TS Eliot once remarked that poetry must be difficult. These feelings are expressed in much of his poetry and in his esoteric style, particularly in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. If read literally, Rhapsody presents a disconcerting scene of confusing, albeit beautifully written, nonsense. However, if it is read in terms of a series of lexicalized ideas, rather than a sequence of events telling a story, extensive and meaningful interpretations can be drawn from it. Therefore, I believe that a metaphorical stance is necessary to appreciate the full value of Eliot's Rhapsody. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayA prime example of this can be found in the title; the reference to a “windy” night encounters no direct reference to wind in the poem. However, if we look at the connotations of wind; change, transmutation and the ephemeral, this ties in with the first line of the poem; “Noon” is the midpoint between one day and the next, often presented in literature as a time of change, perhaps most famously in Gothic fiction. The title therefore suggests that change is an important theme of the poem. Wind is also important in its ability to erode and deform; this is reflected in the repetition of “twisted” that permeates the poem. Twisted images are used to depict scenes of desolation; “a twisted branch on the beach eaten smooth”. The sea also symbolizes change, and the fact that it erodes the branch, which is part of nature, may suggest that the poem is about the effect of change in subverting nature. Additionally, the twisted is also used to convey the unnatural; “Smallpox cracks [the moon’s] face, its hand twists a paper rose.” The image of the "paper rose" symbolizing artificial beauty, juxtaposed with the personification of the moon as a sick and damaged woman, evokes the idea that industry and artificiality have a degrading effect on nature. Contextually, this makes sense since Rhapsody was written in the late 1910s; a time of great innovation and development both artistic and industrial. Eliot's use of personification and reification blurs the line between the physical and the metaphysical, adding to the poem's ambiguous and somnambulatory tone. The reification of memory (“dissolving the layers of memory”, “midnight shakes the memory”) is particularly important. This “captures the essence of an abstraction by recasting it as something more palpable”; the presentation of memory as a physical object suggests the vulnerability of memory as Eliot reminds us that, like physical objects, memory can be lost, degraded, and destroyed. If midnight is taken to symbolize a time of change, then the fact that it "shakes the memory" may suggest that further changes "shake" the memory, causing us to forget. Furthermore, the fact that the “floors” and “clear relationships, divisions and clarifications” are dissolving suggests that in the newness of innovation, tradition is fading. Modern readers may remember Santayana's famous aphorism: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", thus opening various avenues of social and political interpretation of the poem. A metaphorical reading of Rhapsody on a Windy Night proved effective, as the reification of memory inspired the song Memory in the long-running musical Cats. Alongside the aforementioned personification of the moon, Eliot also personifies areverberates throughout the poem. ; “the street lamp crackled, the street lamp muttered”. The street lamp forces the narrator to look at a series of different images ("look at that woman") and constitutes the only dialogue in the poem. This highlights the narrator's loneliness and alienation from the society depicted in these images. The anthropomorphic lamppost and the moon constitute the only sources of light in the poem. This is important because light has strong connotations of happiness, hope and positivity; however, the narrator's only source is artificial or reflexive. This staging gives us the impression that the narrator's relationships with others and with society are tense and superficial, further widening the feeling of alienation. Eliot uses creative metaphors to create acroamatic and enigmatic imagery. Readers must deconstruct these metaphors by examining the combination of literal meanings, connotations, and context of words in order to develop images of what is being described. For example: “I couldn’t see anything behind this child’s eyes. I saw eyes on the street trying to peer through lighted shutters. » is full of meaning that must be “unpacked”. The encounter between “see nothing” and “eyes,” which have contrasting literal meanings, portends discord and dissonance. Eyes are often presented in culture as being linked to character; Phrases such as the eyes being "the window to the soul" and "the mind's eye" are applicable here. Therefore, the fact that the narrator cannot "see anything behind this child's eyes" could suggest his inability to relate to others, thus expanding the arroyo that Eliot creates between his narrator and society. On the other hand, he also sees the eyes “through lighted shutters.” In the context of the poem as a whole, this is associated with the "feminine smells in the shuttered rooms", spoken of with a nostalgic tone towards the end of the poem. This, combined with the previously mentioned connotations regarding eyes and light, therefore leads us to interpret that the eyes he sees "through lighted shutters" suggest that his lack of hope and lack of connection to society may have be redeemed to some extent among women. . However, the fact that the eyes are simply "trying to look", the physical barrier of the "shutters", and the retrospection with which "feminine smells" are spoken of suggest that this redemption has been lost and confined to memory. Eliot presents the poem as a stream of consciousness with free meter and stanzas of varying line lengths. The consolidation of these structural features, the use of creative metaphors and touches of magical realism (“lunar incantations”) give the poem a dreamlike, nocturnal tone. However, the short, jerky lines of the penultimate stanza represent a return to reality. The poem ends with “the last stab”. This is a conventional metaphor, showing that the narrator's return to reality is complete. This later use of the word "twist" and the meanings derived from the expression; the pain and suffering suggest that reality is worse than all previous images of the “twisted.” Throughout the poem, age is juxtaposed with degeneration and obsolescence. For example, “her dress is torn and stained with sand.” The sand may be an allusion to the "sands of time", or perhaps to the "twisted branch on the beach". Although ambiguous, this image gives the reader a distinct impression of age and misuse. It has been “torn”, so it no longer fulfills its usefulness as clothing. Likewise, the “broken spring” is described as old and decrepit; “The rust clings to the.