Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Fall in Richmond...
Melville’s, The March into VA, Ending in the First Manassas, stuck out to me the most. I thought that the poem was extremely straight forward and in a way shines a light on how ignorance and innocence can have a very detrimental result. I was really impressed by the speaker’s tone and they way in which he says exactly how he feels . For me, the poem represented the young soldiers who weren’t in the least ready for what was to come. They believed that it was going to be a joy ride and that victory would easily be theirs. However, as Melville writes here, these young men were soon defeated. My favorite section is the third section that describes the merriment of the soldiers, and how they were chatting and laughing, happy as they could be, when little to their knowledge, the “battle’s unknown mysteries” would soon reveal defeat. The speaker presents this poem in such a way that belittles the innocence of the young soldiers. In the third line, Melville refers to the trust and cheer in which he relates to being the results of both the young soldiers and their ignorance. I thought this was a fairly easy poem to decipher. I love how it is choppy and straight to the point.
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I enjoyed The March into Virginia as well, because I felt that it was easier to understand without a lot of historical context about the Civil War. I read on google books a quote about a theme of the Civil War: "If American history is an allegory of the human spirit...then the Civil War constitutes the moment at which our civilization fell from innocence into experience." This brought me back to the part in the poem where the young boys aren't listening to the wise words of older men, but instead go to battle with their banners seeking glory. Also, I wanted to add that I looked up the picnic reference and because this was the first major battle people came down from Washington with picnics to watch it... I found that interesting, because it pointed out that those Americans had not been directly subjected to true war.
ReplyDeleteOn another topic, I did not understand what The Portent was about because I didn't know who John Brown was. It turns out he is an abolitionist, and the poem is about him being hung in the gallows with a hood drawn over his face. According to an online book, the poem itself is in all italics and was said to be at the preface of Battlepieces... because it's before the Civil War began. It just made me want to read more about John Brown, but I was overwhelmed by the amount of historical knowledge needed to properly decipher the poem piece-by-piece.