Adrian Mitchell starts out his poem in a descriptive nature. He tells his exact location as he claims that .”.. [He] was walking in a government warehouse / Where the daylight never goes.” And so, we ” ve established where he is, but now, what is the significance of it. Why is he in a government warehouse? If you carefully note that the poem starts out in a government warehouse you can pretty much infer that this is a political poem.
Mitchell uses the most influential tools possible, particularly repetition, symbolism, and tone, to help the reader uncover the true meaning of the poem. Through Mitchell’s repetition the reader uncovers a deeper understanding of the poem. Over and over Mitchell pounds into our heads “I saw Fifteen million plastic bags / hanging in a thousand rows.” If your intuitive you may have discovered what this means, however, Mitchell gives us one more clue. “Five million were stamped with Mickey Mouse / And they came in a smaller size.” Through the repetition Mitchell nonchalantly portrays the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The repetition helps the reader to understand what the plastic bags really are and what they represent. It it through thick layers of surreal symbolism that Mitchell can show the reader “how deep the rabbit hole really goes.” The “Fifteen million plastic bags” that Mitchell speaks of are in fact body bags, which depict the eerie and subtle death that the victims of the nuclear fall out were all subject to.
The Essay on First Poem Snakes Snake Reader
The poem, "Snake charmer", is a poem that conveys an underlying theme of power and control, as represented by the snake charmer, through the nature of the snakes and their relationship with the snake charmer. There is no consistent rhyme scheme to the poem, and almost all the stanzas in the poem have run-on lines to the following stanza. The effect these create is a general atmosphere of ...
“And Five million bags were six feet long,” and five million men were soon to be six feet under. “Five million were five foot five,” and these five million women were the mothers of the “Five million [that] were stamped with Mickey Mouse.” With Mitchell’s use of symbolism and repetition the tone is clearly defined. In discovering the tone of the poem we must first discover what the poet’s point of view is. Mitchell says “So I’ve taken my bag from the hanger / And I’ve pulled it over my head / And I’ll wait for the priest to sip it / So the radiation won’t spread.” When the reader reads this passage, its overwhelmingly eerie and surreal tone jumps out at you. Then the government worker subtly dies, leaving the reader not know what to expect next.
The poem ends in repetition. Leaving the reader with nothing but the subtle worker’s opposition to nuclear war. With fifteen million dead that leaves the reader forever changed a enlightened with a whole new perspective on life.
