Thursday, May 16, 2013

Murdering to Dissect?

I decided that, in preparation for the midterm I would take a stab (no pun intended, haha) at analyzing a poem from the common readings of our class. I chose Wordsworth's  "The World is Too Much With Us" because when I felt it called out to me as I first read it. And so I proceeded to take it apart, perhaps to what would have been Wordsworth's dismay:

This shows the markups I made while analyzing the text

I really loved Wordsworth's overall message about our under-appreciation of nature, a theme which helped me categorize this poem as a Romantic Poem. I first looked at the poem as whole. What is it really saying? What I interpreted was that Wordsworth is complaining about how people during his time were foolish in wasting all their energy in daily matters (getting and spending,) completely ignoring the wonder that is nature. Wordsworth then express his deep frustration by saying that he wishes he was like the people of the past who worshipped pagan idols, specifically those regarding nature (hence the allusions to greek gods.)

As I gathered the message of the poem, I sought to find the devices that translated this message. For instance, I looked at the form of the poem and noticed that it was a petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter. As I discovered this, I noticed a shift that occurred both in the rhyming scheme (from ABBA to CDCDCD) and in tone. The portion highlighted in yellow on my annotations, demonstrates a narrator who is passively recounting an observation. However, midway through the poem, and throughout the blank portion, the speaker expresses his passion towards the issue. I concluded from this that Wordsworth choice of a petrarchan sonnet was suitable for conveying the message that humanity is not sufficiently attentive to the beauties of nature because through this he first introduced the problem, but then quickly took up a sharp view on the subject. I felt like the way in which this was structured gave the message a sense of urgency, and effectively transmitted Wordsworth's message.

And so, I really hope that Wordsworth would not be too upset with me. My compromise to this is that though I looked at different elements of the poem, I attempted to see what all of these elements did to create the whole, so that perhaps that way I would not be murdering "The World is Too Much With Us." 

How do you feel about this issue?

  

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you showed a picture of your mark ups. This is going to be so helpful for me to understand how to dissect poems.

    ReplyDelete