Below is a free essay on "Not Waving but Drowning" from Anti Essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples.
‘Not waving but drowning’ by Stevie Smith is about the difficulties some individuals experience in communications and the fundamental isolation of the individual modern society. The poet creates an extension of isolation from her audience, as a result of misapprehension, which is a lack of understanding of the poets intended message.Stevie Smith (Florence Margret Smith) was born in 1902 in Hull, England and moved to London at the tender age of three and lived there until her death in 1971. Smith wrote in a variety of different styles ranging from ballads to the stream of consciousness. She is well known for her poetry and novels.
The title of the poem is an immediate indication that the poem tackles serious matter. There are three Voices in this poem. These are that of the narrator (lines one-two in stanza one), that of the victim (lines three-Four of stanza one) and those of the observers on the beach (stanza two).
The poem is written in three stanzas which are all quatrains with a rhyme scheme of A-B-C-B, which is a regular rhyme scheme. The lines are written in different lengths which could depict the growing distance between the man and the rest of the people, which was the difficulty to bridge the gap. The first and third stanzas are very similar. In the first stanza the narrator speaks followed by the drowning man. This happens again in the third stanza, when the narrator speaks in the second line. On the other hand, the second stanza differs from the first and the third. This is because the stanza holds the voice of the observers apart from ‘they said’.
The man, who is in difficulty, is not identified by his actual name. This could easily represent the idea of any individual experiencing the same problems. In the first line of the poem, the anonymous man is described as the ‘dead man’. We might ask ourselves if he has always been ‘dead’ to those around him which symbolises his isolation. The fact that ‘nobody heard him’ shows the difficulty he had in... Read Full Essay Anti Essays offers free essay examples to help students with their essay writing. Sign Up for free to view this essay on Not Waving but Drowning.Submitted by: claamusuu on May 26, 2013Category: English Length: 978 wordsViews: 7
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