Social Perspective: An Analysis Through Critical Lens

ocial Perspective and Archetypal Perspective:
An Analysis Through Critical Lenses There are many ways to analyze and comprehend other people's writing, especially poetry. Poetry is well known for having multiple meanings and interpretations. Most successful poets are familiar with using rhetorical devices such as social perspective and archetypal perspective. Social perspectives considers and analyzes the setting of the story such as time period, place, and culture. Archetypal perspectives takes a deeper perspective by looking at the feelings and emotions of human longing. All poems can be simply dissected by looking at these two perspectives. “The Explorer” written by Gwendolyn Brooks and “Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden are two powerful examples of analyzing poetry using social perspectives and archetypal perspective. “The Explorer” was written by Gwendolyn Brooks in the time period of the civil rights movement, which definitely sets the social perspective for this poem. During this time period, African Americans were trying to gain the freedom to vote and be equal with the whites. The narrator of this poem describes the goal and longing to find a place of peace and quiet. Considering the …show more content…
Brooks suggests in her poem, “The scream of nervous affairs, wee griefs, grand griefs. And choices.” This line from the poem reaches out beyond the longing of African Americans and groups human race as a whole to describe the worries that every individual faces throughout their daily lives. Everyone has day-to-day conflicts they deal with and this poem expresses the want for peace, silence, and freedom from those internal conflicts. “The Explorer” clearly not only shows the longing of African Americans, but also the longing in which all humans