Skip to main content

In "Butcher Shop," what tone is created by the poet's use of imagery?

In “Butcher Shop”, Charles Simic creates a tone through imagery that’s spare, realistic, contemplative and violent. It’s important to note that throughout the poem very little actually happens – it’s rooted in observation. Only in the first two lines (“Sometimes walking late at night/I stop before a closed butcher shop”) and the last two lines (“Where I am fed,/Where deep in the night I hear a voice”) is there any kind of action, hence the contemplative aspect of the tone – he’s merely observing and thinking.


The realism and sparseness are found in the mundanity of the objects he observes: the apron, the knives, the wooden block. Nothing really out of the ordinary here – it’s everything you’d expect to see in a butcher’s shop and nothing more. What those objects evoke in him, though, causes the poem to take a dark turn. The last line of the first stanza – “Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel” – calls to mind images of capture, imprisonment and the hope of escape. The repetition of “blood” in lines 2-4 of the second stanza suggests not only violence and death but a sense of enormity – the “great continents” and “great rivers and oceans” of blood become almost overwhelming. Finally, the “wooden block where bones are broken” caps off the violence and causes us to realize that what we’re reading is an act of witness of sorts. The stillness and sparseness of the scene belie the brutal actions that take place there at other times.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more