English Lit people...

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

I'm doing a paper on Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper". I have to pick out passages and analyze them. Here's a link:

 

http://www.bartleby.com/101/528.html

 

Maybe you could comment on my notes:

 

Notable "Reaper" Passages

 

Lines 5-6:

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

 

-Plight of the working-class; dealing with life alone

-Melancholy strain = sad, laborious existence

-Singing a metaphor for crying out for help

 

Lines 25-28:

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;—

 

-Wordsworth not knowing the theme = his acknowledgement of not understanding workers' plight on a deeper level

-Maiden has anxiety over difficult life; no relief in sight

-Singing at work = Anger over her present life; Crying out about difficulties as laborer

-Sickle obvious death metaphor

-Bending over sickle = delicate life/death balance? Almost within death's reach? Life as worker a living hell?

 

Lines 31-32:

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

 

-Wordsworth sympathizing with workers' pain; impact staying with him even when he couldn't actually hear their cries for help

-Also suggests the need to remember plight even after it is solved

[Papacita 0]

The overall theme I get from the poem is the maiden's sense of longing...or a yearning for something. If you want to play off the "plight of the working class" idea, perhaps she's longing for a wealthier life, or maybe she wishes that she were born into an upper class family. I dunno if that works, but here are some other things I got from the poem:

 

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

 

-I could be reading way too much into this, but grain, to me, suggests that there's something ingrained in her...possibly a bloodline or something like that. "Cut" and "bind" kind of conflict, because cutting implies separation and binding implies unification, so you could look at it as an internal conflict within her. Perhaps she'd like to break away from her class, but is bound by bloodline, or love for her family...or something along those lines.

 

And sings a melancholy strain;

 

-Strain can take on a few meanings. The most obvious being pressure, work or labor, but it could also represent mood or ancestry. Again, this goes back to the idea of her being unhappy about being in a working class family. It also emphasises the dullness of her labor.

 

O listen! for the Vale profound/Is overflowing with the sound.

 

-Another one I'm probably reading too much into, but Vale is another word for valley, and the valley overflowing with sound suggests that her pain is felt by everyone in the valley, as most likely, everyone in the area is of the same class as she.

 

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

 

-She's likened to a nightingale, so I ran a quick search on google to see what kind of symbolism is usually associated with that. In Sufism, the nightingale represents the soul (lol, don't know how useful that is), but in western literature, it's representative of pain and yearning...in Christianity, it's associated with a longing for heaven. The idea of longing or yearning is really played up in the 3rd stanza...

 

That's pretty much all I got. Hope that helps some.

[Papacita 0]

One more thing...Wordsworth establishes that the speaker/narrator is an outsider, and is most likely of a different class than the woman, so by saying that the Vale is "overflowing" with her sound, he could be saying that her feelings and those shared by her class exceed the boundaries of the area/class and are being felt by him and other outsiders as well.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

You're undoubtedly the MAN, papi. Thanks that absolutely helps a ton.

 

*beer on me*

 

[Papacita 0]

No problem. Glad I could help.