hippopatamus

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The first stanza introduces the scene and tone of the poem. We are given the time as “Twelve o’clock”, ie. midnight, which is in a sense the witching hours of the day. The walk the narrator embarks on is dramatised in the next few lines as the street is described as “Held under a lunar synthesis whispering lunar incantations.” This personification of the moon suggests that the moon is possibly acting like a witch casting a spell on the street, allowing the narrator to abolish all rational thoughts and enter an almost dream-like sequence in which a series of irrational thoughts and memories arise. The first mentioning of a “street lamp” introduces many different ideas. To begin with, the time of the day is midnight, the darkest time of the day. This sets the tone to a rather bleak and dark view of life but the street lamp acts as small patches of light in the street suggesting hope. These small patches of light are also a catalyst for a sequence of thoughts, memories and images that we are presented with throughout the entire poem. Thus in a way, the street lamp forms a significant motif as it represents hope while stimulates all the thoughts the narrator conjures up. The line “Beats like a fatalistic drum” gives us the first insight that the narrator may be in a drunken haze causing a possible headache, which explains all the hallucinations though this is never confirmed. The last lines of the first stanza introduces the sense of pandemonium that we should expect throughout t...

Submitted by: trice014
Date Submitted: 06-10-10 7:26am
Category: English
Words: 1030
Pages: 4.12