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Comparative Analysis Paper- Poetry
Brigitte Nichols
ENG/120
AUGUST 11, 2010
Paul Renaud
Comparative Analysis Paper- Poetry
A poet uses words like a brush to paint an image in our mind or add a color of emotion to Croppers,” by Langston Hughes, and David Wagoner’s “Their Bodies” for comparison of styles and the way they deliver the meaning of the poem. These three poems have one thing in common. They examine the relationship between life and what happens to it due to age, gender, race, and our jobs.
Ruth Collins takes a look at women and the horrible working conditions at a factory. Her reference to a “Red brick building with many windows” seems an analogy of a prison with no possibility of release. Like a vampire the building drains the life from her. The most powerful statements in this poem are “the tired eyes” and “The red-haired girl, when the sun sets her head aflame.(Collins,1996) The girl is still young and beautiful but she does not care because she is trapped in the red brick building. She will continue sewing there until she becomes “one of the tired eyed ones.(Collins, 1996)"
Langston Hughes has a angrier outlook In this poem “a herd of Negroes driven to the field (Hughes, 1996)” are seen as donkeys or oxen. They are sent every day to pick cotton with no recognition of who they are or what they might be thinking. He openly states that this mistreatment is because of the workers’ skin color. This poem is definitely angry about the plight of the workers’ situation.
The final poem makes the strongest statement. From the metaphor of dissecting subjects, Wagoner reminds the students that the bodies need to be treated with dignity, that the bodies were parents once or “an innocent (Wagoner, 1996).” He stresses that the bodies should be treated “politely and truly (Wagoner, 1996).”
In the preceding poems metaphors remind us that neither race, age, nor sex are used to measure one’s worthiness. The workers never rise up against their predicament; they...