English B poems

• Title


  Significance of the title
• The speaker is learning the lesson as he goes along, he doesn't know the lesson until near the end
• Atmosphere in stanza 1

  • Calm
  • Peaceful
  • Serene
  • Relaxed
• Butterflies


  Represent nature and potentially oppressed people
• Lemonade of simple praise

  Metaphor for the gentle, soothing way nature requests praise
• Scansion


  The act of scanning a line of poetry to determine the rhythm
• Black maid singing Protestant Hosanna

  Suggests a parallel to slavery and protest
• Things are not as they appear on the surface - there are hints of darkness beneath the perceived bliss
• The speaker is privileged, relaxing in a hammock, while the black maid is working
• the grass and the butterflies we see uh kinesthetic imagery with the movement of the hammock and the Flight of the Butterflies or the tree image with the with the song of the maid uh uh we see even gustother image with the the um lemonade if you want to put it that way
• the speaker is enjoying this however there's Darkness beneath the the perceived Bliss and the speaker will go on to further understand that this Darkness exists
• the speaker is presenting his race in presenting the contrast with the black maid working and him lying in the hammock
• the speaker is privileged enough to be in a hammock relaxing while the black mate is working
• the speaker is oblivious to the situation around him
• the speaker recognizes the facade that is happening and starts to get an epiphany
• the children are hunting the butterflies
• the speaker feels that the children are breaking his Sabbath with the thought of sin
• the speaker feels that the children's actions are disturbing his sense of peace and rest
• the speaker sees the little girl as a monster, crouched and ready to prey on the butterfly
• the speaker is disturbed by the girl's violent actions towards the butterfly
• the speaker sees the girl as a "thing of Summer light" despite her cruel actions
• the speaker feels the girl is not marked for any later grief or remorse over her actions
• the speaker believes the girl will not change her cruel behavior and will continue to torture others
• m just thank you none of us know but that that's a good way to look at it as well I like that not marked for some later grief that cannot speak so if she is armed in the time to come it will be done on such a level that she will not even be able to talk about it interesting interesting we can leave without that interesting if you are not much for it it can become it can be something that's unexpected so it's not you know you're not being set up for it but it's unexpected it can happen to an unexpectedly
• okay I think that that kind of can work with the the idea of something um reality being different sorry reality being different from my parents so um the idea is that you know um it seems that everything is okay but then then in the midst of that summary thing there is the the idea that Doom is is to come Justice with the butterfly it it's it's a beautiful thing but then she takes it apart you would so there's almost the idea that something beautiful is being destroyed
• if you look at if you look at her as that summary thing a beautiful beautiful little girl a flower it is not somebody you would pick out or something you'd pick out for some pain or hurt so it she's not marked because we would not anticipate the late grief that is to come for her
• all right that's a good way to look at it that's perhaps um more valid than than what I thought initially because I I thought this line was was really saying this girl is like no no conscientiousness is assigned to this girl so she will never look back and and grieve but it could be that you know it will happen to her kind of in a cyclic way you know she's torturing the butterflies no but you know maybe the table and maybe that's why he's afraid because everything seems okay he's relaxing in this nice scene scene you know everything seems or at least on Surface idyllic um but then he sees this thing that disturbs the normal things the kind of summery feeling too um and then he becomes afraid he becomes afraid possibly because he realizes that he too um the same thing can happen to him
• yeah he might share the same fit all right let's quickly look at the last stanza here so now the speaker is basically learning his lesson because his mind is swinging inward which means he's in a state of perfection right uh perhaps if I'm metaphor comparing the mind to a door or something that swings I don't know so the main swings inward on itself in fear what a contrast in mood between stanza one and stanza three it's almost like an imagery so the whole idea of your closing in on yourself your luck within yourself because when you become fearful there's an idea that you lock you lock yourself you become tense so I like it it's a nice imagery there
• swayed toward nausea from each normal sign so uh the mind is swaying and it's swing it's swaying in fear towards nausea the nausea of course when we when we are great when we're terrified we might say we might have that nauseated feeling we might we might even be sick to our stomachs so the fear might not even just be a terror but it might just be a recognition a recognition of how horrible we are as humans or something like that but he's he's feeling so afraid that he's sick that's what I'm getting the swayed to our nausea it's almost that that feeling like the fear is so powerful that it's affecting even how it feels physiologically right so it's a nice another extension of the imagery of how fearful he is
• you know and I like the fact that um there's a it's from normal sign necessarily unusual yes but yeah this is a normal everyday thing this is something he wouldn't give a second thought on a regular day until the sun Epiphany so we see here uh I hear the crash of two small children hunting yellow wings this is this is nothing weird nothing that looks to be cruel or unusual but this is what he's seeing in it all of this cruelty and strange Behavior
• so the signs of Cruelty the signs so we see here this is actually the lesson in a phrase purity of Cruelty everywhere even this little girl has inherited the truth of Cruelty which she exacts upon the butterfly and these signs that he sees he sees a girl playing with butterflies that's a normal thing but he's not recognizing that Within these normalities are like hidden cruelties so we see something that we see every day we think not nothing of it we take it for granted but maybe if we stop unreally internalize the lesson then we'll you know have a different idea as to what's going on
• I was just saying I this suede is just so beautiful because I mean because the idea you know you're moving from side to side so it just intensifies the idea of I am so overwhelmed by um by this it is it's so intense the feeling that I can't stand straight
• and we've seen diction that relates to that kind of movement with scansion with with swings from earlier on but at this point they had positive connotation but now the swing it's yeah it's like he's nauseated and he's sick he's his mind is wobbling
• another interesting thing is that when it begins okay at the Forefront is the beauty the the beautiful atmosphere but there is the underlining as you pointed out um so before that um of the darkness and then know the darkness comes Forefront and um the beauty is just the underlining
• I would say there's a heavy personification here you see somehow wearing frocks um it's torn flux which would suggest that I mean I guess we're the ones would tear up the frogs the same summer here is described to be beautiful here is wearing torn clothes it's not that things changed it's that his perception has been deemed so he's now seeing that it's not really this is not really this that's real but this is actually the reality in that we are you know we see some we see a little girl playing with butterflies as something fun and cute but he's seeing it as like someone wearing torn clothes some are being you know marginalized or abused or whatever the case is of summer is also somewhat symbolic of everything um beautiful um everything good it's now torn
• the ideally the idealistic view then is um is torn so it doesn't yeah it doesn't see things the same way and it links with the fact that his thoughts have been um changed
• so he has been enlightened by by this little anecdote with the with a child and the Butterfly it's like he's now recognizing but this looks normal it looks cute and fun but whoa I can actually see some dark tendencies in us if a little girl can have fun eviscerating the abdomen of a tortured fleeting butterfly what does it say about us as as humans what does this mean you know how do we really treat nature what what am I who are we I think he's really recognizing that things aren't as beautiful as they seem and we're the ones of course responsible for the the torn frocks that someone is forced to wear
• what about the literal meaning where she's at he tells us she's wearing a lemon frock yeah and we look at her frog being so the Frog's been sewn her not being marked for anything but later the frogs are torn but who's trucks
• so I am just thinking here that probably um oh I'm getting lost in my thoughts sorry probably we we are looking at the lesson not just for the persona but for ourselves as well that the things we do to others can come back to haunt us
• that that comes into the like the cyclical nature of Cruelty yeah you know cruelty is in is inherited it runs it just runs through history and as as the speaker reflects on how cruel we are and how this cruelty it has a reverse effect it has a continual effect cruelty we get cruelty and we see