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'The Force' in Dylan's the Force That Though the Green Fuze Drives the Flower

Decent Essays

"The Force" in Dylan 's The Force That Though The Green Fuze Drives The Flower Nature creates, then nature destroys, and this pattern is eternally repeated. The planet Earth exists in all its magnificence through a series of functioning cycles (water, carbon, etc.) that, combined, can be deemed one solitary process: the life cycle. Dylan Thomas’ poem “The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower” creates a dramatic illustration of this cycle. The imagery Thomas evokes of the natural world is beautiful yet simultaneously haunting. Readers envision the growth of a flower, and hear the sounds of waves crashing through rocks, but the sense of dread induced by images of quicksand and blood turned wax gives a sinister edge to …show more content…

He likens the water of streams to human blood and and reflects that the wind which whirls water is the same wind that guides a human through life. The most predominant similarity Thomas finds between humanity and the rest of nature is a shared vulnerability. He speaks of a force that governs all. It calms waters, then creates rapids. It rustles a breeze, then stirs the quicksand. It is a force that generates life, whilst maintaining the power to destroy it. In the forth stanza, the force becomes what the reader can assume is the force of time itself. As the “lips of time leech the fountain head” (Thomas 16), time sucks the life from a human. There is no better reminder of mortality than the concept of time. Like plants, animals, and nearly everything else, no human can last forever. Life must end in a “wintry fever” (Thomas 5) so that through the green fuse the flower can be driven. It is no wonder why Thomas struggles to find the words to describe such phenomena. To fully explain the cycle of life would be to entirely explain the existence of all that is Earth. The phrase “I am dumb to tell” (Thomas) appears in every stanza apart from the second (in which “tell” appears as “mouth”). Thomas is expressing his inability to wholly understand and describe all that he sees and feels about the immeasurable force which drives the cycles of life. Dylan Thomas appears to be humbled by the world around him. It would seem that he views

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