On Finding A Small Fly Crushed In A Book Flashcards
‘Some hand, that never meant to do thee hurt’
1)caesura (after comma) interrupts action before it begins:
-speaker makes it clear that what happened was not malicious before saying what happened (was an accident)
2)Determiner ‘Some’:
-shows carelessness of humanity
-unknown+accidental murder of fly
‘Hand’ ‘hurt’ ‘has’ ‘here’ ‘pages pent’ fist two lines
Harsh alliteration emphasizes:
- sudden snapping of the book
therefore the pity the poetic voice feels bc if he didn’t think it was cruel, he wouldn’t feel sad about it
‘But though hast left thine own fair monument,
Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert’
METAPHOR: the fly’s pressed wings are perfectly preserved on the page forming it’s beautiful tomb, therefore the fly formed it’s own ‘monument’ –> juxtaposed at the end on how humans leave no legacy
VERB CHOICE ‘gleam’:
-beauty of fly represents beauty of nature
‘Oh! that the memories, which survive us here’
-‘Oh!’:
-Breakes iambic pentameter to make his lament clear
-wishes humanity would leave such a lovely legacy
the memories ‘Were half as lovely as the wings of thine!’
-the remainding memories (wings) are only a tiny remaining of the fly
-WORD CHOICE ‘lovely’:
wings crushed are pure and innocent
-JUXTAPOSITION of fly (innocent) & humanity (destructive)
‘Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine’
-The praise for the fly continued
- suggests it fly almost an angelic being because it ‘shines’ even in death
‘Now thou art (are) gone: our doom is ever near:
The peril is beside us day by day’
-caesura shows tonal shift to a more pessimistic tone shown by word choice ‘doom’ ‘peril’
-‘Now thou art gone’ suggests that the passing of the fly brought about the doom. Now that a less significant being is now gone that our fate is near
• The proximity of our doom is suggested when it is described as ‘ever near’ and that our peril is ‘beside us day by day’
‘The book will close upon us, it may be,
Just as we lift ourselfs to soar away
Upon the summer-airs.’
CENTRAL METAPHOR
-book is life, when it closes –> death
-we think we are happy ‘soaring’ and even at the best time ‘upon the summer-airs’ we can die
-one day the book of life is going to slam shut and crush us between its pages
Happy stuff ‘But, unlike thee’ sad stuff
Volta (tonal shift) in middle of sentence
-usually immediately before rhyming couplet
-premature/unexpected
-mirrors random nature of timings of death
Caesura + conjunctive (but)–> emphasizes juxtaposition between life+joy and death/nothingness
‘The closing book may stop our vital breath,
Yet leave no lustre on our page of death.’ End of poem
-When humanity dies, we will leave no ‘lustre’ (no beauty, no legacy) juxtaposing the gleaming monument of the fly.
-end focus is word ‘death’ Indicates importance of death, further emphasizee by rhyming couplet
Tone
-reflective
-morbid (obsessive about death)
-regretful
Themes
-life & death
-innocence + sinfulness
-memory
Structure and form
-sonnet
+Usually for strong emotions, that’s why poet wrote about this because of his strong feelings
+rhyme scheme doesn’t fit traditional sonnet forms mirrors how this isn’t a typical poem
-iambic pentameter -reflects heart beat of of the fly once alive
‘Thee’ ‘thou’ ‘thine’
Apostrophe- directly addressing dead fly
