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Explication Essay: I Sit Beside The Fire And Think

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Explication Essay: I Sit Beside The Fire And Think
Explication Essay
“I Sit Beside the Fire and Think”

Imagine that you are an older person who is close to dying. Thinking about your past and all the great memories you have had becomes a common past time. You might start to think about the future and the things that you will miss. In the poem “I sit beside the fire and think” by J.R.R Tolkien an older man is sitting by the fire and thinking of the great life he has had, along with the future and the things that he still want to accomplish before he goes. After carefully contemplating the abundance of tone, symbolism, and sound effects, the reader of J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem, “I sit beside the fire and think” is left questioning the thoughts people will have before death after recognizing the implication of Tolkien’s impressive work. The tone of a poem has a major affect on how the poem is read and understood. The tone of a poem is based on how the speaker feels about a certain object. An old man who is close to dying is the speaker of the poem, and this is shown in lines 1-2: “I sit beside the fire and think/ of all that I have seen.” The tone of the speaker is depressed and morbid. This poem has a main theme of death so it makes sense that the tone would be depressing also. The tone is morbid because the speaker is talking about his death and the life that he has had. Evidence of this tone is in
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He is thinking about the great life he has had, along with wondering about what the future will be like when he leaves. He has a depressed look on death that is also kind of morbid, but he is slightly hopeful when he thinks of all the things that he still want to do before he passes away. The poem has a complex attitude towards death that is achieved by using tone, literary devices, and sound effects. Looking back on the great life he has had is a common thing for the speaker and anyone to do when they are close to

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