peter grimes + TBoRG
- Created by: Sophia Dossa
- Created on: 31-10-21 18:00
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- Peter Grimes (1810)
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1900)
- OSCAR WILDE
- Overview
- Wilde engages with themes of loss, imprisonment, and emotional turbulence.
- The poet works from his own experiences in Reading Gaol, and those of men he met or knew about, to craft this poem about the sorrows of life, love, and solitude.
- poem begins with a discussion of Charles Thomas Wooldridge who was condemned to die in 1896 for murdering his wife in a jealous rage.
- After the murder he begged the officers to arrest him and mourned his action until his death.
- Wilde’s broad repeittion of lines like “For each man kills the thing he loves.” A numberof the stanzas in this poem are identical or close to identical due to this literary device. It helps the poem maintain its sing-song-like feeling.
- Wilde engages with themes of loss, imprisonment, and emotional turbulence.
- Aspects of Crime
- settings
- Reading Gaol, a place of much suffering and
much introspection, was where he spent two years of his life and where his
identity was removed; he was simply C33
- does not refer to the trooper (or anyone by name),
other than giving his initials C. T. W. in the inscription at the start of the poem.
- prison is grey, oppressive and forbidding, contrasting always with the little
patch of blue the prisoners call the sky
- place of execution
- “a stretch of mud and sand by the hideous prison-wall”
- place of execution
- prison is grey, oppressive and forbidding, contrasting always with the little
patch of blue the prisoners call the sky
- does not refer to the trooper (or anyone by name),
other than giving his initials C. T. W. in the inscription at the start of the poem.
- Reading Gaol, a place of much suffering and
much introspection, was where he spent two years of his life and where his
identity was removed; he was simply C33
- settings
- GEORGE CRABBE
- Overview
- Peter’s motive appears to result from a psychopathic need to subject a
“feeling creature” “to his power” and when the ability to buy a victim is finally
removed by the burghers,
- Peter begins a descent into madness, coaxed along both by the “spirits” of his victims and the village people’s cries of “wicked man” as he begins to experience guilt for what he has done.
- speech to the priest at
the end of the poem is a confession of sorts, but while he appears to feel some
remorse, in particular for the second boy whose death “hit [his] conscience”,
- His confessional is also interwoven with a desire to defend his actions, perhaps to save himself from everlasting torture. Peter clearly is terrified of punishment
- the main focus of his ramblings is self-pity and terror of “the place of horrors”, the hell to which he fears he is headed.
- speech to the priest at
the end of the poem is a confession of sorts, but while he appears to feel some
remorse, in particular for the second boy whose death “hit [his] conscience”,
- criminal psyche
- Aspects of Crime
- victims
- The boys are “pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd and abused”
- their cries are heard by the town and their injuries are stark.
- The boys are “pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd and abused”
- punishment/ justice
- he is punished by the society which rejects him
- His
isolation is the first part of his punishment and he becomes oppressed
- “misery, grief, and fear”
- “three spirits” who torture himed
- never have a “boy abide” with him
- His
isolation is the first part of his punishment and he becomes oppressed
- he is punished by the society which rejects him
- settings
- Peter Grimes is part of a collection
of rural poems Crabbe published in 1810 called The Borough
- The location for
Peter Grimes is a quiet Suffolk fishing town. Given that Peter is a fisherman,
many scenes take place on the sea on his fishing boat and this is where his
criminal behaviour is carried out
- The isolation of the sea is also used to reflect
Peter’s emptiness when he is exiled from his community
- 'dark warm flood ran silently and slow'
- The isolation of the sea is also used to reflect
Peter’s emptiness when he is exiled from his community
- The location for
Peter Grimes is a quiet Suffolk fishing town. Given that Peter is a fisherman,
many scenes take place on the sea on his fishing boat and this is where his
criminal behaviour is carried out
- Peter Grimes is part of a collection
of rural poems Crabbe published in 1810 called The Borough
- comment on society
- disgust with
the workhouses where boys are bought
- “slave shops”
- criticises the values of a society
- “none put the question”
- disgust with
the workhouses where boys are bought
- creation of a criminal
- victims
- Aspects of Crime
- Peter begins a descent into madness, coaxed along both by the “spirits” of his victims and the village people’s cries of “wicked man” as he begins to experience guilt for what he has done.
- His confessional is also interwoven with a desire to defend his actions, perhaps to save himself from everlasting torture. Peter clearly is terrified of punishment
- Peter’s motive appears to result from a psychopathic need to subject a
“feeling creature” “to his power” and when the ability to buy a victim is finally
removed by the burghers,
- Aspects of Crime
- victims
- The boys are “pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd and abused”
- their cries are heard by the town and their injuries are stark.
- The boys are “pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd and abused”
- punishment/ justice
- he is punished by the society which rejects him
- His
isolation is the first part of his punishment and he becomes oppressed
- “misery, grief, and fear”
- “three spirits” who torture himed
- never have a “boy abide” with him
- His
isolation is the first part of his punishment and he becomes oppressed
- he is punished by the society which rejects him
- settings
- Peter Grimes is part of a collection
of rural poems Crabbe published in 1810 called The Borough
- The location for
Peter Grimes is a quiet Suffolk fishing town. Given that Peter is a fisherman,
many scenes take place on the sea on his fishing boat and this is where his
criminal behaviour is carried out
- The isolation of the sea is also used to reflect
Peter’s emptiness when he is exiled from his community
- 'dark warm flood ran silently and slow'
- The isolation of the sea is also used to reflect
Peter’s emptiness when he is exiled from his community
- The location for
Peter Grimes is a quiet Suffolk fishing town. Given that Peter is a fisherman,
many scenes take place on the sea on his fishing boat and this is where his
criminal behaviour is carried out
- Peter Grimes is part of a collection
of rural poems Crabbe published in 1810 called The Borough
- comment on society
- disgust with
the workhouses where boys are bought
- “slave shops”
- criticises the values of a society
- “none put the question”
- disgust with
the workhouses where boys are bought
- creation of a criminal
- victims
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1900)
- criminal psyche
- first person narrator, who is himself a criminal – seems to suggest that there is a collective criminal consciousness that suffers guilt and shares a common humanity, a consciousness that is not depraved or insane
- “I never saw sad men who looked/With such a wistful eye/Upon that little tent of blue/We prisoners call the sky”.
- focuses instead on the thoughts and feelings of the criminals in relation to their punishments, their humiliation, emptiness and shared misery
- Aspects of Crime
- settings
- Reading Gaol, a place of much suffering and
much introspection, was where he spent two years of his life and where his
identity was removed; he was simply C33
- does not refer to the trooper (or anyone by name),
other than giving his initials C. T. W. in the inscription at the start of the poem.
- prison is grey, oppressive and forbidding, contrasting always with the little
patch of blue the prisoners call the sky
- place of execution
- “a stretch of mud and sand by the hideous prison-wall”
- place of execution
- prison is grey, oppressive and forbidding, contrasting always with the little
patch of blue the prisoners call the sky
- does not refer to the trooper (or anyone by name),
other than giving his initials C. T. W. in the inscription at the start of the poem.
- Reading Gaol, a place of much suffering and
much introspection, was where he spent two years of his life and where his
identity was removed; he was simply C33
- settings
- punishment/justice
- Wilde also sidesteps the
crimes of the other prisoners, including his own
- “the fool, the fraud, the knave”
- warders mock the “swollen purple throat”
- “Hope” dies in prisoners
- Wilde also sidesteps the
crimes of the other prisoners, including his own
- victims
- Wilde only gives brief mention in the opening stanza of the wifevictim of Wooldridge’s crime
- W depicted as a casualty of a punitive judicial system which claims to uphold Christian values yet shows itself incapable of forgiveness, denying sinners the possibility of redemption
- comment on society
- clearly condemning a society that sanctions capital punishment and a prison system that allows human beings to suffer.
- “degraded and alone” without hope of forgiveness.
- ballad form for his poem so that he could speak widely to the proletarian. circulated in Reynolds’ Magazine, read by members of the criminal classes.
- no description of the violence inflicted on the murdered woman, but Wilde
details both the psychological and physical violence inflicted on all prisoners
- sewing sacks until hands bleed, tearing ropes to shreds, walking past graves
that gape for those who are executed
- violence/suffering
- focus on the horror of hanging
- poem is a protest poem about the dehumanisation of prison life and the use of capital punishment in the 19th century.
- violence/suffering
- sewing sacks until hands bleed, tearing ropes to shreds, walking past graves
that gape for those who are executed
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