Mrs. Bell’s Commentary on the 2009 Poetry Prompt
Prompt: The following poem written by Edward Field, makes use of the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Read the poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Field employs literary devices in adapting the Icarus myth to a contemporary setting.
Things to do/notice:
- As you read the poem, list the literary devices that you could possibly use. If in doubt always start with DIDLS = Tone. You should be able to use this for nearly anything (poetry or prose).
- For this piece, you could also use irony/satire – Can never bring the past into the present and have it live up to expectations. Do great heroes exist or ever did exist? The irony of great aspirations and the mediocrity of reality.
- Symbolism – baptism (in the ocean) as a type of rebirth for this myth but an ironic one, a negative apotheosis (transformation). His name change from Icarus to Mr. Hicks is also symbolic in this same way. The garden he tends is a meager garden of Eden – after the fall, and the sun could be symbolic of not only his goals but heaven and perfection…being like God (the sin and downfall of Satan).
- allusion – see comments above and also the allusion to the myth of Icarus.
- and metonymy “Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit / concealed arms that had controlled huge wings / Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once / compelled the sun” – standing for not only the man but more so his past triumphs.
- Continue to tie back to the prompt and the contemporary setting. Notice the juxtaposition between the myth and the images of the contemporary setting: police, case, file, gang war, city, suburban, neighborhood, suits, commuter trains, committees…
- But more importantly, you need to ask yourself WHY the poet does this, what is the point, the overall purpose of this juxtaposition.
- We all must face that great terror that our dreams will never become reality, or we will fail, or that our life will not be special or memorable but predictable and dull.
- Modern society metaphorically kills those who operate outside the realm of normal expectations, or it traps us and relegates us to mediocrity.
- When our perceptions/illusions of ourselves are inflated and are not based in reality, it kills our spirit to realize that we are not what we think we are – sadly ironic paradigm shift.
- Question: (not to sound too much like T.S. Eliot in “Prufrock” but…) In the first three lines, could it be that this Mr. Hicks didn’t fly, wasn’t Icarus, but it all took place in his head as he sits in his suburban house? (Hamlet’s version of inaction) He imagines this scenario and the best that happens is that he nearly drowns?
- Or is Hicks an archetypal and complex character pulled out of the epic and heroic past into the plain reality of a contemporary setting?
- Is he a failed hero at the nadir (low point) of his journey?
- Tone (could be addressed in intro or conclusion): nostalgic, wistful, surburben ennui, listlessness, criticizing and realistic, dejected, gloomy
Good Vocab for this essay?
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