Throughout literature, authors often use metaphor to help explain, describe, or bring to life a complex concept or object. Generally, the more vaguely written these metaphors are, a greater number of possible interpretations form. The excerpt above is taken from an Etel Adnan poem called The Morning After / My Death. When looking at the stanza above, interpretations could range from a nature, religion, militaristic, and/or moral meaning of the tightly packed metaphors Adnan writes. In this essay, I will discuss how Etel Adnan uses metaphor in the stanza above from her poem The Morning After / My Death to express the dilemma society faces between the good and evil of the world.
Before the text is examined, it's important to note that the genre …show more content…
To me, this is a metaphor that differentiates religion and violence by pairing lemonade and lemons with religion, while war news is an opposite counterbalance that competes for a person’s (our) attention. Adding to the metaphor, angels eating lemons seems to imply a sour, bitter sense, which further implies the vast differences Adnan wants the reader to see between church and war. Given this interpretation, in the most basic sense, Adnan uses religion to represent good, and war news to represent bad. I believe Adnan is illustrating a tradeoff; while society directs attention on the bad news of the world, it loses focus of the good it brings. Thus, through her metaphor, Adnan brings light to a dilemma of focusing on good versus evil within society …show more content…
In the stanza, Adnan sets the scene by describing the moon darkening as the stars come out, while the church “illuminates” in the night. This word choice seems to draw more attention to the church by having in light up amongst a dark setting, highlighting its importance to the piece. Relating back to the lemons metaphor, setting compliments Adnan’s message to the reader by directing focus to her prevailing lemon metaphor within the stanza.
Branching away from literary setting, it's worth nothing the setting Adnan writes this piece from. Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet who often wrote in protest of wars, specifically the Algeria, Vietnam, and Lebanon wars (Poetry Foundation 1). Since directly writing is less convincing, Adnan wrote poetry to use metaphor, analogy, and symbolism to speak out against war and violence. It is likely this excerpt is another one of Adnan’s anti-war points, discussing how war takes away from the positivity of
Before the text is examined, it's important to note that the genre …show more content…
To me, this is a metaphor that differentiates religion and violence by pairing lemonade and lemons with religion, while war news is an opposite counterbalance that competes for a person’s (our) attention. Adding to the metaphor, angels eating lemons seems to imply a sour, bitter sense, which further implies the vast differences Adnan wants the reader to see between church and war. Given this interpretation, in the most basic sense, Adnan uses religion to represent good, and war news to represent bad. I believe Adnan is illustrating a tradeoff; while society directs attention on the bad news of the world, it loses focus of the good it brings. Thus, through her metaphor, Adnan brings light to a dilemma of focusing on good versus evil within society …show more content…
In the stanza, Adnan sets the scene by describing the moon darkening as the stars come out, while the church “illuminates” in the night. This word choice seems to draw more attention to the church by having in light up amongst a dark setting, highlighting its importance to the piece. Relating back to the lemons metaphor, setting compliments Adnan’s message to the reader by directing focus to her prevailing lemon metaphor within the stanza.
Branching away from literary setting, it's worth nothing the setting Adnan writes this piece from. Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet who often wrote in protest of wars, specifically the Algeria, Vietnam, and Lebanon wars (Poetry Foundation 1). Since directly writing is less convincing, Adnan wrote poetry to use metaphor, analogy, and symbolism to speak out against war and violence. It is likely this excerpt is another one of Adnan’s anti-war points, discussing how war takes away from the positivity of