Comparison and Review of 'Metaphors' Poem and 'The Handsomest Drowned Man in The World'

Over the course of this class, we have learned the importance of the elements of literature and expanding our understanding in fiction, poetry, and drama. This course has also helped us to develop the knowledge of the human condition and cultures, especially to relation behavior, and also ideas and values of human imagination.

Feminism was popular subject during the era of poetry. All women were protected from the community. Even if a woman was not protected she had little to no rights; for example, women did not have right to education or work. The large majority of women were too scared of the results that may cause to stand up for their rights even though they knew they were right. So because of fear of results, many of the women stay with their feelings and deal with the unjust treatment. Part of this women become to poetry to spread their feminist feelings. Poets such as Sylvia Plath used her medium to bring feminism throughout her poems. This poet had experiences leading to her announcing of the feminist message; I believe her personally experiences are truly make an impact through her expressive poetry.

An additional matter women in the early modern period was the required feeling they had to cover up their feeling of feminism. Instead of speaking up for themselves many women hide their feeling in fear of the results of act on those feelings, that's why I believe this poet's work conveys their negative feelings towards the treatment of women during the early modern era.

In my opinion Plath’s poetry is largely affirmative, even when it is lyrical. Most of her confessional poetry, however, is not at all emotional and about her feelings. In her last years of writing, she used this tone frequently, personally, and often savagely. She rarely bothered to create personal poems through whom she could project feelings; rather, she simply expressed her feelings in open, exposed, even raw ways, leaving her self equally exposed.

Plath used many symbols throughout her poetry, some assuming the value of meaning. Even though her tone as a writer was not the “strictest literary sense of the word,” Plath used many symbols in her writing to show meaning to her work, especially when creating some of her most personal and intimate poems. The moon was an object that she relied heavy on for inspiration and can be found in various places throughout her poems. Colors, for example white take on greater significance with each appearance. Just as much as the other symbolic thing, nature seems to have just as big of an effects with the trees within her poem.Plath used children, fetuses mostly, and even corpses, as two symbols in her poetry, not often did she do so, but they were used a few times. Not only were humans, alive and dead used but animals also made appearances in her symbolism within her poems.

One example of this was the poem she wrote by the name of “Metaphors” she produces originality and explains the feelings of a pregnant woman. “Metaphors” was in fact written while she was inpregnanted with her first child which might have been an inspiration. The poem has an ironic theme about the approach on pregnancy and how it can affect a women to lose control of her body. Plath has many second doubt about becoming a mother and her ability to do so. The poem starts of with a metaphor that is implied to give the reader a hint as to the subject of the poem he nine syllables entitled the months that the woman houses her very valuable load. Until now, Plath doesn’t expresses that in her poem. Since the poem was a riddle, the rest of the poem will give hints for the reader to answer the puzzle.

“I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.

Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there's no getting off.'

1st phrase - After the description of the syllabus she feels as huge as an animal like an elephant or a very large building. Her appearance and personality itself around her growing body.

2nd phrase - A watermelon reminds her stomach for her size and s; and her legs are the vines that shoot out. The image the author puts is supposed to be comical and is supposed to allow the reader to envision a stomach as big as a watermelon with supporting legs under.

3rd phrase - It is what she has inside of her that is valued not the woman herself. It is the inside the counts not the outside, for example, elephants are hunted not for the elephants itself, but for the tusks that are apart of the elephant. Just like she refers to what she has inside of her more important than her herself.

4th phrase - The woman’s body is the yeast as the baking to make dough used in the loaf of bread. When this such ingredient is warm, the yeast works to make the bread loaf raised. It is the same matter with the pregnancy. As the pregnancy moves forward, the fetus explains the mother's womb.

5th phrase - Again, it is the feeling of the mother against the baby. The baby is just a newborn, but the mother is the “heavy weighted coin purse that holds the newness inside.”

6th phrase - It is clearly at this time in her pregnancy, she does not have the motherly feelings of waiting to hold the baby. She is officially in the delivery stage where everything will begin to change and the drama will start to unfold.

7th phrase - The apples refer to the Garden of Eden. In the biblical story, Eve was disobedient to God and ate the apple which she was banned from. This lady ate the whole bag. Because of this action that Eve did, women must got through excruciating pain when it comes to the birth of a child. It was Eve who lured Adam to eat the apple; for that reason, she must be punished for it. The pain can not compare to most pain that people who have not had child birth have gone through. Like the stomach ache of a person who has ate a whole bag of green apples and is now experiencing a stomach ache. The green apples are not full grown. They have stay in the tree more time to be ready to be eaten. The woman may not be ready for the experience that she has undertaken. The time is not to ripe.

8th phrase - The pregnant lady has taken a ride that will not allow her to get off, however it is clear that she is having a hard time in her situation. The ride will not be over until the child birth labor has started. Mothers have some of these ideas pop up in their minds as their bodies experience hormonal changes.

In her journal, Plath had mentioned that she was afraid of becoming a mother because she was unsure what kind of mother she was going to turn out to be but she did in fact want to become one but was timid to. Her marriage was rocky at times. Plath suffered from depression and probably some mania, as she was diagnosed in her early twenties. This would provoke her questionable feelings about these marvelous but hard nine syllables.

Some critics see these mixed feelings about becoming a mother as a reflection of Plath’s bipolar disorder, and that may be so. Plath is known as one of the great confessional poets of the twentieth century. Her marriage was not a happy one, and one might reasonably assume that her first pregnancy in that context did not always fill her with joy.

However, that interpretation seems to cheapen both the poet and the poem. Any woman might feel some tension between the anticipated joys of parenthood and the actual and foreseen suffering of pregnancy. The poem voices this ambivalence strongly, though it is weighted heavily with negative connotations. Plath was clearly a troubled soul, but she was also a masterful poet, and in these few lines she captures a universal tension that few women at the time felt free to name in public.

In comparison to another subject we have learned over the Literature course was the genre of magical realism which is defined as a literary genre in which fantastical things are treated not just as possible, but also as realistic” (“Magical Realism.”) Magical realism tells its stories from the perspective of individuals who live in our world, yet experience a different reality from the one we call objective. If there is a creature/spiritual being in a story of magical realism, the creature/spiritual being is not a fantasy component but an appearance of the reality to the individual who believes in it and has previous real life experience with such a figures.

“The style of writing called magic realism is marked by its imaginative content, vivid effects, and lingering mystery.” In combining fantastic elements with realistic details, one of the writers for example, Gabriel García Márquez can create a fictional world where the miraculous and the everyday live side-by-side. This type of writing allows the author to explore their imagination and also involves the creation of made-up fantasies.

One of the examples I can use is “ The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,' written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, because he uses magic realism. Magic realist work, there is no distinction between the natural and the fantastical, and often there is no explanation given of the presence and acceptance of the supernatural anomaly. To start of this story, it is just any regular old day and on this day, children find a gentleman washed up on the shore. The children begin to dig this poor man up and take pleasure out of doing so. The bury him and dig him up and reburry him and the cycle continues, this man is nowhere near ordinary. This poor man is handsome, unlike the other people in the community and he is also tall and handsome. When the people of the community discover the man who was washed up they take his body into a house. A women who found him began sewing and hand making tailor made clothing for his fit. In the man’s face is the mystery surround the magic and the fantasy. No one in the community know the whereabouts of this washed u man, no one is able to identify him or where he came from. To make matter worse, come to find out that ironically the women responsible for the drowning of the handsome mystery man is the woman who is planning the poor guys funeral. One family from the neighborhood adopts him as a family member. They cry for him as he was his son. The community feel horrible that think nothing can be the same as before. Houses need to be adjust in honor of Esteban, the people in the neighborhood named the drowned dead man.Clearly, this is something very enthusiastic to the village that has happened in long time. The appearance of a large drowned man on their shores inspires the imagination of the residents of a small village.

Furthermore, the villagers, when they finding the drowned man on their beach, these people begin to admire and then love him as they prepare him for proper burial. The third-person narrator, however, only defines the man through the eyes of the people of the village. It is their visualization of the drowned man, not any objective viewpoint, that the reader receives.In addition, the point of view shifts away from the villagers at positive times in the narrative, such as when the imaginary hostess worries about her chair and the modesty with which and he 'perhaps without ever knowing that those who told him don’t go Esteban, wait until the coffee boils, were the same that later whispered, finally the great fool’s left, thank goodness, finally the stupid bloke is gone.' This complex approach to narration provides cues not only about Esteban, but about the villagers themselves as they view him in the context of their own lives.

In conclusion, the two pieces of work where very similar yet different in their own ways. The two authors had different techniques to write the same types of pieces. One author used a mythical technique and the other used emotions to write well thought out pieces. The importance of the elements of literature and expanding our understanding were evident within the comparing and contrasting of these two authorsence and personality wraps itself around her growing body.