شرح لقصيدة The Explosion مطلـــوب

[smiles30003]

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.



احتاج لشرح هذه القصدية! :smile (23): فقط الشرح
هيــــــــــــلب:girl face (191):


سي يو بيبل :p

[M.o_o.N]

The Explosion
Philip Larkin [1922-1985]

Relevant Background

* Philip Larkin was born in 1922 in Coventry, England, where his father was an important city official.
* Larkin’s father was very bossy to him while he was growing up. His father was an admirer of Hitler. Larkin’s father was hostile to women. Despite the fact the Philip Larkin rejected what his father stood for, his father’s attitudes passed on to him, to some extent. For example, Larkin was criticised for being racist in his adult life.
* His mother was too weak to defend him against his father.
* Larkin bitterly described his childhood as ‘dull, pot-bound and slightly mad...’
* Yet under his father’s influence, Larkin developed an interest in Jazz.
* Larkin grew up self-conscious and shy and developed a stammer. Perhaps his confidence was affected by being tall and short-sighted as well as by his strict father.
* As an adult Larkin had a strong dislike of children.
* However Larkin was very good at his studies. He was educated in Coventry and at Oxford University. While there studying English, he developed as a writer and became a fan of the jazz music of the 1930’s.
* in life he became a reviewer of jazz music and a sharp critic of experimental jazz.
* He wrote two novels but then decided to concentrate on poetry.
* After gaining a good degree he accepted a post as librarian in suburban library. This gave him the time and opportunity to develop as a writer.Later he
* worked as a librarian in various universities, including Belfast and Hull.
* Larkin always wanted to be loved by women but he lacked the confidence to develop a relationship and marry. Although he had a number of affairs, Larkin feared marriage and family, and never married. ‘Two can live as stupidly as one,’ he said
* Despite his various affairs he basically became a loner. He developed a morose [gloomy] attitude to life.
* This poem is based an event that happened in 1969.

Summary

* This is a poem written in eight even stanzas of three lines each, followed by a single concluding line.
* The poem describes a real event and then moves to reflect on human fate.
* In stanzas one to five the poet describes the event, an explosion deep down n a coalmine, and the day on which it happened.
* Larkin is detached, simply observing the day as he imagined it from the facts that he read in reports.
* Larkin informs us immediately of the tragedy that was about to happen, with the title and its repetition in the first line. The miners are seen in a physical sense as ‘shadows pointing towards the pithead’. Larkin is impersonal. Yet his words predict a catastrophe. But Larkin is not personally involved in what happens to the men.
* The sun was shining. The slagheap or mountain of coal dust merely slept, as if it could awake and do something horrible.
* Stanza two describes the scene of mine workers arriving to start their day’s work. The men gradually broke the fresh morning’s silence with comments that soon grew into conversations. Larkin states their conversation contained curses, some of the men smoked pipes.
* In the third stanza, Larkin describes one young miner who pursued rabbits and returned with a nest of lark’s eggs that he found and left in the grass after showing them to his mates.
* In the fourth stanza Larkin offers random details of the scene of the workers arriving, their beards and the toughened material their mining clothes were made from. There are strong family connections between the men, with two generations of the males of many families employed in the mine. Many are known by nicknames and seem to enjoy each other’s sense of humour. They all enter the mine area through tall gates. These gates are ominous, with the suggestion of entering the gates of heaven or hell. They hint at the deaths to come, like the word ‘shadows’.
* In the fifth stanza, Larkin refers to the man event, the explosion of the title. It happened at midday. First cows noticed a vibration in the ground and stopped grazing for a moment, though only a moment. The sun, slightly covered by a haze of summer heat, lost its bright shine. Perhaps the explosion created a dust haze that partly blocked out the sun. Larkin does not tell us directly about the underground explosion, but the title and how it is repeated in the first line, the use of language and the details of the church service and mourning in the second half of the poem make it easy for the reader to imagine what happened. Larkin avoids describing the violence or grief, the predictable aspects of the event.
* The sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas skip to the church services held for the miners killed in the explosion. It is a quote from a prayer read at the various funerals. This is an attempt to comfort family members with a reference to heaven as ‘God’s house of comfort’. Larkin imagines the widows visualising their husbands, seeing them more intensely in their mind than they ever did during their lives together.
* The wives saw their men like figureheads stamped on a gold coin or imagined them walking that sunny morning of the explosion towards them in the golden sunlight. Perhaps the wife of the young miner who chased the rabbits has a vision of him walking towards her with the nest of lark’s eggs.



Themes

1. Death

comes unexpectedly but does not destroy all life. Death came unexpectedly to the miners who went to work with their normal morning banter and curses. The energy of chasing after rabbits and the displaying of the nest of eggs point to the playful energy of young men. Yet unexpected tragedy ended these lives. However, in the eyes of their families, death marks the entry of the dead miners into ‘God’s house of comfort’. Death does not defeat the living or put a stop to the community. It does not bring despair. The vision of the eggs at the end of the poem shows that human beings can overcome the blow of death.

2. Fate

The poet reflects on the unexpected fate experienced by the miners. When he retells the story he places warnings of death into the story. He refers to ‘shadows’, a sleeping slagheap and ‘the tall gates’.

3. Love and Beauty

Despite death, grief or tragedy, beauty will always remain The images of eggs, the gentleness of a miner who preserves eggs, a lively young miner chasing rabbits, men walking from the sun towards their wives, the humour of miners all show that life has a positive side to counteract the grimness of death. The religious image of the dead passing on to ‘God’s house of comfort’ reinforces the idea that beauty triumphs over tragedy. The vision of the spirits of their men, golden in the sunlight, that the widows shared, suggests that love outlasts death. Community The poem depicts the sociable nature of the miners. They meet and talk as they walk to work at the mine in the late 1960’s. The workers are fathers and brothers, indicating a community of workers. The nicknames show the sense of familiarity that a community of workers share. The fact that the funeral shared the same text indicates such community. The poet refers to their wives sharing an optimistic, Christian vision of their deaths and this strengthens the view that they all belonged to a community.

Style

* Form The poem is an elegy written in honour of victims of a mining disaster.
* Structure This poem contains eight even stanzas of three lines each, followed by a single concluding line. The single line at the end highlights the positive image and serves to emphasise the optimistic tone the poem ends on.
* Language Much of the language appears conversational and casual. But there are hidden meanings throughout e.g. ‘shadows’, ‘slept’, ‘dimmed’ etc. Larkin uses understatement in the first line and in the fifth stanza. He is deliberately matter-of-fact about a tragic event for which he must feel strongly.
* Diction Larkin creates an unusual list of words to portray the miners who died in the explosion: ‘fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter’. He creates a fresh and effective compound word to show the tough nature of the men’s banter, laced with curses: ‘oath-edged’. The use of five verbs in the third stanza is striking and shows the energy of the miners: ‘chased…lost…came…showed…lodged’.
* Full Stops and Commas etc. are frequently used and create pauses that correspond to the way the human voice should read the poem aloud. Each of the first five stanzas ends with a full stop. Each stanza focuses on a particular aspect of the event. But the last ten lines have only one full stop. This is because these lines create a moment of consciousness during the funeral service when the words of the service seem to coincide with a vision of the mourners.
* Imagery Larkin creates a realistic image of the miners as ordinary, straightforward, uneducated men who swear and smoke as they meet on the approach to the mine: ‘Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke’. He creates an image of them as tough, physical types ‘shouldering off the freshened silence’. There is a lot of nature imagery as well as some religious imagery in the poem. The final image of larks’ eggs unbroken by the explosion shows fragility, suggesting how fragile the men were to the forces that caused the explosion underground. The unbroken eggs may also be a symbol of hope in a religious sense. In another sense eggs point to new life: the community will survive through the children of the dead miners.
* Metaphor The heat haze that blurred views of the sun is compared to a ‘scarf’.
* Simile Images of husbands in wives’ heads are compared to portraits on gold coins to signify how precious these images or memories are.
* Personification In referring to the slagheap as asleep, Larkin personifies it as a threatening presence, like a monster about to wake up and create havoc.
* Contrast [difference] There is a contrast between the earthy swearing of the miners in stanza two and the splendour of the biblical picture of their souls from the prayer in stanza six.
* Mood/Atmosphere The word ‘shadows’ and the image of ‘tall gates’ create a gloomy or threatening mood. The atmosphere in the fifth stanza is eerily understated: ‘tremor’ and ‘dimmed’. The mood at the end of the poem is optimistic due to the vision of continuity in the image of eggs.
* Paradox [apparent contradiction] The most fragile object of all, the eggs, survived the violence of the explosion.
* Allusion The sixth stanza is a quote from a formal church funeral service.
* Tone At first the tone is impersonal, factual. The men who died are merely ‘shadows’ pointing to the mine or ‘pit-head’. Yet the word ‘shadows’ is said with an ominous or menacing tone. The tone remains understated in the centre of the poem: ‘tremors’. But certain words like ‘shadows’, ‘dimmed’ etc create an undertone of warning. The tone of the final ten lines is ceremonial, well illustrated by the extract in stanza six from the funeral services. The tone of the final four lines is upbeat, with the vision of husbands in golden light, one carrying unbroken eggs.
* Repetition The repeated images of eggs and the sun hint at the positive. Such repetitions as well as repetition of worlds like ‘came’, ‘face’ etc. add to the musical pattern also.
* Rhyme There is no rhyming pattern and this reinforces the way the central event broke the pattern of normal life in the mining community.
* Assonance [similar vowel sound repetition] Throughout the poem there are numerous repetitions of the ‘a’ sound, such as in ‘lane came’. This provides musical pattern. Note the repeated vowel, a long ‘o’ in the thirteenth line, the line that hints at the moment of the explosion.
* Consonance [similar consonant sound repetition] In lines twelve and thirteen the repeated ‘t’ sounds help to create a musical pattern. This ‘t’ sound interrupts the sound of the lines and also hints at the tension before the sudden explosion.
* Alliteration [repetition of consonant sounds at the start of nearby words] The three ‘s’ sounds of the third line emphasise the false safety of the word ‘slept’. Sibilance [repetition of ‘s’ sound] Note how the three ‘s’ sounds in ‘freshened silence’ brilliantly capture the hush of morning.

[smiles30003]

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4222/14159515ue7.gif

[smiles30003]

بس لو طلب مني الدكتور الرايم شنو اكتب له!!! يعني الرايم abcdef و لا شنو اكتب!

و tone شنو اكتب عنها :smile (73):

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4952/16mr1it31mj2bq4cj4.gif

[M.o_o.N]

يس الرايم نفس abba ‎‏ وكذا أما النغمه فشوفي بحث جوجل حيساعدك بإذن ربنا

[smiles30003]

طيب انا ما اشف رايم!!! يعني احط bcdofghijklmnop
كيف تصير رايم اصلا!!! يعني المفروض نخترع شي اسمه لا رايم >>>>من جيبي :lol:


يسلمووو

[M.o_o.N]

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

هههههه الرايم كيف تطلعية ؟؟


نفس القافية


و بما ان القصيدة مفتوحة و حرة بدون قافية نقووووول



There is no rhyming pattern and this reinforces the way the central event broke the pattern of normal life in the mining community.

[M.o_o.N]

Tone:


At first the tone is impersonal, factual. The men who died are merely ‘shadows’ pointing to the mine or ‘pit-head’. Yet the word ‘shadows’ is said with an ominous or menacing tone. The tone remains understated in the centre of the poem: ‘tremors’. But certain words like ‘shadows’, ‘dimmed’ etc create an undertone of warning. The tone of the final ten lines is ceremonial, well illustrated by the extract in stanza six from the funeral services. The tone of the final four lines is upbeat, with the vision of husbands in golden light, one carrying unbroken eggs.