The Meaning behind “Vindicated”
The speaker in “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional is the teenager inside all of us, and this understanding is vital in comprehending the meaning of the song. The contradictory lines (8-13) and overall sense of confusion helps us to better relate to the way we felt in our teen years. Perplexed and unsure of ourselves, we may not really know which way is up. But no matter what, we are correct, just because we do not want to be wrong.
In the first stanza we are captivated by hope, because it “dangles on a string” before us, not quite in our grasp, because even though we are aware of it, we do not fully have a handle on what it means to be hopeful (1). This is then said to be like “slow-spinning redemption” (2). Again, this is because we do not fully appreciate redemption. We can see it before us, in many different lights, hence spinning, but we do not really understand what makes redemption what it is. Because we do not comprehend the concepts of hope and redemption they “rope us in” and “mesmerize” us (5, 6). We spend a lot of time in our youth...
The opening stanza sets the tone for the entire poem. Updike uses symbolism to portray the sad, disappointing life Flick ...
...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
O. Henry once said, “The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.” The poem goes a lot a deeper than the words on the page, the items and decisions within it really make you see things differently. Three symbols really stuck out to me; adolescence, sadness, and timelessness.
Connelly uses a reflective tone to indicate that one must learn through experience. We learn through confronting what scares us and leaving our comfort zones. While struggling in a situation, the person involved usually realizes “[they] are a fool / come this far” (l. 10-11). Most people will attempt to find an escape, but often to no avail. Therefore, they must confront what they fear in order to move past it. Panicking what some people will resort to as “[their] heart / dissolves like a holy tablet / of salt” (l. 14-16). Swallowing salt water compares to accepting the various defeats everyone experiences on a daily basis. Hyperbole is used in these lines, because sometimes an individual may exaggerate by saying the burdens in their life are “killing” them. The third stanza exerts a calming mood, by describing that the object the swimmer was afraid of was “only a drifting body / of wood. Or a dolphin” (l. 17-19). This symbolizes that the obstacles in life are sometimes nothing to even spend a second worrying about. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes all that needs to be done is to take a step back and obtain a different point of view. In retrospect, fears are sometimes irrational because humans are wired to fear the
enable us to understand the moral of the poem. Which is work hard and you will receive you goals and never give up.
Contradicting to an even further extent, the attitude of the work, the final stanza seems to ridicule the previous: "Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; / The worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots," (CPP, 13). Concerning itself with the world as a whole, the lines utilize a simile to characterize the inevitable persistence of meaningless action, action that sustains persistence, inturn sustaining a spiritually defunct society.
According to Mays “[a]ny one poem may open itself to multiple responses and interpretations…” leading to the metaphor of the butterfly (Mays 847). “The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it” (Poem 2 1). Common sense is needed to read between the lines of such poems, but according to Mays “… some poems certainly do invite us to re-think our idea of what ‘making sense’ might mean” (Mays 846). Sometimes it takes to reevaluating a situation in order to gain the proper message intended to be received. Being uncertain or misunderstanding the concept of a message or even life itself, may lead to depression, causing one to feel the need to escape the pain. The best way to overcome the trail is to continue to search for clarity, because giving up can lead to mistakes which will again delay the progress of becoming successful. Later as the “wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant/ Finally free…” (Poem 2 15 and 16). After gaining the understanding of the way life operates people tend to realize that the struggles were meant to gain appreciation; once they are free they will not take the gained knowledge for granted, but instead use it as wisdom. “It’s a fitting
There are a couple of similes the author uses in the poem to stress the helplessness she felt in childhood. In the lines, “The tears/ running down like mud” (11,12), the reader may notice the words sliding down the page in lines 12-14 like mud and tears that flowed in childhood days. The speaker compares a...
The second stanza of the poem introduces the horse and further develops the location of the events occurring. The horse represents the speakers conscience. following the speaker throughout his life. and hinting at what paths o...
For many of us, one of the most accurate and effective ways to express the feelings that really matter to us is through music. We don’t only grow to attached to songs that are catchy, but also those with lyrics that we can relate to. It is not uncommon to feel like sometimes, artists can convey the way we feel better than we could ourselves. The storybook-like lines you read at the start of this page are a collection of lyrics
In this song The Fray takes great effort to convey the point of talking with the youth of today about making the correct decisions that will have a large affect upon one's life. Although the song in no way forces the narrators thoughts and ideas upon the youth they still firmly instill the knowledge of his choices impact on his future. Ideally this would be a guideline, an alarm of hope, a script on how to one day "save a life."
The image developed in the first stanza is especially striking, with its suggestion of once tame and friendly animals who have reverted to wildness and will no longer risk the seemingly innocent taking of bread from the speaker's hand. This stanza establishes at once the theme of change, a change from a special, privileged condition to one of apparent mistrust or fear, and the sense of strangeness (no explanation is given for the change) that will continue to trouble the speaker in the third stanza. Strangeness is inherent in the image itself -- "with naked foot stalking in my chamber" - -- and the stanza is filled with pairs of words that reinforce the idea of contrast: "flee"/"seek," "tame"/"wild," "sometime"/"now," "take break"/"range." Most interestingly, we are never told who "they" are.
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to
All of this gives the poem a very loose and unrestrained structure which is very well-suited to the theme of the poem the re-connection with the inner self and the sense of freedom to explore one’s inner self after becoming free from the distractions of one’s life. In addition, by having this kind of rhyme scheme, we could pause little by little and contemplate on how every stanza or verse can be incorporated in everyday living. To summarize, having a sense of freedom is the key to embracing one’s inner self.