Search for Truth in Edgar Lee Masters

Oftentimes, the songs that be connect peach to whiz another and overstep the reader efferent perspectives on the same thin out. By doing this, the poetic ele handsts of the related poesys act to depart and contri savee to the antecedents of each other. benzoin Panties and Mrs.. genus Benzoin Panties are dickens poems In the anthology that, when read separately, attend to have separate themes, but when read together speak to each other in an stock and response manner. Through an explication of the cardinal poems, it tolerate be seen that gum benjamin cougar and Mrs.. benjamin Panther both feel betrayed, but their differing perspectives change the readers Initial postage of sympathy for both characters to one of pastimeioning for truth. The form of the two poems Is exempt verse In that there Is no strict rhyme or meter. This style Is actually beneficial In getting the themes of the two poems crossways In a very effective way. Free verse whole caboodle well In getting these themes across because the poet Is not as confine In a specific form.This develops the themes of the two poems In a often more relatable manner since both poems deal with problems that more or less lot can relate to much(prenominal) as friendship, betrayal, marriage, and lone gunstockss. Adding to this discussion of master style of writing, Emilio Tolerated states that halls lines stir up a very human otter, make up of conciseness, hardness, and classic rhythms he Is clear-sighted, sometimes satirical, always brilliant and engage (Talented 46).This Is a very sixth sensory facultyful critique, especially In his assertion that Masters delivery Is very human and direct because this allows the average reader to get Into the mind of the characters and genuinely relate to their themes. In gum benzoin Panther the theme Is that companionship Is necessary to live a happy life sentence, even If It Is with a dog, especially when you have a wretched coitusship with your wife and there Is no one else to turn to. On the other hand, the theme of Mrs..Benjamin Panther Is that you cannot always trust people ground on what they say and how people perceive them, and It Is wrong to Judge because sometimes seeingly Irrational decisions have a listened explanation. Free verse Benjamin Panties helps to develop the sincerity to his relationship with his dog, Nigh, and shows how he has become indifferent to the world. The drop out verse acts almost like a letter to the reader seek to express the struggles he faced at the end of his life. This is not to criminate that there are not some intentional stresses in the poems.For example, Benjamin Panties says our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world (B. P. 12). at that place is definitely a stress on this last phrase which is valuable to his production line because it makes his assertion much more resonant and memorable. Mrs.. Benjamin Panties is overly written in free verse in what appears to be a n in a flash reply to Benjamin poem. She is very candidly expressing the problems she has with her husband, problems that she notes some(prenominal) people do not see from the surface.This helps to bring up a connected theme among the two poems which is that marriage is more complicated than it seems on the surface and requires insight into the situation of the husband and wife to understand the true nature of a relationship. trance the order of these two poems, in the anthology, may not seem that important, it can be very helpful in discerning how the themes speak to each other, and how they are shaped in the readers mind. It is no coincidence that Benjamin Panties is the first poem because it introduces this character as being someone solely without a human friend and who has taken up on life.The line our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world (B. P. 12) is very important in showing that Benjamin did not feel that people understood his desperation and that his story is often lost. This leads at once into Mrs.. Benjamin Panties where she contradicts most everything her husband has asserted in the previous poem and says all the men loved him/and most of the women pitied him (M. B. P. 3-4). Mrs.. Panties is very effectively calling Benjamin line of descent into question by saying that these concerns for him are false and unjustified.Initially, Benjamin poem seems very sad and the reader takes pity with him until reading the next poem. What Masters has done so well is in stigmatizeting up the encourage poem dapple the previous one is still in the readers mind. This acts to garble Benjamin theme room one of solitude that is uncontrolled to one of solitude that is brought on by himself as a result of not appreciating his wife. The occurrence of a very equivalent idea found in both poems, but with different implications, prove to cause conflict among their individual themes.In both poems there is a brief mention of alcohol, but the stage settin g in which both are utilize are completely different. Benjamin Panties says L was alone/with Nigh for partner, bed- fellow, comrade in drink (B. P. 4-5), which implies that the still friend he had to drink with was his dog, and, once again, makes the reader feel disturbing for him. On the other hand, Mrs.. Benjamin Panties points out that she loathe(s) the smell of whiskey and onions (M. B. P. 6), which shows that she aphorism the alcohol as one of the problems that pulled her and her husband apart.While this may not seem important to the connection of the two poems, it is very significant because it shows that Benjamin expire from glory into solitude could be of his own making. On the other hand, the issue of alcohol in Benjamin poem could alter Mrs.. Panniers theme because the assertion could be made that Mrs.. Panties drove her husband to alcohol because of her failure o be a good wife and constant companion. So, in a very interesting way this mention of alcohol creates a sense of ambiguity in both poems and gets the reader to question to r an Mrs..Panniers argument, while contributing to the readers interpretation of both of the themes. In these two poems, Masters uses devices of big(a) and poetic diction very effectively to set the intent and distribute the arguments of the poems. In Benjamin Panties there is both alliteration and a exaggeration in the line then she, who survives me, snared my soul with a snare which bled me to close (B. P. 7-8). A line very similar to this is found in Mrs.. Benjamin Panties as she is Justifying her reasons for being a seemingly bad wife.This constant repeating of the hard s sound turns the alliteration into onomatopoeia that sounds almost like a snake hissing when the poem is read aloud. This sets the very somber tone of the poem which is reflected by Benjamin solitude and loss of soul which he blames on his wife. In addition to setting this tone, the fact that Benjamin uses these damaging words in direct reference to his wife strengthens his argument in the eyes of the reader because they now associate this snakelike sound and deathlike scene with the fifes c grey-haired attitude towards her husband.An example of how poetic diction helps set tone can be seen in the word dingy used in both poems to express the room Benjamin was forced to live in by his wife. The word implies a very unclean and nasty purlieu and is used near the end of both poems to leave alone the reader with a sense of the unclean nature of their relationship. It is significant that the same adjective is used to describe the room in both poems because it implies for Benjamin how bad his life has become, and for Mrs.. Panties how disgusted she was with him to force him to live in such a place.There is a very unique example of irony found in the two poems, which is brought out when they are directly compared. Both Mr.. And Mrs.. Panties make mention of the law of nature in their poems, but in very different ways. Benjamin Panties mentions at the very beginning of his poem that he is an attorney at law. This shows that Mr.. Panties has a good education and a clear understanding of the law. Mrs.. Panties also directly mentions the law but in reference to their marriage by stating the scarcely man with whom the law and morality/permit you to have the marital relation/is the very man that fills you with disgust (M.B. P. 13-15). What comes across as ironic in this cross- reference is that Mrs.. Panties names both law and morality as the reasons wherefore she cannot escape the discontent marriage. Since Mr.. Panties is a lawyer, he can be seen as a man who upholds the law and has to maintain a certain level of moral integrity in his profession. Mrs.. Panniers assertion against the law and morality could, in fact, be another way of associating blame to her husband for her being trap in a bad marriage.Masters background had a lot to do with the types of poems and themes he dealt with in Spoon R iver Anthology. Literary critic Stephen Cushman says that Masters was cursed with the need to search all his life for the love his mother failed to give him and doomed not to recognize genuine love, since he had been deprived of it in the most fundamental stages of his existence, and we can concur in his Judgment that such a fate would ultimately play itself out in a life involving many women and many wanderings until, his physical energies exhausted, he would end old and alone. (Cushman 162). This description of Masters helps a great deal in big(a) a deeper meaning as to why he wrote so many poems about unhappy marriages that ended in loneliness. Since he did not get down much love early in his life, these themes to loneliness and blame scoff in the Panniers could be a way tort him to express how he felt. It is very important to see that there are other sets of poems in Spoon River Anthology that speak to each other about unhappy marriages by means of differing perspectives.In the poems deception McGee and Fletcher McGee, this husband and wife both tell of how one made the others life miserable. Lie claims that Fletcher took her youth and beauty in life, while Fletcher claims that Lie drained the life out of him during her life and continued to haunt him afterward her death. Another pair of poems that display this theme of an unhappy marriage and leave the reader to question who is telling the truth is rosaceous Parallel and Mrs.. Parallel. Rose wants out of his marriage and attempts to get out if by disappearing for a year, but Mrs..Parakeet refuses to get a divorce. Both sets of poems are very similar to the Panniers in the sense that nobody in these marriages can escape their gloominess in life, and all of them ultimately die very upset with their spouses. The unhappy marriage of the Panniers does not stand alone in the small township of Spoon River in vying the reader different perspectives on unsuccessful marriages. While Spoon River Anthology contains many pairs of poems that speak to each other, Benjamin Panties and Mrs..Benjamin Panties are two that significantly change the meaning of each others themes. Standing alone, each poem invokes sympathy in the reader because Benjamin has no human friends and his wife feels trapped in a miserable marriage. Analyzing these two poems together brings out a connected theme among the poems that both Mr.. And Mrs.. Panties feel betrayed, but their differing perspectives change the readers initial impression and force them to either choose one characters argument or find some middle ground in their quest for the truth.