Walking Through Modernity
There are often times when one’s observations of what surrounds him or her lead to conclusions about common sense and society standards . In “Among the School Children,” W.B.Yeats structures his poem as an argumentative piece criticising the social status of the Irish people at the time.
To accomplish this, Yeats starts by building up a speaker that could convey this message . The speaker characterises himself as a “sixty-year-old smiling public man” but one can also see evidence of literacy as he keeps referring to fundamental theories of classical philosophy and mathematics, referencing Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, and to mythological tales as the one of “Leda and the Swan”. The second attribute he has to convey …show more content…
Leda was the mother of Helen, queen of Troy, that was conceived as a result of her rape by Zeus in the form of a swan. The swan, being much stronger than the girl, held her captive, but in return gave her two children that would become monarchs and hold a lot of power. The poet is establishing a dialog by comparing the Leda and the nun because, as previously mentioned, the nun is a manifestation of Ireland and this way the country will rise from its ashes and recover the culture it lost when it “unified with the …show more content…
In both stanza VII and VIII there is a very strong idea of an almost hymn to Ireland when Yeats juxtaposes the two strongest ideas a foreigner associates with Ireland : catholicism and labour-intensive people. Transmitted in the quotes "O Presences, That passion, piety or affection knows,And that all heavenly glory symbolise” and "Labour is blossoming or dancing where, The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,” this idea summarises Yeats' final point about the "full grown man” Ireland finds itself to be at the turn of the century, stuck between two worlds, two identities, recuperating of two traumatic events like the war for independence and World War I, and needing to decide which course to take from them.
In conclusion, “Among School Children” is a transitional poem about how a country recuperates from a traumatic event and needs to trace a pathway back to greatness. Yeats uses a very effective central metaphor since it appeals to the Catholic sense of the Irish people and uses it against them by using it to criticise the status-quo of the
There are often times when one’s observations of what surrounds him or her lead to conclusions about common sense and society standards . In “Among the School Children,” W.B.Yeats structures his poem as an argumentative piece criticising the social status of the Irish people at the time.
To accomplish this, Yeats starts by building up a speaker that could convey this message . The speaker characterises himself as a “sixty-year-old smiling public man” but one can also see evidence of literacy as he keeps referring to fundamental theories of classical philosophy and mathematics, referencing Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, and to mythological tales as the one of “Leda and the Swan”. The second attribute he has to convey …show more content…
Leda was the mother of Helen, queen of Troy, that was conceived as a result of her rape by Zeus in the form of a swan. The swan, being much stronger than the girl, held her captive, but in return gave her two children that would become monarchs and hold a lot of power. The poet is establishing a dialog by comparing the Leda and the nun because, as previously mentioned, the nun is a manifestation of Ireland and this way the country will rise from its ashes and recover the culture it lost when it “unified with the …show more content…
In both stanza VII and VIII there is a very strong idea of an almost hymn to Ireland when Yeats juxtaposes the two strongest ideas a foreigner associates with Ireland : catholicism and labour-intensive people. Transmitted in the quotes "O Presences, That passion, piety or affection knows,And that all heavenly glory symbolise” and "Labour is blossoming or dancing where, The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,” this idea summarises Yeats' final point about the "full grown man” Ireland finds itself to be at the turn of the century, stuck between two worlds, two identities, recuperating of two traumatic events like the war for independence and World War I, and needing to decide which course to take from them.
In conclusion, “Among School Children” is a transitional poem about how a country recuperates from a traumatic event and needs to trace a pathway back to greatness. Yeats uses a very effective central metaphor since it appeals to the Catholic sense of the Irish people and uses it against them by using it to criticise the status-quo of the