This section contains 707 words (approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page) |
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Terminal Illness
Although a specific disease is never identified in the poem, a major theme of Lake is the grief and resignation that naturally accompany serious illness, especially when it is terminal. Words such as heaviness, faithless, and withdrawn all point to a somber mindset, and the phrase those you cannot heal would remain / unhealed clearly implies that there is no recovery expected. Warren uses a water motifa thematic or metaphoric element that recurs throughout a workto portray both faint hope and final abandonment in the process of dealing with incurable sickness. In the beginning, the subject walks deeper into the lake in a halfhearted effort to rinse away emotional pain. Toward the middle of the poem, the you is back on the shore, drying off, while a loved one simply stares back out of the drift, apparently lost in melancholy thoughts. In the end, mountains crumble...
This section contains 707 words (approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page) |
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