Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden Essay

The loss of Aboriginal ethnicity is also highlighted when the land asks “Where are the laws and legends I gave?” This dates back to the Aboriginal culture, as their spirituality is inextricably linked to the land. They believe everything on the vast landscape has meaning and purpose. As long as they look after the land, the land will thereby return the favour. However, through time, Aboriginals have begun shifting away from their original beliefs as their world collides with the Western world. Different meanings could be made out of this; such as the more Aboriginals walk away from their culture, the less inclined the land will be to look after them, thus breaking the chain of their spirituality and beliefs. Caesuras such as full stops and question marks are used are pauses for a moment of reflection. Through the reader’s understanding of the poem’s structure, they are able to not only understand how the poem is to be read but also get the feel and emotions coming across from the poet.

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

Words expressed only through the agonizing notes of distress and sadness. Only then was the “art and suffering,” comingled in only a way that life’s experiences could bring.

Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the first

In Annie Dillard’s narrative, “The Deer at Providencia,” she reveals her awareness of and confusion regarding suffering by paralleling human and animal anguish and dignity . On a trip to Ecuador with a North American group in the village of Providencia , Dillard witnesses the suffering of a small deer. Her lack of reaction to the suffering deer stuns the travelers; however, in America Dillard conditions her awareness of suffering daily by previously daily encountering an article about a burn victim in America (M.S. 4) Posting the article on her mirror, Dillard strengthens her realistic perception regarding suffering and divulges her confusion regarding the randomness, inevitability, and the threat of agony for all beings . (M.S. 8) Recounting these experiences, Dillard employs word choice, tone, and parallelism to acknowledge her deliberate awareness of and confusion about the cruelty of suffering.

The poem sits easily on a page and is visually satisfying, although this is in part due to the visual rhymes previously mentioned. This appearance though is false as the poems content is analysed but reinforces the theme of appearance and reality in the 4th stanza. Again, the "controlled" use of structure can be seen as adding to the poems "passion" showing a masterful combination of the two. The repetition of and permutations on the line: "my heart is breaking for a little love" is another structure that reinforces the poems meaning and show the despair that the poem communicates. The move away from the 1st person in the last two stanzas serves to provide a different perspective on the emotions discussed allowing a broader view than if the whole poem was in the first person, again this use of structure emphasises the underlying emotions.

     The structure of the last three stanzas leaves us hanging from each one. If there was a song to this as music would rise in volume and pitch at each of the final stanza lines. If you read the poem right, the lines seem to echo in your head and slow your progress to the next stanza.

Nature is calm and serene, while this boy’s life has changed in a matter of seconds from living to dead in a tragic event. The end-stopped lines and enjambments are used very well in the remainder of the poem.

A majority of us squander our time fantasizing about a faultless society, a place where sorrow has not meaning but is replaced with harmony, compassion, and riches. Essentially, we want a place where dreams come true. On the contrary, how often do we reflect on the worst? A place where sorrow is the only meaning and harmony, compassion and riches have no existence. Susceptibility, combat and abhorrence- the contemplation of our future. Glimpses of these are shown through demoralizing literature, where the dire stuff is an extrapolation of our world.

Auden truly encapsulates diversity in his writing, always transitioning from prose to verse and from thought to speech. Auden begins part three of The Age of Anxiety in prose with “At first all is dark and each walks alone. What they share is only the feelings of remoteness and desertion, of having marched for miles and miles, of having lost their bearings, of a restless urge to find water”,

In large cities, there are lots of homeless. People with pleas for help, but almost never receive. How could so many passersby not help them? In the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”, Auden argues that humans lack empathy for strangers. He uses examples of people acquiescing to others’ suffering to support his point. Auden complements those examples with a variety of literary methods to make allowing other to suffer seem natural, and be persuasive. Auden uses various persuasive elements throughout “Musée des Beaux Arts” to convince the reader that people do not empathize with strangers. His main tools are the literary devices of irony, enjambment, and rhyme.

Auden in this poem compares human beings to stars. This comparison can be criticised as being very unfair as stars are both literally and metaphorically above humans. This is evident upon reading “…That for all they care, I can go to hell.” The fact that he used objects of such importance allows readers to appreciate

     In the final lines of the poem Auden uses irony to show the government’s role in creating a certain society. In Auden’s eyes the government considers a working-class income, good credit, and a sense of national loyalty and social duties to be the only things necessary to make one’s life complete. He seems to feel that, by insisting on material wealth, society has given government an opportunity to control its actions by creating a world in which a “desirable” lifestyle can only be obtained by adhering to a strict set of ideals and philosophies. The poem can also be viewed as a spoof on certain aspects of the typical middle-class lifestyle. It mocks what many feel are necessities of modern life and points out man’s lack of true feeling for himself and others. But, most importantly, it paints a picture of a world in which people are willing to give up their personal dreams,

Suffering is a staple to the human condition. It can light the fire beneath and push progress, or it can lead to wallowing and a sense of helplessness. Often, helplessness leads to despair, which leads to more suffering, beginning an endless cycle of distress and anguish. Once stuck in this cycle, personal suffering begins to affect all aspects of one’s life, especially the environment around them. This feeling moves across genres and literary eras, giving a sense of human connection across generations. In Robert Browning’s Caliban Upon Setebos, Caliban is stuck in the world of an uncaring god. With an inability to please him, Caliban is helpless in his plight. Similarly, Hamm, from Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, is stuck in a cycle of