Point of View

The poem’s point of view is first person, present tense. The use of first person is characterized by the pronoun set I/Me/Myself, which gives the sense that the poem is being narrated by the person it is happening to. By the use of this point-of-view, the speaker invites readers into the immediacy and fullness of his own experience. Giving readers a character to “talk” to is especially important in a poem like this one, which deals with abstract philosophical and political ideas that are central to its message. The use of first person makes those ideas seem much more immediate and real. By giving us a first-person narrator who expresses the abstractions through the device of a love story, they become emotionally alive to the reader in a way they would not if they were being spoken about in a more distanced...