ED-Narrow Fellow Flashcards
No quote
Subject (snake) X named
→exaggerates menace of snake (link w. Hope, bird X named) never named as bird)
(→D’son enraged w. title ‘the snake’ when pub. Springfield Republican)
A narrow Fellow in the Grass His notice sudden is –
Alteration of idiom
Connotations
Concealed sibilance
→alters idiomatic ‘snake in the grass’ 2 include both affability (‘fellow’) w. connot. constriction (‘narrow’) S’s (& ∴ N’s) duplicity exagg. by sibilance concealed w/in or @ end words, like S concealed in plain sight, until moment it comes into view
The Grass divides as with a Comb –A spotted shaft is seen –
Simile
Fronting of sibilance
Oblique metaphor / phallic imagery
Vivid simile →inc. tension →S = malicious + beyond sight
→prosaic ‘comb’ (like ‘fellow’) implies s’thing familiar
When S seen, it’s a ‘spotted shaft’ = another oblique desc. snake; sense that although S in full view it’s still concealed **phallic connotations (hostility in N often masculinized, as in Frost)
∴by rep. snake this way, D’son charac. N = both commonplace + threatening, destabilizing rom. + trans tenets positioning N. as refuge / N becomes a realm of hidden terrors (hinge)
No quote
Switch to tighter iambic trimester to relate boyhood encounter
→trimeter = tighter + reflects the speaker’s breathless terror as they recount their memory
But when a Boy, and Barefoot -I more than once at Noon
Plosive alliteration
Imagery
→+ plosive allit + imagery = sp’s percussive heartbeat as they recall ‘barefoot’ vuln. 2 concealed danger →destab. trans. tenets man’s easy communion w. nature; on the contrary, humans inc. vuln @ place where human body meets ground
Have passed, I thought, a Whip Lash Unbraiding in the Sun
Bracketing commas
→Bracketing commas ‘I thought’ →retrospective voice draw attn. 2 distinction btw. N’s benign appearance + malevolent reality, like S disguised ‘at noon’ in plain sight
When stooping to secure it It wrinkled, and was gone -
Imagery of the snake’s departure →stanzaic break (stanza previously compressed into octet)
As S ‘wrinkles’ and is gone, departure →stanzaic break / tension (previously compressed into octet) finally dissipates; ∴ longest lexical unit takes place in proximity w. S itself, w. stanza refusing a break or relaxation until S moves away, much like encounter itself
Nature’s People I feel for them a transport Of Cordiality -
Return to present
Diction
→return to present / after traumatic memory S reaffirms the ‘cordiality’ he feels w. other animals (‘Nature’s People’); attempt 2 reassure N can still function 4 him (as it did 4 other Transcendentalists) as a realm of benevolent “transport”
But never met this Fellow Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone -
Conjunction
Diction
Imagery
→‘But’ dismisses self-persuasion of previous stanza as naive recollection of S’s (+ N’s) hidden dangers brings only ‘tighter breathing’ (evoking perhaps, the act of serpentine constriction) + ‘Zero at the Bone,’ an embodied sense of annihilation (‘zero.’)
