Shakespeare's Literary Mechanisms
To the speaker of this sonnet, life is merely a journey towards the inevitable end, which is death. In just fourteen lines, the speaker is able to debate a difficult issue, reach a conclusion, and pour much more meaning into his words than what it seems. Because of the speaker's choice of specific literary mechanisms, such as alliteration, enjambment and caesura, diction, and imagery it is evident that he is fighting an internal battle between his affinity towards life and his affinity towards death. He fears death and the idea of the control of a supreme being, but at the same time he wishes to be free from the constraints of a foreign life and return to his home in heaven. All aspects of the literary techniques in this sonnet suggest some type of internal conflict between the speaker and his interlocutor. The question immediately arises then, who is the interlocutor? To whom is the speaker addressing his sonnet? Obviously it is an internal dialogue that the speaker is rehearsing, and therefore the interlocutor is himself. Although there is some hint to an interlocutor other than the speaker in the last couplet where it says impute me,± the bulk of the poem functions as an interior monologue within the speaker. Not
In the same line the speaker uses the word press± to further illustrate the idea that the things of the body and life are pushing steadily against him, and bearing down upon him with force. The emotions that the speaker feels towards his body and life are unnatural. ± Not only do these two sonnets resemble each other in their uses of alliteration, but also in the subject matter of death. The speaker again has yet to conclusively reach a decision, and is still debating within himself. He is purged of evil± or purified from sin. The speaker is also constantly checking himself throughout his speech with the use of initial, medial and terminal caesuras. To impute means to lay the responsibility of something, and righteousness is to be honorable, and free from guilt and wrong. He uses the word unjoint± to explain that there has been a severing of the strong connection between body and soul. An interesting word that is given more punctuation with an initial caesura is the word idly. From the Christian Bible, it is known that Jesus Christ followed exactly the opposite journey. As an example of an initial caesura, the speaker describes his race± with a paradox, idly, yet quickly run,± as if he has just realized his choice of the word idly± and, after a pause, corrects his speech by adding the opposite adverb quickly. ± This phrase could mean one of two things. Perhaps the speaker is saying that he does not have control over the course of his journey because with the fall of humanity, his whole being has already been marked as imperfect. The last two lines, the heroic couplet, bring the entire sonnet to a hopeful resolution. The use of the word pilgrimage± in the second line alludes to this idea as well.
Common topics in this essay:
Judeo-Christian God,
William Shakespeare's,
Philip Sidney,
,
Webster Dictionary,
Garden Eden,
Jesus Christ,
Spenserian English/Shakespearean,
initial caesura,
life death,
idea death,
body soul,
home heaven,
interlocutor speaker,
pilgrimage's mile±,
sonnet speaker,
using alliteration,
meaning words,
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Acceptance Essays
