1992 Prompt: In the passage below, which comes from William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” the speaker encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. Write an essay in which you trace the speaker's changing responses to his experiences and explain how they are conveyed by the poem's diction, imagery, and tone.
Everything for “The Colonel” starts out normal. The line is bold “WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true” to emphasize and to foreshadow what is coming. A man sitting by his wife and daughter as described in the first few lines until the lines percolate in, “Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace”. More input such as, “The parrot said hello on the terrace” is reminiscent of Poe’s “The Raven” as the eerie bird lands speaking to the Colonel.
Word choice is important in this poem the variety is great and it makes the poem flow easily. After reading once many would notice this author’s simplicity this piece contains no fancy diction and is basic and not wordy like many other poems. Going over it the most complex vocabulary is nothing extravagant, the “govern” due to the dual meaning employed which seems to go into the politics of the area and we can infer from the scenes that follow the Colonel must enforce the law of that land.
The tone set by the author is one of a great shift which starts out slow and normal and ends in a fast paced horror. In the first paragraph there is the line about the validity of the coming events and a standard description of what the Colonel’s family is doing: wife bringing dinner, son gone for the night, and daughter filing her nails. The maid comes in to bring some more food and all seems the same then it is quickly changed by the parrot. Knowing the directness of this poem the parrot is literal and unsurprisingly so are the human ears which the Colonel dumps of the table and pours water onto. This drastic change in the atmosphere changes the speakers tone on the country and he is told by one of its officers to stay out of the human rights department and to screw himself.
“The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche is an interesting literally piece that puts the author in an position as a guest in the house of a tyrant. This poem explores the rights of man in Latin America and the inevitable involvement of Americans and is elaborated with blunt diction, startling imagery, and a unique tone.
