An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow - Identity

920 Words4 Pages
Identity is constituted by our external and internal self. Our identity is formed by both our view on ourselves - what we see in the mirror - and how society perceives us – how we act in accordance with our surrounding environment. Les Murray’s poem ‘An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow’, written in 1969, explores the concept of both the identity of the individual and of a collective group through the actions and reflections of a crying man and city society. Murray accentuates how city society reacts to the simple act of expressing emotion – they simply watch, fearfully. The individual is used by Murray to represent that which is common, emotion, and the beauty which it contains. Murray also uses emotion to create a Utopia, a paradise, and formulate the idea that what is considered a weakness – crying – actually offers a strength to the individuals that choose to embrace their humanity in one of its purest forms. Part of our humanity is being able to express emotions without fear and, as a result of this, being able to accept each other’s expressions of emotion. Murray constructs the society of the city so that they appear to the reader as though they want to repress the ‘unnatural’ act of expressing emotion and, by extension, repress part of both their humanity and the humanity of the crying man. Murray introduces his thesis in the title of the poem “An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”. The antithesis displays to the reader that there is great beauty in the simple and ordinary. This is further supported through the contrasting images and repetition in the lines, “The crowds are edgy with talk and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets which minutes ago were busy main streets” which create suspense in the reader making them question whether the people of the city are fearful of what is happening. This atmosphere of suspense is broken in the anticlimax
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