Stephen Crane utilizes detailed examples and depicts a strong bias in his poem, “The Impact of a Dollar Upon the Heart”. This poem dramatizes the conflict within the wealthy. In this poem, he depicts the emotions and experiences between the contrasting lives between those with just one dollar compared to one million dollars. Crane’s overall focus is not to demean the wealthy but to prove that their public facade masks their private despair. Through the use of powerful symbols, metaphors, and shifts in tone HHH Crane characterizes the lives of the wealthy as burdened, strained, and cumbersome.
Through the title “The Impact of a Dollar Upon the Heart”(1), the content of the poem can be found. This title, also the first line of the poem, begs the question : What is the impact of wealth on the heart? The “heart” refers to the mindset, attitude, and possibly somebody’s values, while “impact” refers to either a positive or negative connotation such as corruption or greed. The speaker goes on to say “[it] Smiles warm red light sweeping from the hearth rosily …show more content…
Crane now brings us the opposite tone by focusing on negative points. The speaker chooses to use the words crash, a rough and lumpy fabric, and flunkey, a servant. The impact of a million dollars is to create a rough or utilitarian fabric of people who perform menial tasks. The speaker continues by saying the impact is “[a] yawning emblem of Persia cheeked against oak, France, and a sabre”(8-9). This sentence creates a plush and affluent image when an empire such as Persia is mentioned. However the emblems of Persia are carved into oak and cannot be erased. This can be compared to the predictable problems of being wealthy which, too, cannot be erased. These lines of the poem are also quite difficult to pronounce with harsh phonetics, such as ch, st, and k which contribute depth to it’s harsh
Through the title “The Impact of a Dollar Upon the Heart”(1), the content of the poem can be found. This title, also the first line of the poem, begs the question : What is the impact of wealth on the heart? The “heart” refers to the mindset, attitude, and possibly somebody’s values, while “impact” refers to either a positive or negative connotation such as corruption or greed. The speaker goes on to say “[it] Smiles warm red light sweeping from the hearth rosily …show more content…
Crane now brings us the opposite tone by focusing on negative points. The speaker chooses to use the words crash, a rough and lumpy fabric, and flunkey, a servant. The impact of a million dollars is to create a rough or utilitarian fabric of people who perform menial tasks. The speaker continues by saying the impact is “[a] yawning emblem of Persia cheeked against oak, France, and a sabre”(8-9). This sentence creates a plush and affluent image when an empire such as Persia is mentioned. However the emblems of Persia are carved into oak and cannot be erased. This can be compared to the predictable problems of being wealthy which, too, cannot be erased. These lines of the poem are also quite difficult to pronounce with harsh phonetics, such as ch, st, and k which contribute depth to it’s harsh