Third Eye”, uses “Friendship” and “Compassion” (Guitang 14;15). This device provides structure to the poems with a rhyming effect, making it appealing to the reader. The use of consonance belabored the emotions behind their words where it cannot be simply conveyed and reiterated the significance of a theme. The connection of “Eating Walnuts” and “The Third Eye” relate with the author's use of language to carry out the overall theme. A new view of the shell in “Eating Walnuts” and the use of the thrid eye in Guitangs’s poem, disclosed what is real. Although the poems contained different uses of language, Keith and Guitang shared the central theme of

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