We are seven
In "we are seven" the narrator speaks of an encounter with a young village girl, who appears to embody childish purity and enchantment. He enquires as to how many siblings she has, in response "she answered, seven we are" including two deceased that lie in the resident churchyard. The narrator unproductively endeavours to explain that they have died and that now there are only five, believing she is naive or irrational in her disbelief. Throughout this poem Wordsworth uses two voices, which proves to be very effective in its purpose. The narrator's ignorance to the child's organic relationship with nature highlights the child's lucid voice and definite explanations about her faith in eternal identity, which cannot be tainted even by death. The young child captures the true essence of existence itself and defies anyone that claims that her siblings are dead, e
In the first stanza the narrator tells his "brother Jim" that the child "feels its life in every limb" and that she couldn't possibly know of death. The simplicity of the language such as using monosyllabic words masks the more complex set of beliefs that unravel in the poem. The dead to her are as real as the living providing an emotive image, stretching her beliefs to full affect describing how she sings and knits to her dead brothers and sisters. It appears, conversely, that the narrator himself is more blinded and confounded. As you might expect, much of the imagery in Wordsworth's poetry is drawn from nature. The semantic field to this poem is indubitably death, which is a theme that frequently reoccurs in Wordsworth's poetry. She is explicit, unsentimental and has no illusions about death unlike a more prickly narrator. ngulfed in the blindness to see rationality, she knows more of death than a peer more than twice her age. Wordsworth worked hard in making his poetry accessible to everyone; imagery is often not an important part of his writing. This was often reflected in the characters qualities, such as the Child's innocence in this poem. She is unable to say her siblings are dead and evidently uses euphemisms like "she went away" and "was forced to go" proving that to her that death is merely a word. This depicts that the narrator does know of death, however in his response he seems to know nothing BUT death, since he clung to it with such unforeseen passion as to bawl "but they are dead; those two are dead!" it appears that the narrator does not "feel life in every limb". The form of the poem is parallel to the diction, simply constructed with four lines in each stanza excluding the last, which has five.
Common topics in this essay:
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wordsworth's poetry,
life limb,
siblings dead,
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