Witchgrass Essay

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Student: Seher Selcuk PSI: Introduction to Literary Studies Lecturer: Bauer Semester: The first `Witchgrass`, by Louise Glück Over decades people have always lived in harmony with the nature. But later, when the phenomenon civilization appeared, mentalities changed in the direction of changing their natural environment. Many people became settled and built up residential areas. During this process of urbanisation, people have cut away trees and green areas permanently in order to achieve their goals. By becoming dominant concerning the hierarchical position of the living creatures, people take the right to influence the nature. The relation between human being and nature is also thematized in Louise Glück’s poem `witchgrass´, which was published in 1992. In what follows, I will analyse the nature’s perspective and the impression the mankind leaves behind. In the first place the poem illustrates the conflict between the mankind and nature. ‘Witchgrass’ represents the nature. Through the poem, the ‘Witchgrass’ is speaking reproachfully to someone, but that someone retorts. So it becomes obvious, that the lyrical I is the ‘witchgrass’. There are several indications, which define that someone: he hates the ‘witchgrass’ (l.4), plants a garden (l.36) and ‘[attacks] the cause’, which leads to the death of his ‘previous flowers’ (l. 20-23). When you consider the fact, that witchgrass is something people do not want and see as disturbing, because of the fact that they take the hole water so that other plant can’t survive, which is why people eradicate it, than you will see, that nobody is meant but the man. So the conflict between the witchgrass and the man symbolizes figuratively the conflict between the nature and the mankind. It seems like a ‘fight’ where both want to win through. In the second place the poem involves a religious tone ‘one god’, ‘one
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