A Game of Chess Explication

A Game of Chess is a statement about how superficial modern beauty is.

In the first stanza, the speaker is describing a beautiful Grecian room with marble floors, fruited vines, and “a golden Cupidon”, or the Angel-Baby of Love. In line five of “A Game of Chess”, the speaker says “Another hid [the Cupidon’s] eyes behind his wing”. This is the first reference to the overall theme, which is how blind we are to beauty in our society.

Later on, the speaker describes synthetic perfumes, “Unguent, powered, or liquid – troubled, confused and drowned the sense in odours…” and while on the outside these smells sound luxurious, they suddenly make the room seem fake and tawdry, not at all like the palace we were imagining. I imagine those tacky mall perfumes that they spray on you as you pass; they’re almost suffocating and make your mouth taste like rubbish.

Another example of this in the text is T.S. Elliot’s allusion to Greek Mythology, and the tale of Philomela and Procne. Basically, a king named Tereus raped Philomela and cut out her tongue so she couldn’t tell anyone. So, being unable to speak, Philomela weaved her story into some cloth and gave it to her sister, Procne. Procne then fed the king his own son as punishment, and before Tereus could catch the sisters, the gods changed Philomela into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow and Tereus into a hawk. The author says this poem would be“”Jug Jug” to dirty ears,” because the mythical tale wouldn’t make sense to uneducated people trying to understand it. It’s almost like T.S. Elliot is trying to weed out who should or shouldn’t be reading his poetry because they wouldn’t understand the importance.

In the second stanza, the blank verse structure begins disintegrating, along with what seems to be the new speaker’s state of mind. The new speaker is asking whomever she is talking to to speak to her, then asks why does he speak, then what is he thinking of, why does he ever think, and finally to “think”! The person the speaker is talking to says “I think we are in the rats’ alley, were the dead men lost their bones.” This is an allusion to World War II; the men who fought in the war used to call the trenches different nicknames- such as rats’ alley. This makes me think that the speaker is a veteran, or someone who is suffering from a severe case of PTSD. The speaker then asks about the noise outside, and his partner has to tell him it’s just the wind under the door, the speaker asks again, and his companion says “Nothing again nothing”. The enjambment of the next line “Do- you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?” shows that the speaker is becoming unhinged.

“I remember those are pearls that were in his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?” This is the speaker’s counterpart’s reply. There are two important pieces in these lines, one is the allusion to the Phoenician Sailor from section one, and then the use of nothing for the sixth time. The Phoenician Sailor represented the fall of the great, which supports the theory of the speaker being an old war veteran. The use of nothing throughout the last few quotes is a statement about society, and how little we know nowadays, which has been a continuous theme.

After the insane speaker is finished talking, there is a sudden change in speaker during stanza three. The new speaker becomes a woman talking to her friends Bill, Lou, and Mary in a bar about one of her other friends. Basically, the speaker is recounting a conversation she had with a friend whose husband was coming home from war. This entire conversation supports the overall theme of superficial beauty in modern society.

A refrain that is happening throughout this entire segment is “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME”. This wasn’t an uncommon thing for bartenders to say at “last call”, which kind of gives us the setting in which this is taking place, and shows the change in speaker more effectively than just plain switching over. Also, it adds a sort of strange tension to the scenario that the speaker obviously doesn’t feel.

“He’ll want to now what you done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth.” In this line, the speaker was telling her friend that since her teeth are so gross, she needs to take some money and get them replaced. She basically tells her that she can hardly bear to look at her with her mouth in that state, and tells her friend to think of “Poor Albert”, who is probably her husband. This is a statement about superficial beauty in our modern society because this kind of thing actually happens in our world today, except it’s not just teeth. If we don’t like something about ourselves, we go to the doctor and have him, cut, pull, enhance, or downsize whatever that may be. It might not even be something that bothers you, but someone else. People will do crazy things to live up to the unrealistic standard of beauty set by society.

“You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique (And her only thirty-one.)” In this line, the speaker is now telling her friend that she looks old, even though she’s still a young woman. The friend replies that she can’t help it, that it had happened since she took some pills, and even though the chemist (probably a doctor) said nothing would happen, she had never felt the same. The pills she is talking about in this situation are abortion pills. This eludes to the infertility in section one, but it is more of a forced infertility. It’s still a statement to how superficial beauty is now, and how people may judge a person on their exterior without ever knowing their story.

As the bartender becomes more agitated at the loitering friends, he begins repeating “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” more consistently until they pack up and move on. They end their terrible conversation with a severe change in tone. “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night,” The use of “good night” is an allusion to Hamlet, and Ophelia’s drowning. A happy way to end this joyous poem, don’t you think?

Burial of the Dead Summary

            In the first four lines, the mystery narrator is telling the reader about how April is the cruelest month because the earth is trying to grow new plants in dead soil. He says that winter is the best month, which is kind of ironic because usually it’s associated with death, but “Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow…” as the narrator says. The think the speaker is saying it’s better to be numb and forgetful in your emotions and just survive on the small joys in life- as if they were “dried tubers” (a kind of potato). At this point in the poem, the speaker changes to a woman named Marie. She talks about a Hofgarten a couple miles south of Munich, Germany, and how she used to drink coffee and speak to a friend for hours there. She states in German that she is a “real German” suggesting that a real German can come from Lithuania, a controversial topic for the two places. Finally, she begins reminiscing about the joys of childhood and the freedom youth can bring. Aon the last line of the poem, she ends it on a sour note: I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” She could be referring to the constraint aging brings, and how she can’t sleep because of the aches and pains, and how she may go south in the winter, like some elderly couples do when they move to Florida.

            The very beginning lines of stanza two are a statement about society made by Eliot: how can we create historical roots in a time period where we can appreciate nothing during the pursuit of knowledge? The first half of the stanza is describing a desert, with red rock, a hot sun, and little to know water, water being a symbol for spirituality. The speaker at this point, no longer the woman from before, states that he will show the reader something different than the shadows he is normally associated with. This is a reference to the lack of good and evil in the poem, meaning there is no hope either way. The shadow striding behind a person could be a symbol of good, like a guardian having your back, and the shadow rising in front of you could represent evil, like a satanic force blocking your path. In the poem, they talk about a completely different shadow, one that isn’t associated with good or evil. After a passage in German, a new speaker arises, introducing herself only as the Hyacinth Girl. The hyacinth flower is a flower commonly placed on graves, which gives her speech a very creepy tone. She talks about a man she feel in love with, and about how when he returned from the Hyacinth garden, her eyes failed and she knew nothing. This is playing off the phrase “Love is Blind”, and the Heart of Light is a statement to the importance of love in the Wasteland they are living in.

            The speaker in the next stanza is talking about a clairvoyant woman, Sosostris. The speaker says that she is the wisest woman on Earth, even though she gets a bad cold every once in awhile, symbolizing the fragility among even the greatest of people. This could also be a statement about our society, and how even the most successful societies have flaws. Sosostris is reading the speaker’s fortune in this scene, and first she pulls the drowned Phoenician Sailor. The Phoenicians were a people who knew their way around a boat- so the cards support the whole “Even the greats’ can fall” theme in this stanza. In the next line, “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” is an allusion to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” when she is describing how, if a person lies at the bottom of the sea for long enough, their eyes turn to pearls, and since eyes are the windows to the soul, it’s safe to assume that, like the pearls, the persons soul is hardened and dead as well. This supports the aforementioned theme, and an earlier theme about spiritual death; the soul is representing spirituality and society, and the lack there of represents the fall of both. The next card Sosostris pulls is “Belladona” or Beautiful Lady in Italian. “Belladona” isn’t a real tarot card, but the “Lady of Rocks” is, and Sosostris calls the card the lady of situations because she can be both beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Next, she pulls the man with three staves, or the three of wands, the wheel, which symbolizes rapid change, and a blank card that she cannot read. She also says that she cannot find the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is a card which symbolizes self-sacrifice to restore the lands fertility, and in the first stanza, the lands are infertile and cannot have anything planted in them. Sosostris is saying that she doesn’t see that changing in the future. The next line, “Fear death by water” is also interesting because the lack of water was a running thread in the beginning of stanza two. Does she mean drowning like the drowned Phoenician tarot card? Or by the lack of spiritual identity displayed by not having water to begin with?

The “Unreal City” is London, and this is an allusion to Charles Baudelaire, “Fleurs du Mal”. The city is “unreal” because of the looming smog hovering over the city and the zombie-like population. He says he “had never thought death had undone so many”, which is basically quoting Dante’s Inferno, and he uses this allusion to compare modern life to living in Hell, the unsatisfied people being used to represent the undead. While the crowed “flowed up the hill and down King William Street” the speaker says the bell at Saint Mary Woolnoth, a church, “kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.” T.S. Elliot keeps mentioning death along side religion to represent the death of appreciation toward culture in our modern society. In the next lines, the speaker then sees someone he knows in the crowd –Stetson- and asks him if the corpse he planted in his garden has begun to sprout. This is a reference to the infertility of the land, and how someone would have just as much luck planting a corpse as they would crops. One strange inconsistency in the poem is when the speaker asks his friend if the sudden frost has disturbed [the corpse’s] bed. Why would there be a frost in April? I think this is a mocking question because the speaker clearly thinks winter is better than spring. At the end, the speaker quotes Charles Baudelaire again. He says, You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère!"  by calling his friend his “brother”, he is saying that he blames him, himself, and everybody around him for what has happened.

Two Definitions

Allusion

Definition: an indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work.

Example: the use of "Adam and Maiden" in the poem "Fern Hill"

Explanation: the writer is making a biblical reference to the Garden of Eden and its occupants. "Maiden", or Eve, was lured out of the Garden by a snake who tempted her with the forbidden fruit, and the  author of Fern Hill is using this imagery to show how he was thrusted out of adulthood the same way the antediluvian couple was thrusted out of their home. 

Connotation

Definition: "The emotional implications and associations that words may carry, as distinguished from their denotative meanings."

Example: Using "strong-willed" or "pig-headed" instead of "stubborn" in literature. 

Explanation: "Strong-willed" has a positive connotation, showing someone who believes in what they preach, and are hell-bent on achieving what they desire, while pig-headed has a negative connotation, showing someone who may be difficult to deal. Both have the same denotation (stubborn) but very different connotations. 

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

First Paragraph (Stanzas 1-4)

“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne is about a man saying goodbye to his lover before he dies. In the first four stanzas, he is describing how their love is different than other loves, and how just because they have to be apart doesn’t mean they have to fall apart. He says in the first paragraph that they’re parting should resemble the death of an old man, gentle, and you can’t even tell he has stopped breathing. In the third stanza, he says they’re love is unlike an earthquake, because earthquake’s cause pain and suffering for a moment or two, but in the long run are innocent, and their love has a more lasting effect. There is actually an allusion in the line “trepidation of the spheres” to the Greek myth that the revolving planets created a song that controlled everyone’s destiny. In the fourth stanza, he talks about couple’s whose relationship is fueled by lust, and how that couple couldn’t survive the distance like they will because parting “doth remove those things which elemented it”. He uses a bit of sarcasm in the first line “Dull sublunary lovers’ love” because he making fun of the cliché couples who fall in love in the moonlight, as the tale goes.

Second Paragraph (Stanzas 5-9)

In the next five stanzas, John Donne goes from talking about how the speaker and his lover are different by comparing them to different types of couples, to talking about their relationship specifically. He says in the fifth stanza that their love is so much bigger than anyone else’s that it’s hard to fathom its’ complexity. He tells her that they share a soul, so they will stay connected no matter what, through a breach or an expansion. He then contradicts this last statement in stanza seven and eight by saying that if their souls are two and not one, they are two like the two legs of a mathematical compass are two: one sits in the middle (his lover), while the other revolves around it (speaker), but in the end, they will always come together. He tells her in the last stanza that she holds him down, and without her, his circle would be ungeometrically correct, and he wouldn’t be able to come back to where he began and complete the circle.