Kimberly Whitehall


             INTRODUCTION by Cecilia Meireles

https://pixnio.com/nature-landscapes/oceans/sky-ocean-horizon-sunset-water-dawn-sea-beach-landscape 
This image represents Introduction because it shows the 
isolated ocean that the speaker relates to their 
heritage and life. The emptiness and grief that the 
speaker feels is conveyed through the 
dark black and white filter placed on image. 
Here is my life:
This sand so clear
With drawing that walk
Dedicated to the wind…     

 Here is my voice:   
This empty shell             
The shadow of a sound
Preserving its own lament…

Here is my grief:
This broken coral
Surviving its pathetic moment…
                     
Here is my heritage:
This solitary sea —
On one side it was love
And on the other forgetfulness.
http://www.antoniomiranda.com.br/poesia_ingles/cecilia_meireles.html

About Cecilia Meireles

     Cecilia Meireles was a Brazilian writer, poet, and educator born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Meireles was raised by her grandmother because she was orphaned at a young age. She started constructing poetry when she was nine years old, but she took a break a few years after she became a teacher at the age of sixteen. When she began to write poetry again 14 years later many critics said that her poems showed maturity.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecilia-Meireles

Analyzing Introduction 

   The speaker describes their life, voice, grief, and heritage as broken and ruined aspects of the beach and ocean. They seem to have been affected by an awful event in their life that caused them to be disconsolate and miserable. In Introduction the speaker is depressed and grief-stricken. It appears as though they were happy, but a traumatic event caused them to snap. The poems figurative language helps to communicate the pain that the speaker feels. The speaker uses symbolism by describing their "grief" as "broken coral" and their "heritage" as a "solitary sea." The use of symbolism in Introduction allows the reader to connect to the poem, because they are able to associate the speaker's emotions to items in life and have an example to go off of if they have never experienced such feelings before. Meireles also uses anaphora in her poem by repeating the same phrase "here is my" at the beginning of every stanza, by using the literary tool it allows the poem to have a specific flow that helps to connect it as a whole. Introduction is divided into four stanzas which each touch on different but connected topics. Their life, voice, grief and heritage are in separate stanzas but are tethered by their relation to a part of the sea or shore. Throughout the poem the speaker's tone stays consistent with the overall feeling of misery. In Introduction the tone refines the depressing and disheartening theme. Meireles' use of words such as "empty," "pathetic," and "solitary" aid in relaying the general sorrowful attitude. The theme of Introduction is when you come to a hard moment in life it can affect, break, and change you in more ways than you thought.


Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2019 at 1:41 PM

    I agree with your anaysis. The narrator is very sad about their life being broken into pieces. Every single item that makes up the person is broken. The "sea", "coral", and "sand" are suppose to be imagery. I envision the narrator depressed comparing themselves to what is surrounding them.

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  2. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2019 at 1:49 PM

    I agree with your interpretation of life, voice, grief, and heritage as broken aspects of the beach. When the speaker mentions "forgetfulness," I think that she is talking about her birth parents and how they abandoned her at a young age. She said her voice was an "empty shell," and she probably felt that she did not have a say in what was happening around her. When reading this poem I imagined her walking on the beach and finding shells and corals. She used the shells and corals as symbols to represent her life as an orphan.

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