On Friday our class discussed the poem "The Sun Rising" and why the speaker was addressing the sun about his love life. I am still not sure why the speaker was talking to the sun, but there are many theories. Personally I think he was annoyed about morning coming... I mean a lot of people hate morning, they would rather stay asleep in their dream world, or just skip right to the afternoon. So I think initially the speaker was just responding as a lot of us would by telling the sun to just go away. But as he began to talk to the sun, maybe he just kinda went with it, and continued the conversation as if with a person who would care enough to listen.
Another theory, one discussed in class, was that he has some insecurities, and feels the need to prove to the sun that he is better than the sun, and in talking "smack" to the sun which can not reply he may temporarily feel better about himself. This would make sense since he was trying to make himself look more powerful or better than the sun by saying, I can close my eyes and you no longer affect me, that is how little power you have. However I think there is a major flaw in that argument, for if the speaker was awakened by the sun, that must mean that the sun can penetrate at least somewhat through your eyelids, otherwise he would not have been wakened by the light. And it must have been the light because the sun does not make sound, although I suppose it would have made him too warm. But we still know that we can detect light even with our eyes closed.
In class we talked a lot about what the speaker was saying, and why. For example, we decided that the speaker was in his own little world, and the sun was interrupting him, so he said look, if your not going to go away, revolve around us, because we are the world. We would try to address why the sun? but end up talking about why what he said instead. I don't think that we ever really reached a conclusion on why he chose the sun to talk to instead of his lover or a friend. I think he was really talking to himself in a sense, talking out loud about his feelings in a way that doesn't make him vulnerable. If he talked to a real person about his relationship or the world he created, he becomes more vulnerable to criticism etc... but if he talks to something that doesn't respond, the worst that could happen is that he stares into the sun too long and is temporarily blind. This relates also to the idea that he has insecurities, and why he has to prove his worth to the sun. If he is that insecure of course he won't want to talk to an actual person that responds to what he says.
So I think that the speaker is speaking to the sun for the simple reasons that he is initially just annoyed with it for disturbing him, but also because he seems to be an insecure person that wouldn't talk about any of the things he says with a real person, nor who could prove his worth to anything that can respond. So the sun is a convenient opponent, that is already on his mind and that doesn't respond.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I still think there's a possibility that the speaker is hiding his insecurities by talking up to the sun. The fact that he isn't more powerful doesn't rule this analysis out, because if he was, he wouldn't be insecure. He is angry because he feels bullied by the sun; he is awoken against his will, and there's nothing he can do about it. Hence his insecurity. So in smack talking the sun, he is trying to convince himself that the sun isn't in fact all that powerful. The reader knows as well as he that he can't simply ignore the sun, but nevertheless he pretends he can.
To be honest I almost feel like we're over-analyzing this whole poet-sun relationship. I mean, let's be real, who [i]actually[/i] feels threatened or bullied by the sun of all things? When you talk about insecurities, it's always relative to the scrutiny of others. You're insecure for x reason because y person, or just people in general, will judge you for x reason. The very meaning of "being insecure" derives from the relationships people have with one another, so to talk about feeling insecure as a result of something the sun did to him seems a little far fetched.
If, on the other hand, you argue that he's kind of "talking down" on the sun because he's insecure about something else and this makes him feel better, well then that's a little more plausible. However, I still think it highly unlikely that this would be an incentive to write a love poem. It just doesn't make sense.
Personally, I just think he chose the sun because it was something he could write about that expressed his *utmost* worship for love (specifically, his own love) without actually directly writing about how great love is, for then it wouldn't be much of a poem. I picture it like he's laying in bed after a long night with his lover and the sun's coming up but all he wants to do is stay in bed with her forever but then the sun comes up and she has to go to work and therein lies the inspiration to write about the sun in relation to his lover. Or something like that.
Post a Comment