The Power of Human Creation

The central symbol of the poem, “a jar” is of unnatural origins in contrast to the “slovenly wilderness” around it and clearly feels like an object that has been “placed” in a position that is out of place (1,3). Nonetheless, the mere presence of this object in the poem and the choice to “[place]” it “upon a hill” gives it a power to reorder the preexisting, natural setting around it (2). Despite its contrived origins heavily laden with human intervention, the speaker’s jar reorders the natural world around it: “The wilderness rose up to it, / And sprawled around, no longer wild” (5-6). The jar, emblematic of the human mind’s creativity, essentially creates a new order with itself at the center of it in its literally elevated position – “The Jar was round upon the ground / And tall and of a port in air...