Analysis of "According to the poem"
According to the poem, we are composed of baseness, nobility, kindness, cruelty, faith, doubt, and change every minute. It also describes the many people who reside in us. The poem's opening stanza describes an individual who is trying to figure out who his true identities are in vivid detail. We are unable to identify even one of the many persons I am. (Neruda 1-2). These lines make it clear that he is home to a large number of individuals, all of whom are male and who all show their faces at various times. Lines three and four in the first stanza a metaphor is used to describe how the persona is lost whim himself.
Hyperbole and self-mockery in the second stanza
In the second stanza, there is hyperbole and self-mocking personification that Neruda uses to describe the misgivings about the steadiness, consistency, and reliability of his unpredictable and interchanging character. Consequently, the poet is seen to doubt his intellectual abilities when he says, "the fool I always keep hidden, takes over all that I say" (Neruda 7-8).
The poet's dream and awakening in the third stanza
In the third stanza, the poet sees himself in a dream of being equal to the heroes when he says, "At other times, I am asleep among distinguished people" (Neruda 9-10). However, in the next line, he awakes and says "and when I look for my brave self" (Neruda 11). All he sees is "a crowd unknown to me rushes to cover my skeleton" (Neruda 12-13). He ends this metaphorical and irreverent personification with a hyperbole "with a thousand fine excuses" (Neruda 14).
The poet's self-parody and self-perception in the fourth stanza
He continues to describe his self-parody in sarcastically hyperbolic exaggeration about his failure to be a hero. When I descent house is on fire instead of him being a firefighter, he becomes an arsonist, comically and rhetorically expresses his inner thoughts, emotions, and self-perception on his conflicting personalities by saying "what can I do to distinguish myself? How can I pull myself together?" (Neruda 19-20). In short, what he meant was how he could get to be himself and attain renown.
The poet's desire to be a hero in the last stanza
The fourth stanza the poet suggests jokingly that instead of being "a crowd" he wants to be a hero who sure of himself as the ones he reads in the books. Nevertheless, this has not been possible for when he calls for the hero a lazy old self-shows up (McCormick and Jennifer 28-30). Finally, he says that he does not know when his impermanence selves will end. In the last stanza Neruda uses self-irony to show with helpless and sad disappointments not only to the several perplexing faces of himself but also curious if others around him are also affected like him. Towards the end of the stanza, Neruda uses an equivocal allegory and metaphor, which compares the "we" in his multifaceted character and personalities to a foreign land of humanity within his confused mind. Overall, considering every line of the poem we say this is not a happy poem. However, Neruda uses humorous and sarcastic tone to show self -effacing style, bearing in mind that we are just like him and often are surprising ourselves by what we do and say and also our lack of control over our emotions and thoughts (McCormick and Jennifer 31).
Analyzing "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
The persona's melancholic state in the opening verse
The above poem is what Keats uses to give detailed account to contrast reality of natural beauty, and life and death. In the very opening verse, the author appears to be enchanted by the Nightingale's passive song. Right from the beginning of the poem, we can tell that the poem is not a cherry one by looking at the first three words of the poem "my heart aches" (keats1). It shows human tragedy and the human wishes that elude our minds. The persona compares his mental state to being intoxicated and further alludes referring to river Lethe. River Lethe in Greek mythology it means an underworld river that erases all the memories of those who drink from it.
Description of the nightingale's song and the persona's trance-like state
Towards the end of the stanza, we learn that the nightingale's song is the reason behind the persona's trance-like state that makes him so happy that he forgets about everything else. The second stanza which builds on the first stanza's theme of intoxication and poetically describes the varieties of wine. The stanza is made of imagery as the speaker describes the wines coolness (Matthey and François2). Therefore stimulating our sense of touch, test "tasting of Flora and the county green" (Keats 3), hearing "Dance, and Provencal song, and mirth" (Keats 4), and sight "And purple-stained mouth "(Keats 8). In last two lines, we get the underlying theme of the stanza, which is the urge to leave the physical world. "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, and with thee fade into the forest dim" (Keats 9-10).
The immortal nightingale and the ephemeral physical world
The second stanza builds on the idea of fading away and follows the nightingale's song. The speaker says the nightingale is immortal and has never seen death, disease, and sorrows of the physical world. This stanza supports the persona's view of the physical world that nothing in it lasts forever even love when he says "Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow." (Keats 10). The next stanza seems a little tough and full of illusions and mythology as in the first stanza. In the second line, the speaker mentions Bacchus who is Roman god of wine who is riding a chariot drawn by leopards or "pads" as the persona calls them (Keats 2). He again mentions the Queen-moon and "Frays" who are fairies in the European legends (Matthey and François6-7). The main aim of using these illusions is to emphasize on the difference between the dark physical world and the dreamlike spiritual world of the Nightingale (Matthey and François8-10).
Stimulating the sense of smell and the desire for death in the penultimate stanza
The second last stanza just like the second stanza stimulates the reader's sense of smell (Matthey and François1-2). Finally, the final stanza unveils another revelation that the speaker does not want to transcend the limits of the world but wants to die and feels contented when he hears the nightingale's song and don't mind dying. Furthermore, the speaker says the nightingale's song would continue even after his death.
Works Cited
Keats, John. "Ode to a Nightingale." John Keats. New York: Oxford University Press.(Original work published 1819) (2010).
McCormick, Jennifer. "Transmediation in the language arts classroom: Creating contexts for analysis and ambiguity." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54.8 (2011): 579-587.
Matthey, François. The evolution of Keats's structural imagery. Vol. 78. Francke, 2016.
Neruda, Pablo. Pablo Neruda-VeintePoemas de Amor Y UnaCanciónDesesperada. Manchester University Press, 2007.
