Analysis Of The Poem ' The Ruined Maid '

Have you ever read a mystery story and or listen to your favorite song and thought that they are completely different? Well here is a little dose of reality check, they are not so different. Books and music are both a style of writing. They both tell their own story whether its fictional or based on a real experience. Same can also be said about poetry, “Poetry is, in certain vitals ways, distinct from other forms of writing” (847). However, the biggest difference between these three are the answers in the end. In a book you will receive the answer to your question as you continue, the lyrics will tell you what happened and how they feel, but sometimes in poetry one might not ever find an answer.

The poems by Hardy, Thomas “The Ruined Maid” (852) and Kennedy, X.J. “In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day” (884) although these poems have many things that makes them alike, a more explained detail and examples will help one understand and see how they are more different and alike. In these to poem I find them to have more difference than they are alike.

In the first poem The Ruined Maid, this is a conversation between two women about the new and better life one of them has acquired. The main character Amelia and an old acquaintance she has encounter while strutting through town, recounts Amelia’s old life as a poorly maid before she was so richly “ruined”. The style of this poem is Dramatic Poetry. Dramatic Poetry is “a poem structured so as to present a scene or series of scene as in a work of drama” (A4). It is a Dramtic Poem because it is mainly a conversation between the two characters and is without a narrator. For example:

Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I’m bewitched by your delicate...

... middle of paper ...

... cost of junk. (Kennedy 884)

However, despite the differences in the poems, some might think there are more similarities. Both the poems “The Ruined Maid” and “In Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day”, show Rhyme. Rhyme is the repetition or correspondent of the terminal sound of words. These poems demonstrate end rhyme with stressing the last words of the poem on every line. Also the message of the poems is similar. Both Rose and Amelia’s life had changed greatly while they were young. Due to Ameila having been ruined, and Rose being single and fine they both lost their virginity, which caused activated the change in their lives.

Still the poems are more different than they are alike. Their style of writing, diction, and even their views on the situation or experience are different. However, as readers of literature we all have the right to agree or disagree.