Research Paper On Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 6, 1914 to Owen and Anna Jarrell. He spent part of his childhood in California, but moved back to Nashville and attented Hume Fogg High School from 1927 to 1931 where he excelled in tennis, drama, and journalism. He then attended Vanderbilt University in 1932 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1935. His first published poems appeared in 1934 in an issue of The American Review. Jarrell the proceded to teach at many colleges including Princeton and The University of Texas where he met his future wife Mackie Langham. His first book of poetry called Blood for a Strange was published in 1942. In the same year he enlisted in the Army

"The Woman at the Washington Zoo is a story of a woman walking through a zoo and looking at the animals in the cages. She begins to view the animals and contrasts her role in the world with that of the animals. In the first line the woman mentions saris walking by her. Saris are Indian women garments that consist of a cloth draped around the body. This clothing is simplistic and as the woman states in the next two lines by comparing it

until she dies. This gives the idea of human life as being repetitive and boring and away from nature where life is extemporaneous. She then comments about the "chief" which is referring to human authority figures and drivers of the humans' civilization. These chiefs make no effort to change human culture from the rut it is in and they do not care either. This woman then refers to the human body as "a machine" which adds more to the idea of civilized humans as being repetitive working zombies cut off from nature. She then in line 12 says "no sunlight dyes [the human body]." This statement means that he human body is never exposed to nature where life lives and human animals get tan bodies. In line 13 she says ,"Wavy beneath fountains", which means that the human body and soul is weak under man made objects like a fountain and humans can barely stand and survive in this world they have made for themselves. Then the woman begins to view her present situation in the zoo as the humans are the ones in the cages and the animals are the ones that are truly free, because they have no worries and are not aware of