Figurative Language

Figurative language is the words or phrases that are different from the literal interpretation of the words. Cleanth Brooks argues that the paradox is the foundation of figurative language within poetry. A paradox is often contradictory language that requires further discovery to understand the meaning. Brooks examines multiple poems from his book “The Well Wrought Urn”. He examines Donne’s “The Canonization” which is a paradoxical poem that makes the act of death in love as true life. I aim to analyze how “Carrion Comfort” by Gerard Manley Hopkins is also a paradoxical poem in the same style as Donne.

Carrion Comfort is a poem about the despair of man-eating him alive, and being almost primal in its destructive of self. The phrase ‘carrion comfort’ while may sound as if you are moving forward in comfort, it is actually a different meaning which aids in the creation of the poetic paradox. Carrion refers to decaying animal flesh. The opening line sets the tone for the rest of the poem: “ Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee.” The poet juxtaposes the imagery of rotting animal flesh to the feeling of comfort. The poet references himself asking that despair not feast on him, meaning that he is …show more content…
The despair is rotting his insides, pulling on the final strands of his physical self. The speaker circles back to the primal nature of his feelings through his animal imagery, while referencing a ‘lionlimb’. Again, the paradox arrives in the contrast of unfathomable and destructive feelings to the basal and primal nature of destruction for the poet. From Hopkins’ words: ‘darksome devouring eyes’, ‘bruised bones’, and ‘tempest’ we see the figurative language of loss and damage. By using these concrete expressions of damage, we are able to see it in relation to his physical and emotional state being damaged at the hands of ‘Despair’. Unpack