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Laurence Paul Dunbar |
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Paradox Discussion
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The Paradox
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Paradox is a dilemma of being a human in a world that seems blurry and atrocious. On the first stanzas the speaker gives a
contrasting view of himself. He calls himself the “mother of sorrows,” (Line 1) but on the next sentence he also
says that he is the “ender of grief.”(Line2) One would think- wait a minute, what is it about? Or what is going
on in this poem? Nothing makes sense. But assuming that the speaker is clearly taking about aspects of his life, he is just
talking of the many times he feels like being someone that is not him such as being a priest and also being a king at the
same time. For example when he refers as the mother of sorrows, it could be that he has been in a situation where he hurt
many people by his thoughtless actions. Or when he refers himself as the serf and the king, he could be talking of a situation
where he worked very hard to accomplish something and by doing this he felt as a king because of his conquest. Another Point of view for Paradox is written as
follow: "Paradox" is a lyric poem in which the author introduces his self and his poetry. This is a dactylic
tetrameter poem which has eight stanzas. The literature device that he uses throughout the poem is paradox, as the title.
In the first two stanzas, he introduces his self as a poet. Beside paradox, he uses assonance such as I am in line and alliteration
like the in first two stanzas. Or he uses oxymoron device such as mother(1), ender(2), bud and blossom(3), late-falling leaf(4)
etc, to describe himself. In addition, Dunbar uses impressive images such as sorrow(1), grief(2), serf, king(6) etc. Furthermore,
with his listed literature devices, he creates the rhyme and rhythm for the poetry.
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Still the speaker
is not only a human that can change into other characters, he also faces changes in attitude.
On the stanzas 3 to 5, the speaker changes his attitude by portraying an imagery of extremes. It can never be in between,
in other words, there are only two colors; black in white. For example he says “Speak to me gently or curse me, /Seek me or fly from my sight ;”( Line 17-18) It clearly states
two states that are completely opposites, there is no “in between”. However, in the last stanzas he shifts
his mood to a positive side of his person. He implies that once he overcomes the shadows of darkness in his life, he can become
a loving self, too. He describes that he can be a good lover and a good brother. Many things happen in our life such as one day we can feel as the king of the hill or some other day we
feel as the worse human being in Earth, but these little pieces are what make us human. These are aspects that shape our life
and determine our self strength. They are the path to find the true person that lies in us.
In the third stanza, he describes his appearances and characteristic. For his appearance, he uses oxymoron
and colorful image such as white (9), swart(10) to describe about his appearance.
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