not waving but drowning
- Created by: rubyella24
- Created on: 31-05-19 15:03
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- Not Waving But Drowning
- Purpose
- Conveys difficulty we all have in understanding other people's interior worlds and psychological suffering
- metaphor for 'drowning' in life- people put on a brave face but under the façade they are struggling
- death can be a blessing if it relieves one from heaviness in life
- Content
- begins with speaker stating there is a dead man who is not really dead because his story has more to offer to the world
- his death came at the hands of apathy and neglect
- emotionless reactions of beachgoers- attempt to recall something about his life, give up and declare him dead
- Structure
- three stanzas, rhyme scheme deviates as poem progresses
- second line of both stanzas ends in moaning, 4th ends in drowning
- 3rd -->1st person
- enjambment in every stanza conveys 'last breath' of dying man
- Choice to rhyme every other line lifts dark tone--> lighthearted. allows reader to enjoy poem without being distressed by subject matter
- but contrast between rhyme scheme and discussion of death draws more attention to it
- Tone
- 1. Narrator
- initially factual/ neutral, hint of impatience (still, moaning)
- 2. Dead man
- obviously emotional/plaintive/angry
- 3. They
- almost jaunty, offhand, unconcerned
- 1. Narrator
- Analysis
- Stanza One
- first line hooks reader
- syntax 2nd line- not dead YET. dead man characterised in a disturbing way
- 'you'- people unable to see distress they are in
- Stanza Two
- 'larking'- colloquial, jolly, casually shrugging off reality of situation
- Onlookers look no deeper into his life or his death than what their first guesses give them
- 'they said' -placing of this in a single line makes us question this
- underlying apathy/ distaste for death
- contrast between how they see him and how he sees himself
- Stanza Three
- speaker's emotions come through
- caesura after 'no,no no;'- interjection/ emphasis & brackets emphasis that he is still there dying
- 'moaning- whining about something insignificant
- line 10-12: being dead soesn't stop him from trying to be heard
- this stanza further confuses the difference between life and death, as well as the cause of his misfortune. dead man describes a lifetime of drowning, not just a single event, as if life and death aren't separate states
- Stanza One
- Purpose
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