Literary Analysis Of Miniver Cheevy By Edwin Arlington

Literary Analysis

Miniver Cheevy and Edwin Arlington are the same in most respects. Dreams of an idealized fantasy past have long overcome their desires of this life. They both seem to desire an earlier birth than anything else. However, at a closer look I believe Cheevy to be a more dramatic description of Arlington and that lust for olden adventure. My reasons are, with the information in the book, that we see Arlington attempt to make something of the life that he dreads living in replacement of the one he wants. Another is that he writes of Cheevy’s want for adventure not as a dream or wish but as a fervor of fantasy that overcomes his emotions and rationale. Lastly, Arlington perhaps wrote “Miniver Cheevy” after heavy influences of olden fantasy

However, the character is, in my opinion, an extreme dramatization of Arlington’s emotional turmoil in living in a time long past the one he feels he belongs in. We see the outcry of emotion throughout the poem but it is most prevalent in the first and last stanzas. In the first stanza, it is made clear immediately that this sense of wonder has driven him to the point of depression with Arlington describing the character as a “child of scorn” and then continuing that he weeps at the very thought that he was born in the time that fate put him in. In the final stanza Arlington writes that thinking about when fate has decided to push him that “keeps on drinking” this suggests alcoholism but there is not much more evidence to suggest that Cheevy or Arlington were alcoholics. However, this does give us insight as to Cheevy’s acceptance of the situation regardless of how much he desires things to be different. The line “Miniver coughed, and called it fate” tells us that Miniver Cheevy is also a poem that could be interpreted to be about doing the most with what you have instead of trying to change what you