This poem was not an easy read or easy to decipher. Turns out, this is quite the dark poem. Definitely not what I had imagined reading it the first time. I just perceived it as an innocent tale of a boy, comparing the poem to school. After the in-class discussion, I hereby apologize to Sage Hill. You are not death by any means, because that is the gist of the poem by Roethke.
Waking to sleep is his way of saying that basically we are all going to die one day and that it is inevitable. "I feel my fate..." (Roethke, pg. 822). Fate: The development of event's beyond a person's control. Death is beyond our control, he cannot fear it, as he later says.
So, after this in-class epiphany, I definitely realize how dark this poem and Roethke are. Like I said in my previous post, the word "have" in the repeating line "I learn by going where I have to go" gives a negative connotation of living life because he is forced to do so, and he simply wakes up to, in short, pessimistic terms, get closer to the phenomenon to death.
Reading your true, personal opinions makes your blog very intriguing! I love how you concluded your thoughts and discussed what you felt not only before, but also after the in-class discussion--good job!
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DeleteMilad, I applaud your ability to continuously add humor to your writing which adds to that unique factor. I was interested to read that you perceived this to be a rather dark poem because when I first read It I interpreted it to be the authors message of living life to its fullest and that the inevitable death should not be feared.
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