Essay Comparing The Wild Swans At Coole And Among School Children

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Yeats paradoxically expresses the collision of order and chaos extremely effectively, by representing order as the passing of time and chaos as the speaker's cognizance of the aging process as a consequence of time, resulting in the awareness of his own mortality. Both The Wild Swans at Coole and Among School Children represent order and chaos as the being intrinsically connected, thus inevitably colliding. In The Wild Swans at Coole, the speaker reminisces the inevitability of transformation which is a result of time passing and the suffering it brings about. Similarly, Among School Children reflects on the loss brought by aging, however, it emphasises the necessity of acknowledging this aspect of human experience rather than neglecting it …show more content…

The persona is communicated to be “A sixty-year old ‘smiling public man”, however, this is contradicted with “the children” who stare “in momentary wonder”. The juxtaposition Convey’s the passionate interior of the persona and the reminiscing of youthful days. This reflection portrays the loss and sorrow associated with aging as suggested in the binary opposite “of a childish way to tragedy”. This is furthered when Yeats realises that even the beautiful and enchanting Maud Gonne has aged, through vivid imagery, “Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind”. The disturbing tone created through the imagery of “Hollow” implies death and aging, whilst the ephemerality of “wind” symbolizes the brevity of life and one's youth being “swept away” causing aging, loss and suffering. Moreover, the subversion from the personal to the universal as Yeats questions the value and burden of life. Through the assonance of onomatopoeic sounds, “shriek, sleep, struggle”, creates a pessimistic tone, alluding the misery and hardship that one will go through during aging and it being an inescapable experience because of times continuation. This is furthered with the pathetic fallacy of winter, “with sixty or more Winters on its head”, the metaphor of winter rather than the word choice of “years” communicates the anguish of living and existence, because as time continuous, pain, suffering and dying will prove one's mortality in comparison to times never ending cycle. In lieu of this, the process of aging and time being interconnected causes chaos and illuminates the extremity of loss and suffering in one's

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