Tuesday, April 30, 2013

In Class Essay #2

This was not my best essay. :/ At all.

In this poem "Thou Blind Man's Mark," the speaker has a distinct dislike for the feeling of desire in his mind. With poetic devices such as diction, tone, repetition (pleonasm/anaphora), and details, the speaker reveals his complex attitude towards desire.

"Thou Blind Man's Mark" has a very formal diction, yet a tone that is quite unsatisfied lies beneath it. Lines 1-4 describe desire in a very detailed way, and hints at what the speaker thinks of when it comes to desire. "Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care": there is no sense of kindness towards this feeling. Later on in the poem the speaker goes on to say how "in vain" desire made him do things that he did not wish to do. "In vain" and "too long" are examples of pleonasm, so as to emphasize how angered the speaker as at his weakness. It also emphasizes how much control desire tries to take of him.

With these clues revealed to us throughout the poem, we can understand how much that overwhelming feeling of desire that overcomes the speaker angers him as well.

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