Part
I
In
the novel The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence
uses polysyndeton, the symbol of blood, and imagery to contrast the “far-off”
land of the urban world with the woman’s simple, rural existence that flows in
her family’s bloodstream, emphasizing her unquenched thirst for knowledge.
A
woman who wants to be part of the “world of cities and governments” (line 20)
wouldn’t make that great of a story, but the fact that this longing goes
against her very nature is what opens the reader’s eyes to her situation. Rural
life is the essence of her family’s very being; it is what they “know in their
blood” (line 8-9). Lawrence goes on to describe that “their faces” are “always
turned to the heat of the blood” (line 12) which signifies that her family
always follows their gut feeling to be close to nature and, consequently, “far-off”
from the “active scope of man” (line 19-21). The woman looks out to the “world
at large” (line 31-32) while “the Brangwen men faced inwards to the teeming
life of creation” that flowed in “their veins” (line 27-29). This once again
depicts how the rural life seems to be rooted in the blood of the family, yet
the woman strays from this, rejecting “blood-intamacy” (line 16) that stems
from her family’s very nature.
The
polysyndeton with the word “and” throughout the passage stresses the extent to
which the woman’s ideal and actual lives differ. Facing outwards to the city,
she discovers…
Part
II
My
partner (Derek) scored my essay a 5-6, which I thought was a little generous
considering it was not even close to finished. I agree that my analysis was
reasonable and I could present my ideas with decent clarity and control, but I
did not closely analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices because I barely
got to discussing them when time ran out. I feel like if I articulated my ideas
on paper in a more timely fashion and got the chance to write everything I was
thinking I would have scored better.
One
thing I would do to make my essay better is discuss the contrast between the
complacency of the men and the tension within the woman. I touched on this with
my discussion of the “blood-knowledge” but I could have talked more in-depth
about the woman’s internal struggle to gain knowledge (and the way Lawrence
uses both the repetition of the word “knowledge” and tense diction to portray
this idea). Lawrence uses words like “strained” (twice actually), “hung”, and “battle”
to describe the woman’s “deepest desire” to gain knowledge. This deep yearning
is contrasted with the men’s complacency and the fact that, although they look
towards the sun (a symbol of growth), they are stuck in a rut that she wishes
to escape.
Another
technique that emphasizes the men’s complacency is polysyndeton, which I began
to write a paragraph but wasn’t really going this direction with. I was going
to discuss how it pointed out the differences between the men and the woman,
but this does not cut into the deep and complex meaning of the piece. Yes, they
are different, but how, and why does this make the passage meaningful? After
further analysis of the passage, I began to see that the repeated use of the
word “and” seems to mirror the kind of repetitive work that the farmers partake
in day in and day out. This monotonous working exemplifies the fact that these
men are utterly and completely unmoving in their being, forever sentenced to
working the earth and helping other organisms grow while ignoring their own
potential to gain knowledge. For example, the men “looked out to the back at
sky and harvest and beast and land”. This would also be a great place for me to
address the complexity of the passage and the seemingly contradictory position
that the men are in as “their faces” turn to “the heat of the blood” (or the
sun).
This
idea mixed with the idea of the woman looking outward to gain knowledge could
have made a really good paragraph. I could have discussed the juxtaposition of
the woman “looking out” the front of the house and her husband looking “out to
the back”. This simple comparison captures the essence of the woman’s position.
She is looking out in front, forward, which can symbolize progress and movement
towards knowledge, while her husband looks backwards, towards “sky and harvest
and beast and land”, towards what the family has always done, towards
complacency. This also would have been easy to tie back to the “blood knowledge”
idea as the shear fact that there is a huge difference in the way the woman and
the men see the world and this is the source of her current position. The woman
tends to look forward and yearn for growth through knowledge while the men grow
complacent in their tendency to look back.
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