Exiled in a kilt

Ok, everyday when I visit this site I am amazed by the level of knowledge and how well read so many of the members are. In particular a lot of the young ones. As I have mentioned previously I was in the idiot class for English throughout high school and in fact failed it the first time around.

When I moved last year, I found a stack of my previous english notes that somehow survived the years. This is an essay I wrote at 17 in preperation for my English exam, the worst part is it is possibly the best English essay I ever wrote and I commonly see kids younger than that around here writing far more coherent, insightful posts on a variety of works that I have little knowledge of and have certainly never read.

So here it is, definitive proof that I am useless at analysis of literature and why I read only for the story.

Prompt: Poetry has been employed for specific ends. Choose a poem which in your view performs a specific "purpose", show how the poet employs the poetic form in order to convey his/her ideas, beliefs or feelings.

The purpose of "Assisi" by Norman McCaig was to attack what he sees as the hypocrisy of the modern church. The techniques that McCaig uses for this are alliteration, irony and imagery, also the poetic form is used. "Assisi" was written after McCaig returned from a visit to see Giotto's frescoes, and it is about the tourists ignoring a poor, helpless, dwarf on their way in to learn about St. Francis and God.

The poetic form is not the greatest contributor used to convey McCaigs views, but it does play a small part. Although the poem "Assisi" does not rhyme there is a definite rythym, which would not exist in a section of prose.

A further technique that McCaig uses is imagery. An image that was particularly vivid for me was when he compared the dwarf's body to a "ruined temple" and then compares this to the "three tiers of churches built in honour of St. Francis." I believe this image conveys McCaig's beliefs as it was obvious that he felt this money spent on building the churches could have been better used to help the poor, he also feels that St. Francis would have preferred the money to be spent on the poor, instead of building a church in memory of him.

Another very effective image in my opinion is the similie where he claims the dwarf's voice is "as sweet a child's when she talks to he mother, or as a bird's when it spoke to St. Francis." I though image was significant in the conveyance of McCaig's ideas, as it carried on the idea of hypocrisy on the part of the tourists as know after giving the dwarf some money they walked away with a clear consience, and in McCaig's opinion forgetting about their treatment of him earlier on their way into the church.

The above two images were also very ironic, as in both it was obvious to me that McCaig feels that the dwarf should not be ignored by everyone.

One example of irony in the poem is where the dwarf is ignored by the tourists on their way to hear about the cleverness and goodness of St. Francis, and on their way in ignoring the very kind of person whom St. Francis would be trying to help.

A further use of irony by McCaig is where he mentions the priest explaining the frescoes to the people. I believe McCaig feels though that if Saint Francis was still alive he would try to help people like the dwarf instead of wasting his time showing a few tourists around a church.

The final technique used by McCaig is alliteration. The use of alliteration in "clucking contentedly" is effective because it gives the image of of birds, like chickens, that are happy because they have just been given "food" (religious enlightenment) but on their way out they feel guilty so they give the dwarf some money so that he can buy real food. McCaig feels this is more important than the tourists enlightenment.

Therefore although poetic form is not the most important aspect of "Assisi", when combined with imagery, irony and alliteration it produces a very specific purpose in the poem as a whole.

** All grammatical and spelling errors have been left intact, there is no innocent here to protect**

**See here for poem