Poetry Essay Reflection

Prompt: 

        The following poem is by the sixteenth English poet George Gascoigne. Read the poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the complex attitude of the speaker is developed through such devices as form, diction, and imagery. 

Essay: 

        In the poem "For That He Looked Not Upon Her", George Gascoigne, the author, introduces an internal conflict that is brewing within the narrator. In order to reflect the narrator's attitude of simultaneous contempt and allure for the mysterious woman, the subject of this poem, he carefully utilized diction, form, and juxtaposition to construct a conflicted tone. 

        The poem begins the speaker's internal monologue by introducing the central conflict: the speaker is described as holding his "louring head so low" to avoid the gaze of a woman. He references this action of a bowed head again, in the last couplet, stating that he again holds down his head to avert the "blazing eyes" of the woman. However, the ending couplet contains an extra reference to the speaker "winking", which shows that the attitude from the beginning of the poem has shifted by the end. In the first quatrain the speaker's eyes "take no delight to range" (line 3), meaning that he chooses to show zero interest in the woman. At the end, though, the speaker proclaims that he will either "wink" or else "hold down my head", indicating that he admits that the woman still holds some level of allure for the speaker. From an attitude of absolute disgust and avoidance, the speaker finally admits his fantasy of flirting with another troubled romance with the woman at the end. What caused this shift in attitude?

        It's clear from the beginning that the speaker feels contempt towards his ex-lover. However, the poem also indicates that the speaker pities himself, and wants others to pity him as well. In the second quatrain (lines 5-9), the poet uses the personification of a mouse to characterize the speaker. He refers to the mouse as having once "broken out of trap" (line 5); the "trap" being a reference to the woman's enticing demeanor. This personification of a mouse shows that the speaker sees himself as being a hopeless creature, and animal of prey and not a predator (like his ex-lover). As a "mouse" that has been baited before, he pities himself, and views himself as being a gullible victim, rather than an intellectual human that can make good judgements. The personification of the mouse further emphasizes how the speaker feels weak and diminutive, and although most people do not want to characterize themselves in this seemingly negative way, the speaker does this to arouse sympathy from others. Further in this quatrain, the speaker, refers to the woman as a "trustless bait" with "deep deceit" (lines 6 and 7). Again by comparing his ex-lover to an inanimate "bait" full of "deceit", he reveals his attitude of contempt for her. However, by this stage, the narrator's attitude is no longer absolute, as he uses the word "enticed" to describe the woman's actions rather than a more sinister word like "kidnapped". 

        Towards the 3rd quatrain and the end of poem, the speaker's internal conflict is revealed even further. Although it was clear from the previous quatrain that he pitied himself and despised the woman, a shift occurs in the lines 10-13. The narrator begins to use the metaphor of fire to describe how his ex-lover "scorched him". This time, fire still represents deceit, but fire is a much more nuanced metaphor compared to a "bait". Fire, while obviously capable of burning and destruction, also holds power, heat, warmth, and passion. In this way, the speaker shows that he views the woman with a strange mix of contempt and allure. Furthermore, in line 13, the speaker describes himself as being "dazzled by desire"; the word "dazzled" reflect how an object may appear to be of value, but actually is deceitful and trustless, like the woman herself. Again, the speaker wants to show that he was entranced by the beauty of the flame (the woman) initially, but then grew to realize that flames can also burn. 

        Though the speaker acknowledges his own gullibleness and weakness through the 2nd quatrain, and the woman's duality of passion and deceit in the 3rd quatrain, the last couplet solidifies his changing attitude about his previous lover. He is still entranced by her "blazing eyes", but acknowledges the misery she gave him. In the end, he does not know whether or not he should "wink" at this romance or avoid it altogether.

Reflection: 

        This week, I wrote the last benchmark essay of our AP Lit preliminary races: the 2014 poetry prompt. This prompt asked students to analyze the complex attitude of the speaker in the poem "For That He Looked Upon Her" by George Gascoigne. Considering the overall reasoning in my argument and the slight misinterpretation of my analysis, I scored my own essay as a 5. 

        In my thesis, I argued that the form, diction, and juxtaposition used by the poet serves to "reflect the narrator's attitude of simultaneous contempt and allure" for the speaker's ex-lover. Instead of giving examples of the specific types of diction, form, imagery, etc (rhyme schemes, extended metaphors, animal imagery) used by Gascoigne, I simply restated the prompt- this inevitably lowered my score and revealed weaknesses in my "control of writing". My analysis also had some gaping holes- in particular, I misread the speaker's shift in the last couplet of the poem, instead labeling the 3rd quatrain as a change in tone. In the couplet, I should have highlighted the speaker's steadfast decision, rather than interpreting the diction as a "[solidifying] the changing attitude about his previous lover". This, and other "minor misinterpretations of the poem", lowered my score to a 5. My essay, however, did exemplify some elements of a higher level essay: I referenced the text multiple times, and strayed away from paraphrasing or summarizing elements of the poem. These strengths, though, were not strong enough to carry my analysis to a deeper level.

6