Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines'

Edward Ramirez
Literature
Professor Hall
February 19th, 2017 “And the Snakes will start to Float”

Many individuals living among a society tend to abide by laws for fear of the unknown – in order to stay safe. When speaking of order and chaos, the two juxtapose each other by definition and idea. Chaos being the subject matter for being viewed as a negative entity, will have difficulty getting through even the simple-minded individuals. In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1954 Italian sonnet, “I Will Put Chaos into Fourteen Lines”, Millay dispatches an understanding that her thoughts, which represents Chaos, will be able to co-exist within the borders of order and insist that anything deemed dangerous is just different. To an extent, Millay handles

Millay follows a tendency to use personification to display Chaos as masculine by using words as “him” (2) “his” (10) and “he” (11). Millay transcends her inner thoughts as a man incapable to abide by rules – such is the stereotypical portrayal of a man in literature. By using personification on Chaos she is able to connect her audience to a human rather than a word. Millay also laments the idea that certain measures were laid on Chaos: “…years of our duress/… our awful servitude” (9-10). With “duress” (9) Millay believes Chaos did not have a say into what was going to become of her work and have him assimilated into what is expected in a camaraderie. Despite cynical connotations with words as, “Flood, fire, and demon…” (4) used to flaw Chaos throughout the octet, Millay breaches a sense of confidence that she will tame “him” and let everyone know that there isn’t anything to fear. Ultimately, Chaos is able to establish a relationship for those who have difficulty fitting in a group due to his/her physical appearance or even their reputation proceeded by individuals unfamiliar with