Wife Essay

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Analysis of wife hits Moose poem “Wife hits moose’ is a poem written by Thomas Lux in 1986. The poem is a narrative one, where the main plot is that a married woman hits a moose, whilst on her way home. However, upon further analysis, the reader can find many more connotations to those lines. Lux achieves those effects through a wide range of techniques, which shall be discussed and analysed throughout this essay. Stanza one introduces both the victim, the moose, and the one causing the accident, the wife. The time at which the accident occurs is mentioned, at dusk time. This could indicate that the day is coming at its end, and that tiredness and fatigue has won over both subjects. This idea is further supported by the “heavy and primordial” jaw of the moose, which highlights the fatigue felt by the moose. The fact that he decides that “the day, for him, is done” without any “psychic struggle” also shows that it must have been indeed very tired, that the fact of calling it a day is done without any thinking or hesitation. The caesura, in this case the semi-column is used to draw the attention of the reader to the fact that the moose is moving “somewhere else”. This could be a metaphor to represent a day’s cycle, since the fact that it is moving away could represent the setting of the sun. Another caesura, this time in the form of a full stop is included right after this line. The purpose of this is not only to show a change in idea within the very stanza itself, but also to draw the focus of the reader to the wife this time. It must be noted that the very first mention of a human being is accompanied by the first mention of man-made objects, in the case a car, which the wife is seen to be driving. The mention of human beings can thus be taught of as disrupting the harmony created by Lux in the opening lines of the poem, whilst giving an account of
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