In his poem “Thou Blind Man’s Mark,” Sir Philip Sidney writes of a speaker addressing the subject of desire by comparing it to a concept that is able to deceive men and ruin their lives through superficial achievements. Through a number of poetic devices, including apostrophe and extended metaphor, Sidney serves to convey the speaker’s complex attitude toward the concept, including how he will no longer allow his life to be controlled by desire’s corruptive nature. The poem in itself is a speech addressing the subject of desire. However, because desire is an abstract concept, this makes the work an act of apostrophe. The speaker berates desire as though it were another person. This person is imagined as a merchant selling his goods, which …show more content…
are only useless to the speaker; although at first meeting, the speaker clearly does not realize that the merchant sought to do him harm. After some time, the speaker comes to realize that he is looking at desire through a veil that blinded him to reality. In the speaker’s eyes, desire has brought about his ruin rather than possessing him to do more in life to achieve the goals that he set himself to. Desire is portrayed as a sly individual who is coy about his intentions and deliberately chooses to slowly ruin his target’s life rather than outright do so. Desire does so by falsely making the speaker aspire to superficial things that will do no benefit to his life, rather than letting him advance on aspirations that will bring him actual prosperity. Yet, over time the speaker has grown wiser and now addresses the concept of desire for how he now sees it. What he thought was once an asset to his life now only serves to be detrimental, and he had learned to look to himself for his own benefit and to kill the rising desire that may dampen his ambitions. Extended metaphor is used throughout the poem beginning with the first line.
Desire is constantly channeled into another concept instead of naming it directly. This is done so by Sidney to turn an abstract sensation into a solid, concrete object that the audience can better understand. The use of numerous metaphors throughout the poem, including “band of all evils,” cradle of causeless care,” and “web of will, whose end is never wrought,” contributes to a larger metaphor that is in turn greater than the individual. These metaphors contribute to the speaker’s negative view of desire by comparing it to sources of evil and destruction. Through the use of apostrophe in the poem, desire is portrayed as another person, and the reader comes to realize desire’s detrimental nature through what seems to be a negatively impactful relationship between two people with desire playing the role of the manipulator as shown in the line, “But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought.” Desire does nothing but seek to destroy lives while not revealing its true intentions. Yet, the speaker knows better now after becoming a victim of the concept. By the use of this poetic device, the reader is better able to sympathize with the speaker, assuming he has also gone through a similar situation whether with desire itself or a person whose behaviors mirror that of what desire is described to be in the poem. Desire is an abstract concept that is so different from a person, yet by continuing it through the poem, it serves to draw comparison between the two unlike
things. The relationship between the speaker and the concept of desire is a complex one. While the speaker once bought into desire as shown in line five, he now knows himself to be a victim of it. Like many people, he was drawn in by the superficial aspects of want and of what it may bring to his life, exemplified in the line “Desire, desire! I have too dearly bought, with price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware,” but only realizes that he had been made a fool at its hands. For so long, he was under its spell, yet discovered later that not all that glitters is gold. The speaker ruined himself through desire, ignoring the aspects of his life that he should have focused on, including bettering himself, but only chose to focus on the superficiality of objects of lust. However, he does admit to having come out smarter than he once had been. Creating the complex relationship, the speaker also holds desire with some sense of respect. He realizes that without it, he would not have come out a better person. Following his ordeal with desire, he has learned to have better faith within himself and to look only toward himself to fulfill his needs and to kill any desire that may come again. In the end, he is stronger because of this and has learned to look past the superficialities of life for what lies beneath it is what he can only truly trust. In “Thou Blind Man’s Mark,” Sir Philip Sidney creates an image of a chaotic relationship between the speaker and the concept of desire. Through the use of poetic devices, such as apostrophe and extended metaphor, Sidney leaves the audience with a relatable, parasitic relationship. While the relationship is complicated by the speaker’s distaste for desire, he also acknowledges that without it, he would have been left foolish and superficial; rather, he learns to look to himself to fulfill his own needs, and he is left with a greater sense of self-worth because of his past relationship with desire. Because of this ordeal, he is no longer figuratively a blind man, but has realized the truth in desire’s intentions.
In John Updike’s short story “A&P,” the reader witnesses the power of desire. Three girls walk into the store, A&P, in nothing but bikinis. They were looking for “Fancy Herring Snacks” for one of the girl’s mother. The girls were being kicked out by the manger; however, the cashier quits because he desired one of the girl’s attention and tried to be the hero. The poem “The desire of love-power” by Sri Chinmoy, illustrates that desiring something can change a person’s life for the better, or for the worse. This poem, like the short story, explores the power of desire.
Both poems represent the despairs and failures of the love they hone for their beloved, with brings a touch of sadness to the poems. From this the reader can feel almost sympathetic to the unrequited lovers, and gain an understanding of the perils and repercussions of love.
In the first quatrain, Sir Sidney explicates a rather enraged attitude toward the concept of desire. In this quatrain, the apostrophe is the primary poetic device that’s used to convey his emotions. Sir Sidney’s attempt to vilify desire is seen when he tells desire that it is the “band of all evils.” Not only does apostrophe make desire tangible like a person, but it also makes it a demonic figure. Another poetic device Sir Sidney employed in the first
In the first quatrain, Sidney describes to the speaker the he was overwhelmed by his own desires, throwing himself into a trap of quarantine. This is shown in Sidney’s choice of using the words “snare” and “web” (1-4). The speaker foolishly trapped himself through the entanglement of desires with no end and will never be achieved. Much like a “labyrinth of desire,” trapped and searching for a way out (Brennan). Calling desire themselves “band of all evils” and that they are worthless “scum.”
As James Baldwin has expressed, “The state of birth, suffering, love and death are extreme states -extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it”. Of course, motivation is only natural, but it causes us to have tunnel vision, and only set our targets on our desire. However, many do not remember, nor question the effects or occurrences of anything other than these desires; within this ignorance, lies the error. Many people would rather set their eyes on the prize than focus on reality and our present state. Such blindness and ignorance of realities will cause severe damage to one’s true self. An example, which proves this, is the protagonist of the novel, The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, whose ambitions
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
He says, “Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge below us, as far as eye could see”(Tennyson, lines 13 and 14). These last lines of the poem show the potential danger that can come up if the speaker tries to reach the one he loves. It represents how love can conquer any obstacle. The poet also uses personification by saying that “Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine”(Tennyson, line 6). Personification is used in this poem to show how powerful true love can be. Both stories expertly show how difficult it can be to achieve love, but how powerful it is once
It’s often that the most influential lessons learned in life are those that come when we least expect it. Raymond Carver’s realistic short story “Cathedral” presents a broken, disassociated narrator struggling to find meaning in his marriage, career, and himself. Extremely uncomfortable with the idea of Robert, a blind man emotionally intertwined with his wife’s past, the narrator displays his inexperience with the visionary disabled with an unusual amount of jealous backlash, revealing his deep-rooted lack of empathy in the beginning of the story. Robert, however, proves to be an extraordinary, and ironic, representation of the vision and clarity that the narrator is missing from his life. As a result, Robert works as the catalyst that helps
The first line opens the poem with a tone of ridicule; the speaker describes desire as a "blind man's target" and a "fool's... snare." This illustrates how the speaker believes that those who desire are either unaware and "blind" to the corruptness of what they crave or are uninformed regarding the nature of desire and the hold, or "snare," that it can have on a person. In the first stanza the speaker is trying to almost "debunk" validity of desire by stating that only "dregs," the most
this poem. I believe it is mainly what the poem is about. To make the
In the poem “A song of Despair” Pablo Neruda chronicles the reminiscence of a love between two characters, with the perspective of the speaker being shown in which the changes in their relationship from once fruitful to a now broken and finished past was shown. From this Neruda attempts to showcase the significance of contrasting imagery to demonstrate the Speaker’s various emotions felt throughout experience. This contrasting imagery specifically develops the reader’s understanding of abandonment, sadness, change, and memory. The significant features Neruda uses to accomplish this include: similes, nautical imagery, floral imagery, and apostrophe.
The playwright has done remarkable use of symbols, tensions, and irony. He uses all of these components to express the main theme of the play; the hopeful desire to change the present followed by unavoidable disappointments. All of the characters have dreams, which are destroyed by the harsh realities of the world. As the narrator admits in his opening of the play, "since I have a poet's weakness for symbols," is an expression of a particular theme, idea or character.
The narrator has no confidence in himself and always expects things to end unsatisfactorily, therefore he never accomplishes the enormous task that he ponders the entire poem. The main character is completely incapable of normal human interaction, he never asks this monumental question in the story he mulls over the entire poem, because he chickens out, and has very little self esteem. “He knows he is not Prince Hamlet and he does not think the mermaids will sing to him. He knows that he can not make a decision(Lafuente).” An example of this is that the narrator is constantly obsessed with women and his supposed faults, such as baldness and growing old. “Eliot’s use of literary techniques portrays a man incapable of normal day-to-day life, constantly mulling over every action he takes, debilitated by this paralysis (Jaklitsch).” At the end of the poem, mermaids, also known as sirens, represent all of life's opportunities and Prufrock, as he stands on the shore as an observer until his imminent death (Laura). This connection to Modernism is the most obvious, since it is one of the defining characteristics of the poem and Modernism. The reason for this pessimism is because society was faced with the harsh realities of war, the belief that God if he
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...
When the occipital cortex of the brain, located posteriorly in the skull, is damaged, the brain’s ability to perceive and respond to visual stimuli is inevitably affected. Impairment of this primary visual cortex, also called the striate cortex, may leave and individual completely blind regardless of the health of the eyes themselves. However, there is a remarkable phenomenon in which blind people are able to continue to perceive visual stimuli without being aware that they are doing so. This phenomenon is called blindsight, and it is defined as the ability to respond to objects and images without consciously perceiving the visual stimuli. One experiment involving blindsight documents the ability of a blind man to successfully navigate through a hallway littered with obstacles without consciously