Analysis Of The Poem 'The Vine' By Robert Herrick

The poem “The Vine” by Robert Herrick demonstrates the concept of the psychoanalysis theory by describing a physical vine being a long stem of a plant and but the usage of it relates that to himself, in which he wraps himself around his lover just like a vine would wrap around other things. Herrick demonstrates the theory of psychoanalytic through the defenses of not recognizing destructive behavior from forming identity around it by the usages of denial, displacement and regression. The lover does not give infatuation in return. Which is where these techniques come into terms within the poem. Herrick makes the speaker of the poem to be someone who is love with this girl. He has the power to take over of the virginity of this woman and at the time he is not certain whether she is enjoying it or not and feels mutual and the same way. He is in denial with the fact that she actually does not like it by describing it in the lines “Was metamorphosed to a vine, Which crawling one and every

(All parts there made one prisoner). But when I crept with leaves to hide. Those parts which maids keep unespied, Such fleeting pleasures there I took” (Herrick 14-20). This shows how she felt as if she was taken advantage of because she could not move while he was doing these things to her. Through her eyes this could be considered rape and is demonstrated through regression being that it was a pleasurable state for him. Also, being the act of a primitive pleasure for him through imagination and in this case the poem is based around his dream obviously stating is his imagination. This is shown in the line, “I dreamed this moral part of mine” (Herrick 1). Indicating where the concept of imagination comes in through