On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book

Question 1

theme

Answer 1

*fragility of life
*inevitability of death
*presence of legacy
*randomness of fate
*interrogating about life
*history
*memory

Question 2

Context about the poet

Answer 2

• Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879): older brother of Alfred Tennyson, a well recognized poet
• lived a relatively peaceful and quiet life as the vicar of a church
• wrote almost 350 sonnets of wide-ranging subject matters in his lifetime
• choice of subject (death) considered rather daring and subversive, due to him being a vicar in a relatively conservative era

Question 3

Form

Answer 3

• Shakespearean sonnet: idea change in line 8; rhythmically ordered into 3 quatrains and a couplet
• apostrophe: directly addresses a dead fly that has been unwittingly crushed

Question 4

Poem’s Title

Answer 4

• reflective, informal
• different from the style presented in the stanzas
• construction of ‘On…’: generic, common title, yet poem not typical

Question 5

‘some hand that never meant to do thee hurt’

Answer 5

• ‘some hand’ - synecdoche: the hand may be fate / god / the speaker / another person; serving to distance the action from the intent of whom was responsible
• ‘never meant to do thee hurt’ - remorseful tone
• ‘hand, that…’ - caesura: forces the reader to focus on the hand; heightens the depth of the poignant sentiments; forces a pause before the poem has properly begun
• ‘hand’, ‘hurt’ - alliteration: heavy tone
• strong opening, introduces quirky predicament

Question 6

‘has crush’d thee here between these pages pent’

Answer 6

• continues previous mood by directly referring to the hurtful act ‘crush’d’
• ‘pent’ - archaic adjective: means trapped/imprisoned;
  OR
• ‘pent’ = past tense form of pen: refers to the pages that are filled with history
• ‘between these pages pent’ - anastrophe (inversion of normal syntax): poet’s intention to rhyme
• long vowel sounds → heavy tone
• ‘pages pent’ - plosives: distress

Question 7

‘Oh! that the memories, which survive us here’

Answer 7

• ‘Oh! that’: briefly disrupts the metre
• ‘Oh!’ - exclamation: stress that memories are what remains
• focus changes from concrete (wings) to the abstract (‘memories’)

Question 8

structure

Answer 8

*mainly follows Shakespearian sonnet, but the VOLTA appears in eighth line, which makes the poem as a combination of Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet

Question 9

time period context

Answer 9

*Victorian era
*short average lifespan
*Queen Victoria publicly mourning her husband’s death by wearing black for the next 40 years –> invention of elaborate funeral

Question 10

The book will close upon us, it may be,

Answer 10

*metaphor- life as book, death as book closing upon us; comparing human life with the fly — death is coming to everyone
*caesura
*“it may be”– uncertainty – the randomness of life and fate

Question 11

Yet leave no lustre on our page of death

Answer 11

*lustre - shimmer, shine left behind of the fly’s wings
*liquid sound of ‘leave’ and ‘lustre’
*die without leaving any meaningful legacies behind us
* being conscious of how we are going to be memorized

Question 12

“Our doom is ever near:// the peril is beside us day by day”

Answer 12

*doom - death, destruction
*peril - serious and immediate danger
*caesura used in the middle of the line (before our doom is ever near) - muse the mortality, pulls readers sharply
*pessimistic tone
*death and danger accompany people through their lifetime — “day by day”, remain in our mind
*personification
*exaggerated and over melodramatically