Commentary on Astronauts

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Commentary: “Astronauts” by Robert Hayden Already evident from the first word of the poem, the title, the poem is about “Astronauts”. Robert Hayden, the poet, explores several philosophical issues that pertain to moon exploration. The single-worded title “Astronauts” seems bold and unique at first sight, but simultaneously draws attention to the absence of identity of both the moon, and those who explore the moon, in the first 5 lines whereupon the poet portrays the “faceless” astronauts as lacking personality and detail with their “mirrormasks reflecting the general glare and shadow of the moonscape”. The imagery, voice, structure and language are effective literary devices that the poet uses in order to convey his opinion on what space exploration actually entails, and further expands to question the interests of humanity. The striking imagery throughout the poem is one of the elements that contributes the poems’ effect on the reader’s mentality towards space exploration. In the first line whereupon the poet describes the astronauts as being “Armored in Oxygen, faceless in visors”, conveying a soldier-like quality as they seem to be protected by the very atmosphere, as well as by their visors – which seems to detach them from the rest of the human population. However, upon closer reading, we see that perhaps this description is to demonstrate how in fact these astronauts are fragile as they only have a thin layer of oxygen for defence against they are “risking edges”. The second stanza paints an environment of complete silence and stillness that the astronauts prevent unintentionally as they “sing, exulting (though trained to be wary of “emotion and philosophy”)”. This is an interesting picture to the readers as what we feel is that the astronauts behaving like children and not have much intention whatsoever but hopping around. Finally, the astronauts are

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