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Tragedy in Allen Ginsberg’s Sunflower Sutra and Tom Waits’ Small Change
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Recommended: In a dark time poem analysis
Tragedy in Allen Ginsberg’s Sunflower Sutra and Tom Waits’ Small Change
In both Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” and Tom Waits’ “Small Change”, tragedy is the major premise for the sad and melancholy tone the authors share. In his poem, Ginsberg describes the fall of a mighty flower, the sunflower. Once a bright yellow beacon of life, it now is “broken like a battered crown.” Having been covered by the dirt and grime of industry, by human “ingenuity,” this sunflower is really representing a demise in humanity. Rather than choosing nature as a prime example for life, choosing the “perfect beauty of a sunflower,” we have chosen industry and technology, and have forgotten that we are flowers. Ginsberg berates the dust and grime which have rained down from the locomotives onto “my sunflower O my soul” and wonders “when did you forget you were a flower?” This poem really is not about a flower, but the tragedy of losing one’s inner beauty, the vivacity and brightness which makes one shine. Thus Ginsberg delivers his “sermon of my soul” to whoever shall listen in hopes that we, unlike the sunflower, do not turn gray in despair and gloom but shine brightly among the soot of the world we live in (Ginsberg 36-37).
Similarly to “Sunflower Sutra,“ the lyrics from “Small Change” pose a tragedy, which, though more concrete of a scene, shares all the gloom and weariness of the gray sunflower. In a Ginsberg-esque lyrical style, Tom Waits’ rambles through his lyrics (his mind), posing vivid descriptions of the depths of life. His victim is not a flower, but someone by the name of “Small Change,” who, when killed by his own thirty-eight, gains the headstone of a “gumball machine” on the street. The real tragedy in this song lies in the first line of the third verse: “And no one’s gone over to close his eyes.” Though there is enough cruelty in the world to kill “Small Change” for a “fistful of dollars,” there is not enough kindness to shut his eyes to the cruelty which has slain him.