Venetian Familes Essay

713 Words3 Pages
The passage by Jan Morris highlights the ironic differences between the perceived exquisite beauty of Venice and their people, with the dull and monotonous reality of Venetian family life. The author who evidently has children and is living in Venice at the time, creates a dull and condescending tone throughout the passage in order to portray her strong negative view that Venetian parents are too strict on their children and most families have dull and gloomy lifestyles. She depicts them as fake and “ludicrously dressed” people who seem to care more about how they are perceived by outsiders in terms of their high intelligence and looks. Jan Morris uses a clever change in setting alongside her choice of vocabulary in order to convey her feelings to the reader, Although she shows negative, judgemental views of Venetian parents, she is able to appreciate that their harshness, and attention to detail is key for the future success of their lives and will also bring honour and benefit to Venice as a whole in the long run. Jan Morris’s carefully creates regularly structured passage in order to reflect the regular, monotonous lifestyle of the Venetian children. Throughout the poem he is able to show a progression of age which clearly changes with each paragraph. In the first paragraph, she describes Venetian babies which then progress into young children working laboriously in lavish “schools” and “entertaining themselves” in hot “alleyways”. Finally the children in the final paragraph are “old beyond their years” where they are trying to get into “universities” in order “sustain [their] family honour”. Furthermore, Jan Morris creates long endless lists of tedious actions in the final stanza in order to convey a sense of dreariness of Venetian life. The children “unscuffle” their shoes, “neat” their gloves, “stroll sedately” and “impeccable their hair”. Although there
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