Paradise Motel Simic Analysis

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Recommended: War poetry in English literature

The Contemporary Period of English literature transitioned an era of unbound expression to one characterized by great intensity not shying away from the pitfalls of the modern world . The shift in focus enabled poets to tackle world issues of the current day, one being the horrors of war. Charles Simic, a renowned English poet during this period attempts to portray war in it’s purest form in his work, “Paradise Motel”. Simic displays the true nature of conflict through the eyes of the narrator whose experience reveal that warfare is subjective as well as the personal impact war can have on an individual.
The opening lines of the poem thrust the reader into the grim reality of armed conflict. Simic describes through his narrator a mere moment …show more content…

a magic love potion”(3). To make such a claim and even sexuallize war to make it appear more enticing is heinous in the eyes of the narrator and the body language makes it ever so apparent as he states“My eyes opened in astonishment”(4). The feeling of shock at this moment is not allowed to truly resonate with the reader as instantaneously the speaker is exposed to a feeling of despair and subsequently met with intense guilt following the president’s statement, “In a mirror my face appeared to me/ Like a twice-canceled postage stamp./ I lived well, but life was awful”(4-6). He sees his face and compares it to that of a “twice-canceled postage stamp”, essentially a letter that never reaches it’s location. The letter is representative of the wish to return to a state of happiness but, the feeling of anguish is too great and the emotion is unreachable. He further emphasizes the guilt in the opening line of the second stanza where he describes living well but having a life that is dreadful. Further consumed is the narrator knowing that he is powerless to stop the bloodshed that has been glorified by others and whatever attempts that could have been made to try to rectify the situation have long since passed. The final stage that the narrator arrives at is the complete loss of empathy. The

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