Transcript Document

THEME
MS. AMBER HUNTINGTON
ADAPTED FROM INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM
THE SUBJECT OF A POEM IS NOT THE
SAME THINGS AS ITS THEME
• A poem’s subject matter is whatever the poem talks about
• Example: “The Gray Squirrel” by Humbert Wolfe
•
Like a small grey
coffee-pot,
sits the squirrel.
He is not
The keeper on the
other hand,
who shot him, is
a Christian, and
all he should be,
kills by dozens
trees, and eats
his red-brown cousins.
loves his enemies,
which shows
the squirrel was not
one of those.
• This poem’s subject include the habits of the grey squirrel, the act
of the keeper in shooting it, and so on
• The theme of a poem, on the other hand, is its “idea,” its
generalized content, which it is possible to state with various
degrees of generality
• One could say that the theme of this poem is that animals follow
the law of the jungle and destroy—but that man is worse
because he destroys while pretending to follow a higher law
• Or one could say, much more generally, that the theme is the
hypocrisy of man
THE SUBJECT OF A POEM IS NOT THE
SAME THINGS AS ITS THEME
• In the following poem, much of the subject matter is
declared in the title
• Two neighboring New England farmers are out walking
along their stone boundary-wall in the spring, each on
his own side, and as they go they replace the stones
that the “frozen-ground-swell” of winter has dislodged
• One of them ventures to suggest the wall is hardly
necessary
• The other replies that good fences make good
neighbors
• This, in brief, is the subject matter of the poem
• What is its theme?
“MENDING WALL” BY ROBERT FROST
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
WHAT IS THE THEME?
• What is the theme of the “Mending Wall”?
• The following questions may help guide you in your
answer
• What is the subject matter of the poem?
• How many things or persons are mentioned in the poem
that apparently do not love a wall? What would you say
the “something” is that is referred to in lines 1 and 35? What
is implied about the nature of this “something” by lines 3637?
• What do lines 38-42 tell us about the theme? What is the
“darkness” referred to in line 42? Is it a darkness that we are
all likely to be surrounded by, sometime?
“CLIFF KLINGENHAGEN” BY EDWIN
ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine
With him one day; and after soup and meat,
And all the other things there were to eat,
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood*. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed*
It off, and said the other one was mine.
*wormwood = a bitter extract from the plant
And when I asked him what the deuce* he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
*quaffed = drank
*what the deuce = what on earth
WHAT IS THE THEME?
• What is the theme of the “Cliff Klingenhagen”?
• The following questions may help guide you in your
answer
• In what ways are wine and wormwood different? What
would you say each represents (symbolizes) in the poem?
• How does Cliff’s behavior warrant the use of the word
“happy” in the last line of the poem? What does he do that
should make him happy?
• What is the subject matter of the poem?
THEME AS ONLY A PART OF THE
WHOLE
• The theme of a poem is part of its meaning, just as is its
subject matter
• But neither subject matter nor theme nor both together
make the whole meaning
• The whole meaning of the poem is the whole poem as it
stands
• For Example: It is convenient to talk about a man or woman’s
“character,” “temperament,” “intelligence,” etc. But just as
none of these abstract words can substitute for the whole
person, who is always flesh, blood, and bone—a person with
eyes and hair of certain color, a brown mole behind the right
ear, and a passion for cooking—so no theme or subject can
substitute for the whole poem
• Themes are important but are not the end all
NOW YOU TRY
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You may work with one other person
Get a Theme assignment
Read the poems
Answer the questions
Decide what the theme is