- Development of speakers
In “The frosty at midnight” is a conversation poem, where Coleridge, the speaker, converse silently to his infant son late at midnight, although he’s just a listener. Coleridge reflects on the frost falling outside his home when he seizes the moment to expand his reflection on love for nature. Something he did not have much of a chance to enjoy in the city when growing up. But now his son has a better opportunity than he ever had to enjoy all aspects of nature that promotes creativity and imagination. The speaker’s love for nature can be traced way back from his young age, remembering the incident when he was in class and gazing outside the window. So the shift to the village gives him more satisfaction and opportunity to enjoy nature even at an older age.
In “The victim,” the poet changes the perception about herself is within the poem as she displays hatred, anger, and disgust to the father. Due to his abusive nature, she develops a negative attitude towards him, his work, and his suits. The father is so much into his work that nothing makes sense to him, not even the family. The mother, too, goes through this with them without speaking about it, treating the abuse as a norm. Her change in attitude happens within the poem, and this impacts her general outlook.
- Analysis of “Frost at Midnight”
. The poem begins with a setting that the speaker did not experience in his boyhood life.
‘Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
The circular nature of the poem is adherent when the speaker takes us from his current setting through to his boyhood life in the city and back to when he holds his infant. And he enjoys the nature an opportunity he didn’t get as a child.
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
The poem draws the parity between the city and his rural setting. In the city, through his childhood, the only aspects of nature that he ever enjoyed were the stars and the sky. But in the rural, nature aspects are vast, and his child will have a better opportunity than he had to enjoy them.
“Reared/ In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim”
The speaker is seizing this perfect moment to catch up on what he missed. At the same time, he was a child living in the city, and nature is allowing him to expand his creativity, and imagination which had lain still for a while.
- Analysis of “The Victim.”
The poem the victim by Sharon olds is about an abusive father to his family. But for how long can they take it? The repetition of the work took shifts the change in attitude. To take is an act of accepting a vice as a norm, she says,
When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
The mother was persevering the abuse of the father, this is what the speaker is bitter about, and she expresses an immense amount of anger and hatred to the father. She says,
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon’s helicopter lifted off the South
The poem explains the struggles someone goes through in conforming to abuse, and as victims of abuse speak out to these carcasses is a chance to stop them.