Essay Comparing Adam And Eve By Tony Hoagland

Emotional Situations “Adam and Eve” and “Porphyria’s Lover” both have a unique story between a man and a woman. The poem written by Tony Hoagland, “Adam and Eve”, explains about a man showing anger towards the woman and how he wanted to hurt her. Hoagland wrote, “she held her mile white hand agitatedly / over the entrance to her body and said No, / and my brain burst into flame” (14-16), which gives the readers the idea of how the man was furious. Another line Hoagland wrote, “I wanted to punch her right in the mouth and that’s the truth” (1) explains how the man would use violence towards the woman and that he reveals his honesty of how he feels about her. In the middle of the poem, the man became curious about if he actually meant to hurt the woman who he became very uncertain where Hoagland quoted, “Is a man just an animal, and is a woman not an animal?” (26). The man began to ask questions about how men are the animals, which he meant men are more aggressive and fierce and that women are define as human beings meaning they are more passionate and reasonable. Hoagland’s last two lines, “Until we say the truth, there
can be no tenderness.
/ As long as there is desire, we will not be safe” (63-63), explains that until the woman knows that he wants to hurt her then she cannot feel safe, however, as long as the man wants to hurt the woman then
it she may not be safe. In addition, the poem written by Robert Browning, Porphyria’s Lover, is more of an unfortunate love story between a man and a woman. The unfortunate part of the story is that the woman is very ill and that she is suffering where it leads to her death. In the middle of the story, she did not have time but told the man that she loved him which Browning wrote, “Murmuring how she loved me-she / Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor, / To set its struggling passion free” (21-23). Lastly, the story ended where Browning wrote, “In one long yellow string I wound / Three times her little throat around, / And strangled her. No pain felt she; / I am quite sure she felt no pain” (39-42) where the man had killed her in order to end the woman’s suffering. Hoagland’s and Browning’s had the same story between a man and a woman but both authors had their own twisted idea of how the story starts and how it ends. The narrator’s realization in the poem “Adam and Eve” was more of an aggressive man that held anger which leads the woman to become endanger. As for “Porphyria’s Lover”, the narrator’s realization was that he knew she was going to die because of how weak she is and he did not want to see her suffering. The narrators also had different actions that lead to the ending of the story. In “Adam and Eve”, the narrator had anger inside of him that he wanted to hurt the woman but instead he held back due to his curiosity. Lastly, the narrator in “Porphyria’s Lover” uses physical force which he strangle the woman to end the misery and sufferings because he could not bear to see the pain that is causing her.