{ March 13, 2008 @ 8:19 am }
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{ A.P English, Homework }
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- What imagery does Shapiro use in the first three lines to evoke sound and sight? How do these images become increasingly significant in the context of the entire poem?
- Shapiro uses the words beating. Ruby, pulsing and red as imagery to evoke a foreboding feeling, to make the reader feel that something bad has happened. These images set the mood of the poem.
- What contextual significance do the following words and phrases have: ”mangled”, “tolls once”, “terrible cargo”, “rocking, Slightly rocking”, “deranged” and “composed”?
- Mangled refers to the victims of the accident and gives the reader a disturbing image. Tolls once, refers to the ambulance bell, telling it to leave for the hospital. Terrible cargo refers to the passengers but it sounds very casual, de-humanizing the victims. The idea of rocking sound almost comforting although it is talking about the bodies. Those watching are deranged while the cops are composed suggesting that the civilians care more about the victims than those trying to help and that the police are use to this kind of disaster.
- Analyze the metaphors in lines 3, 18, 22 and 29-30. What pattern do they create and why is it appropriate to the poem?
- Although line 3 is not a metaphor, it is a simile, it can be analyzed as comparing the light of the flare to the pulsing of an artery. This reference to blood helps set a dreadful mood and goes along with the topic of a car wreck. In line 18, the blood is exaggerated by the word ponds, comparing the amount of blood to the amount of water in a pond. In line 22, tourniquets (devices used to stop the flow of blood from arteries) are used to describe the tightness of the observer’s throats. In lines 29-30, is comparing the witnesses feelings to that of a wound. All of these re-establish the feeling of dread and relate to some sort of wound or blood.
- What is added to the theme of the poem by the metaphors in lines 20-21 and the simile in 24-27?
- These metaphors add to the disturbing scenes of the poem. They help to add to the theme that pointless and un-predicted deaths overturn our assumptions of the tameness of life.
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