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images that align themselves with the following poem…

Among the Narcissi

Spry, wry, and gray as these March sticks,

Percy bows, in his blue peajacket, among the narcissi.

He is recuperating from something on the lung.

The narcissi, too, are bowing to some big thing :

It rattles their stars on the green hill where Percy

Nurses the hardship of his stitches, and walks and walks.

There is a dignity to this; there is a formality-

The flowers vivid as bandages, and the man mending.

They bow and stand : they suffer such attacks!

And the octogenarian loves the little flocks.

He is quite blue; the terrible wind tries his breathing.

The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely.

- Sylvia Plath -

for those of you who are unfamiliar with the above poem it is about confronting life’s challenges against all odds and unfavourable conditions.

the significance of the title lies in the irony that narcissi are symbolic of vanity, yet the poem centers on the physical/emotional condition of the man who is persistent to live life.His focus on life, suggests that the man is centered on himself. It appears that being among the narcissi, symbolic of life, invigorates him to continue…this idea is stressed in the following line…

There is a dignity to this; there is a formality-

Plath uses the caesura to emphasize this declaration that to struggle to live is ennobling. A life filled w/ obstacles, ‘hardships’ is a beautiful life, a life worth living. And this explains why Plath has juxtaposed both natural imagery connoting life and colour imagery connoting age and ill-health. She implies that it is this combination of the pos/ neg aspects of life that holds the balance, intensifies the tension w/i the poem, and makes the man, narcissi, and narr voice better appreciate their life. Thus this emphatic line stresses the theme of man’s persistence to continue to live despite obstacles. It is this theme that supersedes the previous morose atmosphere, undermines the monotonous colours and impels the reader to focus on the man’s determination to ‘walk.’

Also the repetition ‘There is….there is’ conveys the narrator as one who is in self-denial and needs conviction that ‘there is dignity…’ – humans, animals, plants, all living things are not only physically vulnerable to forces beyond their control, but are morally and mentally affected by it as well.

xxx

sources: girlwhimsey/ wolf + willow/ via weheartit: sebastian/ le fruit /things we like /imgfave/ senseless acts of beauty / match.box.muse / tumblr photography xox / between eyes. / sugarsnap / never do what youre told/ cosmic/ lets go back to a never ending story/ all my stars aligned/ a body of thought/ neuroadventure/ cristina diaz / sweetmeg/ lara/ Oscar Falk &Acirc;&raquo; ELLE : LUNDLUND