Week 3: Discussion Questions

1. In Shakespeare's soliloquy "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" he definitely appears to be having doubts about the whole being in love. I would have to support the statement that was said by the critic Annemarie Muth. She explains the way Shakespeare flows from denial to then acceptance. When he says "Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove", he is showing that he can not possibly believe in something that can transform to different forms depending on the people or moment. Closer to the end he comes to the realization that love can be changed, but it is "not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks". Love will be adjusted from time to time, but it does not do it hastily. Shakespeare comes to the end of the soliloquy with some final acceptance with the statement of "If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved." He contained doubt over love, but then gives in to the belief that there is perseverance in love.

2. In the poem "Somewhere I have Never Travelled" by E.E. Cummings, he does use vivid imagery to give the reader a clear view into what he has written. There are other literary elements included as well. Cummings uses comparison and contrasting like when he says "though i have closed myself as fingers". The use of analogies goes along with the comparing as well. There is a hyperbole when Cumming states "if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully". There is some exaggeration there, that if the woman wants him to be closed off then his entire life will be closed. There is personification when it is said "not even the rain, has such small hands". He is giving the rain humanistic characteristics. The critic Ryan Poquette said that the ultimate goal of Cummings poem is "have readers experience the depth and potency of his love in the same way that he is experiencing it." Well, I would have agree that this is the main goal of the poem. And as a reader, I felt that I was able to comprehend the experience love gave to the narrator.