” She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle.
#Barbie doll poem how to
Aimed at teaching her how to be happy and successful she was told to conform to society’s beauty standards. ” Years later, she receives advice that many women receive. ” All anyone saw her as was “a fat nose on thick legs. However, she chooses to ignore her natural gifts and she decides “to and fro apologizing. īy all accounts she is capable, strong, and healthy. ” The young girl’s sexual drive, physical prowess, and intelligence are all expressed in the second stanza. Later, “in the magic of puberty,” a classmate remarks adversely on how she looks, mocking her about her “great big nose and fat legs. As a young girl she received gifts such as: makeup, dolls, and miniature home appliances. The poem begins “This girlchild was born as usual”. The twenty-five line, story poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy gives us a short story of a “girlchild” who has allowed herself to be greatly swayed by the opinions of others, which ultimately lead to her untimely demise. Though the ending of the poem seems to suggest that the widower now seems to understand that life is fleeting and to him not worth much since his wife is now gone. ” This to me represents him deciding that it is time for him to move on, and that by using the vacuum to clean he will be letting go of all pain and sorrow and can finally move forward with life. The middle of the poem reads as one long sentence: “I’ve lived this way long enough, but when my old woman died her soul went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear to see he bag swell like a belly, eating the dust and the woolen mice, and begin to howl because there is old filth everywhere she used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair. The poem has very lengthy, and intricate sentences that build tension, stacks clauses, and then collapses with a hushed finished. ” This tone shift coincides with what the widower is feeling hurt and the sharp pains of loss. ” Then, the somber lines are interrupted by short, piercing sounds, such as “biting at air” or “cheap as dirt. Some of the grief-stricken sounds are from lines that have the letter “h”, in them like, “the hungry, angry heart hangs on and howls. The poem switches between vowels that sound grief-stricken, and sharp, harsh consonants. The syntax and sound of the poem are two crucial features. These rhymes make the poem sound unsatisfied, which reflects how unsatisfied the widower is with the loss of his wife and the current situation. Some of the slanted rhymes are “dirt/heart”, “enough/dust”, “mouth/youth”. The fractured and slant rhyme scheme of the poem creates a feeling of disarray and incompleteness. The poem makes it evident that the widower is struggling with his grief and his newly appointed duty of caring for the house. The account of the poem is about an elderly widower is missing his wife, and “can’t bear” to run the vacuum due to the painful memories attached to it. The speaker is an old widower, who has an empty place in his heart where his wife once was, symbolized by the vacuum.
“The Vacuum” by Howard Nemerov is based around a vacuum the speaker’s wife owned. The two contrasting portrayals of death could not be further on further realms from the spectrum.
Poets like to tackle this subject in their own unique ways. People all choose to deal with it in the different ways. Death is a very serious topic something we all must deal with.