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##xiety In Courage, Gwendolyn BrooksThe Explorer, And Frederick Douglass

Decent Essays

Monroe says, “Poetry has always been independent, unaffiliated with any institution or university—or with any single poetic or critical movement or aesthetic school.” All poetry has a different theme that it focuses on, or does it? In these four poems, there is a strong sense of social anxiety, and then the overcoming of that with courage. In Sylvia Plath's Mirror, Anne Sexton’s Courage, Gwendolyn Brooks’ The Explorer, and Robert Hayden’s Frederick Douglass there is a strongly shared theme. To start off is the theme of social anxiety in Sylvia Plath’s Mirror. This poem is about a mirror that spends most of it’s days reflecting the wall, but occasionally, it is the friend of a man or woman. One day, a woman comes to stare into its depths, …show more content…

He feared what was behind each door as he walked in a long hallway of doors. In lines 12 and 14 of the poem it states, “He feared most of all the choices, that cried to be taken… There were no quiet rooms.” The man was feeling left out in the world and didn’t know where to settle down. He just couldn’t find the right door for him. Bohl concludes, “The bend occurs on him, at first, thinking there might be somewhere where he can go and don’t worry about all the problems, and then the bend comes in stating that there is no such place.” The social uncomfort in this poem is very prominent as we progress through the theme. Last, but certainly not least, is the continuing theme of perturbation in Robert Hayden’s Frederick Douglass. This poem is about former beaten slave who escapes and waits for the day when freedom will belong to everyone. He is different than others because of his skin color, and doesn’t quite fit in with the rest. Aagard reminds the reader, “Hayden's poem has so much thrust, pushes forward with such alacrity and rhetorical incantation, that the poem triggers for me both the power of his longing for freedom and his tasting of it.” Frederick Douglass’ inquietude comes from the fact that he has never even experienced freedom. In lines 1-3 in the poem, Hayden wrote, “When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing.” Here, Hayden reflects on the

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