Summary Of An Elegy When You Can T Be Poorer Than Dead

Shanee Thompson
Professor Black
ENG-243
June 8th, 2018 The Art of Elegies
“I watch these lines grow and the art of poetry harden me // into sorrow as measured as this, to draw the veiled figure / of Mamma entering the standard elegiac” (Walcott ll. 48-50). An elegy is a poem that reflects on the death of a loved person or object. Just like mourning many elegies start based on memories or a recollection of thought, shared with the deceased. Then the speaker usually transitions into praising and acknowledging the person's legacy. Finally he/or she starts to console themselves or others around them. Every elegist may not follow this tradition when writing a elegy because the genre is evolving as a whole with many
For one, this isn't a elegy instead it is a story on rituals. O'Connors story displays how the genre can come off as a elegy to many readers who misread but also it addresses a small part of a elegy which is rituals. Tarwater, being one of the main characters isn't aware of how to mourn or what exactly is mourning. His Uncle seen his death and before he did he asked for a traditional burial. “Burying the dead right maybe the only honor you ever do yourself “. (O’Connor 297). Uncle Tarwater was very big on the natural way of doing things and he asked his nephew to do right by him and give him the proper burial. Tarwater is indecisive with the options he has, whether to do it the proper way or burn him. At the moment of his Uncles actually passing his mind scrambles and he lashes out on people around him, the lady of color for example. “Tell her to shut up,” Tarwater said. “ I'm in charge here now and I don't want no nigger-mourning”. (O’Connor 305). Tarwater uses the phrase “nigger-mourning” because the lady let out a loud whale which is a normal thing to do when somebody passes away or at the exact funeral. He lashes out yet again, out of anger and frustration. The lady meant no harm but because of the color of her skin and how she decided to express her mourn bothered him as he hasn't even shed a tear since the passing. In most elegies we
Based on Sider’s research, an elegy comes with many fragments and are mainly presented in the form of a poem. An elegy commemorates a deceased person's life through a poetic expression of sorrow and melancholy. Older poets, around Milton's time and even before never stepped out of the traditional way of writing an elegy. Later authors has brought other forms forward that has the key concepts distributed differently. For example, emotions. Not everyone reacts to,pain or tragedy the same way. “Another feature of some of the fragments is the personal involvement of the narrator. This may mean that the speaker/poet was himself a participant, however loosely this is to be interpreted”. (Sider 335). Within each elegy, all of the authors were mentioned personally. O’Rourke mentions every doctor visit with her mother, Lycidas mentions the fields in which Lycidas and himself used to spend time and Bechdel reflects on all those awkward conversations she shared with her father at home and in the car. “ Despite the paucity of evidence, it nonetheless seems clear that history in elegy is an elastic term. That is, if we want to claim that elements in a elegy are "historical," we must accept that these narratives can be of an immediate past, with or without the poet's personal involvement, of events within the preceding two or three