A Breakfast For Barbarians Analysis

To live is to die; this is the message both poems convey, a somber reminder that without death there cannot be life, and without ignorance there cannot be knowledge. These poems represent a duality of two opposing forces, akin to how shadows are born by light, and how change will always be a positively and negatively occurring force. A Breakfast for Barbarians by Gwendolyn Macewen concerns itself with the evolution of a culture, a company of barbarians ripped of their namesake and turned into scholars. Similarly, Breaking by Phyllis Webb addresses both religion and mental stability, questioning from the first line whether one is ever truly whole. Instead of addressing the act of change, Breaking aims to pool together a mass of known and gifted
Whether it be through the overtly positive but ultimately doomed evolution in A Breakfast for Barbarians, or the destruction of religion in Breaking only to find faith born anew, these poems show that for greatness to prosper it must always grow hand in hand with corruption.
The usage of imagery and metaphorical language combined with blatant allusions to the Bible and Christianity enable both writers to act as religious prophets, appearing to question their previous faith and look forward towards something new. Although obscure at first, the second line of the first stanza in Breaking asks “Give us wholeness, for we are broken. / But who are we asking, and why do we ask?” (Breaking, Phyllis Webb). The question of “who” we are asking if referring to God, and by asking “who” God is, the poet questions his power. This is expanded by the addition of “why do we ask”, implying an impotency. The second stanza is ripe with allusions to the Bible, attacking “god” immediately in the first verse: “Shattered gods, self-iconoclasts / It is with Lazarus unattended we belong” (Webb). Webb’s decision to both call the “gods” shattered, and denote them in the plural shows how little respect these “gods” (rather than God”) receive from her; she believes the gods to be
The poem notes a variety of Gods, and the title itself is relevant in that “Barbarians” predominantly refers to the Norse religion which houses a dynamic pantheon of Gods and mythological creatures associated with them. This is reinforced by the verses: “let us answer hunger / with boiled chimera / and apocalyptic tea,” (A Breakfast for Barbarians, Gwendolyn Macewen). This “hunger” is a hunger for both knowledge and change. The chimera is a famous Greek monster, an amalgamation of various animals, often a lion, goat, and snake. The fact that the chimera is “boiled”, besides the obvious intention to consume it, implies a finality inherent to both monster and faith; it has been prepared, cooked, and done away with. Thus, a creature of terror is no longer terrifying, losing its godly lustre. This is backed by the verse that follows it, which uses tea to represent religion itself. Tea is known to be calming, and an apocalypse is anything but calming. Viewing tea as the stagnated religion the Barbarians have habitually followed, this “apocalyptic tea” represents a new form of tea, and thus a new form of religion. The allusions to the bible end with the conclusion of the stanza, as Macewen writes of “an arcane salad of spiced bibles, / tossed dictionaries”. The notion of being “arcane”