The Slithering Albatross

1800 Words8 Pages
Ragsdale 1 Ragsdale 1 Brock Ragsdale Ms. Jude Marr ENGL-1102 9/9/12 The Slithering Albatross D. H. Lawrence in his poem Snake speaks of how society has clouded our views and forces us towards the social norms. Lawrence shows the battle that goes on in a man’s mind when determining what is morally acceptable compared to what is socially expectable. He shows how society has clouded and seduced the man’s mind to go against what is truly the right decision to do. D.H. Lawrence was known for how he went against societies acceptable traits, and because of this he was criticized and even censored! He starts his poem by mentioning the sight of a snake. Christianity’s view on snakes has been negative for thousands of years. When I saw “snake”, it immediately made me think of the serpent in the Garden of Eden in the Bible. This serpent represented all of the sin in the world, and more importantly everything evil. Therefore, before getting past the first line of this poem I already disliked the snake. However this is exactly what Lawrence is showing in the poem. Because of my education from society, I assume that an innocent creature is automatically evil. This poem is filled with alliteration. More specifically it is filed with alliteration of the sound “s.” I believe Lawrence did this for a reason. While reading the poem I heard myself saying words like “strand-scented shade… slackness soft-… straight… silently…ect.” While doing this, I found myself hissing in a way that Ragsdale 2 Ragsdale 2 sounded like a snake, and Lawrence keeps this going through out the entire poem. In the fifth stanza he begins by comparing the snake to cattle drinking water. First of all when thinking of cattle I immediately thought of innocence. So, therefore in a way he saw the snake as an innocent being. Cattle also rhymes with battle, which refers to the battle that is going on
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