Analysis Of Jim Stevens 'Schizophrenia'

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Schizophrenia By: Jim Stevens Jim Stevens poem Schizophrenia depicts the way a schizophrenic person’s brain works. The poem uses two different types of figurative language-allegory, and symbolism. Allegory is used in the first line of the poem when it says “it was the house that suffered the most. In this instance, Stevens is using a visualization of a house but in my opinion he chose the house as an image that portrays the schizophrenic person, or the, mind of a schizophrenic poem. From the view of a reader I viewed the poem as being about a schizophrenic man rather than about a house having feelings such as suffering. The end of the first line states” the house that suffers the most, this statement takes on multiple meanings. A house …show more content…

The house itself can be used as a symbol to describe a family and how they go about living their life. Locking the doors before they go to bed, shouting at each other when they get into a fight, saying that they are sorry, having a divided house because of an issue, taking sides etc. In the sixth stanza when it says “seeing cracking paint, broken windows/ the front door banging in the wind/ the roof tiles flying off, one by one / the neighbors said it was a madhouse”, can symbolize that the house was slowly starting to crumble due to neglect. It also could symbolize that this house might have been abandoned when the schizophrenic person decided to …show more content…

By repeating this line, it shows that even though things in the house seemed to have settled down the trauma of Schizophrenia remained. I can relate this back to my life in a form of a car accident. A couple of years ago, I got into a bad car accident on the high way. During this car accident, I went across four lanes of traffic twice, spinning around in my car finally to stop in the median. The worst thing about it was it was a hit in and run. Even though this was several years ago, I still have a constant reminder of my accident every time I drive by the location of the accident. This just goes to show that trauma can make a lasting effect on a person especially a person with

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