The comments made by Murray in 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow' reflect a distorted society where feelings and emotions are kept secret, and dark fears and worries remain imbedded deep within individuals.
The isolation of society is shown when the crying man is situated in a busy street with 'crowds', yet he is so alone that 'no one approaches'.
Weeping is a bitter-sweet emotion, but the rewards of inner peace through the release of grief and sorrow outweigh the pains of weeping. while the man cries out with "grief" and "sorrow" it is a "gift" to weep because it brings peace.
People are shown as being so obsessed with fitting in the unfeeling social mainstream that they have become afraid of change. The poem points out that people have become less dignified because they no longer openly express their feelings and attitudes, but the man appears as a savior, having the courage to openly weep at all the ills and worries of modern day life. Les Murray has used him to symbolize redemption, and the man is portrayed as a messiah through the description- "Only the smallest children and such as look out of Paradise come near him and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons", presenting him as being innocent, pure and genuine. The pitching of the lone man weeping in amongst the crowds of busy, materialistic commuters clearly shows the contrasting events that occur in life. The passers by eventually yield to their inner desire of releasing pent-up emotions, and are also able to sincerely weep. This change triggered by the weeping man completely changes those around him, showing the ease with which negative circumstances can change.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Distinctively visual images evoke profound ideas and notions about society, culture and values which enables responders to perceive reality in a new light, challenging or reinforcing their own ideas and attitudes. Through the use of distinctively visual images, composers are able to add depths and complexity to the characters within their respective texts in a way that shapes and deepen their responder’s perceptions of these characters. In the postmodern novel “Maestro” by Peter Goldsworthy, distinctively visual images is used to convey Edward Keller’s traumatic and shady past, allowing the audience to perceive his distressing past experiences with greater depth and clarity. Additionally, Goldsworthy uses distinctively visual images to illustrate Keller’s isolation and displacement in Darwin while also highlighting the complex and nebulous relationship between him and his student, Paul. Similarly, I have used distinctively visual images to represent how Goldsworthy’s characterization of Keller has shaped perceptions of him, allowing the audience to see both his past as a musician in Vienna and his life as an exile attempting to escape his traumatic past.…
- 926 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
He had taken a dreary road, darken by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveler knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.…
- 1031 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
It does always result in trying to escape that isolation, but when we are isolated from ourselves it resides within us, and escape is impossible. It sits closer to the concept of separateness rather than loneliness. It is clear that in “The End of the World”, the narrator’s isolationism is because of his own choice. I argue that the most important way in which the novel discusses isolation is to see it as an internal state which does not necessarily have anything to do with how isolated one is with regard to other people. Instead, it is to show that as even as social beings who constantly interact with others carry elements of isolationism in our lives. Marukami effectively makes the whole story subordinate to the theme of isolationism to relate the reader to his…
- 1629 Words
- 7 Pages
Powerful Essays -
In many cases and in literature isolation plays a major role on a character's personality, this isolation leads the characters and humans to become outraged and become violent. In Ken Kesey’s, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, McMurphy…
- 729 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Nevertheless, even though she has physically committed herself he is still mentally “suspended” and trapped between what she wants and who she is. As a result, she represses those thoughts from “r[ising] higher”. This is the pivotal point upon which she consigns herself to follow society’s expectations because she understands that without social rules and stigma, “the world would not exist” and be able to function properly. Her “answering point in…[her] body” instinctually gravitates “towards” following social norms because despite the struggle against it, everyone will eventually cave to the expectations of others. She has become “inflate[d]” by the “inrush” of the external pressures of being part of a society . She realizes that she is finally experiencing the typical emotions, even though she feels removed from the “smiles” and “what it is [supposed to feel like] to be happy”. In spite of that, she feels “doubleness” as if it is not really herself going through the motions – she doesn’t feel true to herself and who she really is but simply sees a reflection of her figure that she can no longer recognise. On her way “hurtling” down, she has flashes of her “own past” that “recede[s]” and she has to make a decision between the light of the “white sun” and the darkness of an endless “dark tunnel”. Ultimately, she focuses on the “bright point at the end” of the tunnel and becomes a small “pebble” in the “bottom of [a big] well”, which is an analogy to her small and insignificant self in a world filled with billions of people. Her metamorphosis is paralleled to that of a rebirth into her new life. She has chosen the light and she is being christened into her new life as an innocent “sweet baby” that is being reborn again from “it’s mother’s belly”. All throughout this process “Buddy” and the “other faces” of society watchfully gaze and “h[a]ng…
- 1226 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
After she and her ex-lover talk “from his neat head…rises a small balloon- but for the grace of god.” Here is the main point the writer makes. In this line, the writer illustrates and image of her previous life, enabling us to conjure and guess at her life before and wonder how wonderful it was then; because, why else would the man be so curious of her diminished state if she hadn’t changed so drastically? The composer of this poem further emphasizes her lethargic, depressed and aimless life by using coloured words such as “whine, bicker,tug,aimless.”…
- 822 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
People sitting by themselves at lunch, people who never go out with their so-called friends, and people who avoid association with anyone unless necessary. All of these are examples of individuals who one may try to help because of an automatic assumption that they are lonely and in need of a friend. This assumption is flawed, as their is both chosen and unchosen solitude, as expressed in Barbara Ascher’s essay, “The Box Man,” from her book Playing After Dark. Through the juxtaposition of the homeless man and the two lonesome women, accompanied by an admirative tone used in regard to the homeless man and a tone of sympathy toward the women, Ascher expresses the idea that one’s material standing in society is irrelevant to one’s state of mind…
- 719 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
People and their experiences in their life are based throughout the challenges and difficulties they face. They may either experience friendship, war, love or even death. These ideas are shown visually within John Misto’s “The Shoe Horn Sonata” and Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”. Both texts depict the experiences evident through people, places and communities worldwide.…
- 953 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
He struggles with his difficult privilege of being Jewish. He tries to challenge God and even criticizes God. He has mixed feeling about the whole concept of God, but he doesn't lose faith. He successfully does it with vivid images and strong words. The use of contrasting words like ray-world, goodness-dark, and the use of nature in his poems shows his extreme feelings. He plays with images from the Torah and the Judaic belief to emphasize and illustrate his lack of understanding of the whole horrific Holocaust and God's role in…
- 524 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In the play Everyman, allegorical characters are used to represent what “Everyman” must eventually go through to attain ones Christian salvation. This allegorical character represents all of humanity. When “Everyman” catches wind from God that he will soon be sent to face his salvation with the lord, he tries to seek solace and pleads for just one more day. Once Everyman accepts his fate, that he will ultimately die soon, Everyman turns to several different things to comfort him in his time of pass. These “things” are allegorical meanings that represent more than what it seems at first. During Everyman’s journey, one that he seeks out is fellowship, which are representing the friends in one’s life, only to find that they have shot him down…
- 279 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The entire poem is a metaphor in an iambic pentameter form, it is fourteen lines long and has ten syllables in each line. You will find the personification as…
- 607 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
'The passing crowd' is a phrase coined in the spirit of indifference. Yet, to a man of what Plato calls 'universal sympathies,' and even to the plain, ordinary denizens of this world, what can be more interesting than those who constitute 'the passing crowd'?…
- 359 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
He is one which people admire….for the ordinary to be doing the extraordinary; it is not right to see a grown man to cry in the streets……
- 887 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Yes, he thought, yes, it's in the evening I will meet her. An inner cheers roared soul. Her, her. Final. Anyway, he was not rid of it dark, shadow, discomfort. Every time he talked to her, looked at her, thinking about her, he felt this discomfort. This gloomy, dark feeling that shook the he. What was it about her that made him feel like that? Her, with her long red hair that looked like a sunset when she walked on. The blue islands one could dream away and which could contain an entire galaxy. Her. With the beautiful lips and the apparent collarbone just stuck out from the sweater. He had so wanted to go over to her and talk more, learn more and be more with her, but every time he tried, came back shade. It felt as…
- 1033 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
The transformation in this poem is about how in order for a man to actually evolve into a man (through evolution) then he must accept God’s will, which this poem explores. A man I am begins with ‘I was consumed by so much hate I did not feel that I could wait.’ Already, this poem starts off with a single minded, primitive and pessimistic view and goes on to sound uncontrollable; for humanities sake and almost animalistic. The narrator goes on to describe themselves as ‘wild’, untamed, and therefore on a completely different level to the traits of a human being. ‘I seized a little new born child I tore his throat, I licked my fang, just like a wolf. A wolf I am.’ This ends the first stanza and contrasts the purity of innocence with an animalistic feature of a wolf, a killer with no guilt, and so the narrator represents themselves as a predator with no remorse and at such a position where hope would seem inevitable, and a cause of transformation would seem almost impossible.…
- 626 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays