Louis MacNeices and Thom Guns poems Essay Example for Free

Louis MacNeices and Thom Guns metrical compositions EssayLouis MacNeices and Thom Guns meters use the first voice to look at have a bun in the oven through babies eyes. They help us see that babies, unborn or newborn, be living merely powerless beings. They crapper think and feel but cannot make decisions or changes in their cognizes. MacNeices piece is burthen with desperate pleas from the uterus for a chance to live while Gunns poem takes on a lighter tone towards a newborns differ to leaving the comfortable and familiar uterus. Written in the form of a prayer, the Prayer in front Birth addresses God as its audience but the poets intention is re wholey to decry the horrors of abortion to the reader. The poem takes on a troubled tone of one who is facing death sentence. The centers of its tone are made stronger through the use of the first soul in the impotent unborn youngster to lose ones temper the fact that it is alive and not separaten a choice for its life. Each stanza repeats the fact that it has yet live. This even off the reader into the speakers thick(p)est burden as it reveals its concerns.The poem also uses images associated with pains and fears the speaker faces to communicate its tone of deep depression. The first stanza shows us a childs nightmare of bat, rat and ghoul followed by equipment of torture such as walls, racks and drugs then criminal acts of treason and murder men in authority as in gaga men, bureaucrats and manwho thinks he is God and finally the vivid description of the brutal act and the detachment of the speaker from its obtain of humanity. All these depressive images are interrupted only in the third stanza, with a sense of longing and in warmer tone, to experience life from childhood (being dandle) to death (being guided by a white light). It brings images of record and life and all that we take for granted.Even the poems structure supports the tone. The long sentences and heavy-sounding words (dragoon, dissipate and bloodsucking) communicate a heavily laden heart. The poem moves slowly with increasing length at distributively stanza and that tells of a intensify sense of hopelessness. The sixth stanza is very short as if to communicate the end of the hope. The last stanzas lines shorten with each subsequent plea as if to signify the shortening timeleft.The poet chooses words that support the deeply burdened tone and evoke the readers emotional response. This is especially so when an innocent unborn has been subjected various agents of abortion in the form of creatures of the night (bat, rat and ghoul), equipment of torture (walls, racks and blood-baths), criminal acts (treasons and murder) and unloving human (lovers, beggars and bureaucrats). They communicate uncaring, cold and ghastly in achieving their ends without regard to the subject. Many rarely used heavy-sounding and multi-syllabus words add to the ominous mood as they dragoon, dissipate and engendered the speaker.And th en the word thistledown also helps add the finality of the act as we picture the fetus as unattached weed just go directionless and lifeless (hither and thither) to be spilled like body of water into the drain. The use of the word me gives a picture of helplessness to be subjected to other peoples direction (think me, beyond me, live me, curse me, lecture me and hector me). The sum effect of the dramatic play of words is designed to form the dark, troubled mood of one facing death sentence and to draw a response from the reader.On the other hand, Gunn also uses the first voice but he gives the protesting baby a less extreme tone. His intention is to explain the babys first cry and he thinks that it is from its reluctance to leave an environment of security and eagerness for a strange and cold world. The poem carries an angry tone of complains (Things were different inside)and warm tone of memories (The unadulterated comfort of her inside). Like the previous poem, the effect of its tone is made stronger through the use of the first person who shares its experience first hand. Yet unlike the first poem, the tone it carries is not as overwhelming as to evoke a respond from the reader for it hints that it is only temporal (I may forget).Gunns poem also uses images but those of contrasting scenes to communicate its objection to the changes. One can hear the warm and longing tone as the baby thinks of the snug and secure jolly and padded and the perfect comfort of her inside. Otherwise, the poem moves in displeasure as itcompares the warm and wet and black womb with a rain of blood and the discomfort of the lighted outside world, the exposed and spacious rustling bed and the changes that comes when all time roars. Like MacNeices poem, it also communicates a helpless baby in the midst of the situation it cannot change as it lies raging, small, and red. And it may continue to folly till it forgets for it has no choice to the matter of whether it wants to be born.Gunns poem is designed to support the tone of protest through its fast-paced, easy-to-read rhythm and rhyme and its short and even sentences. These, as compared with Prayer before birth, give the effect of a less forceful albeit angry tone. Its pace slow down a little in the last two stanzas (with longer vowels sleep, soon, womb and board) as the child gets tired and slips into dreams of the familiar surrounding again.The poem keeps the lighter tone and moves with ease through informal and conversational language. Many of the words chosen in this poem refers to tangible objects as in womb, bed and room. The tone is also supported by choosing single-syllabi carry out words like fall, ride, tuck and lie. All those action words imply how quickly everything happens between birth and the babys sleep. Many words also indicate the drastic differences the baby has to endure at birth e.g. from offstage to a shared environment from the warm and wet and black womb to a lighted room an d from padded and jolly to rustling. All these imply changes the baby needs to adjust to. But they are all temporal shock and the protest will not last even though the newborn may fight it But I wont forget that I regret. And eventually, all that is left of the memory of the womb may exist only in the babys dream.Both poems revolve around the subject birth and give thought to life. The main difference is that MacNeices poem is meant to evoke a response or perhaps farm the reader to action while Gunns poem only wants to share a response of a baby at birth.