Losing a Language Explication free essay sample

Merwin immediately sets a tone for â€Å"Losing a Language† in the title, hinting at the lament-like characteristic of the poem. In fact, the title is not supposed to be a metaphor or even contain a hidden meaning that the reader must deduce by reading on. The poem is exactly what the title suggests: language and words, and thus communication, has been lost. Merwin creates a nostalgic and sad tone to emphasize the loss and quickly establishes the direction of the poem using simple diction. He carries this simple language, along with the mournful tone, into the rest of the work and does not stray from the subject. This allows the central idea, the loss of language, to not only persist throughout the piece but to become the dominant thought in each line. The speaker starts with â€Å"A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back. † This breath is an example of the words that people speak and the same words that the speaker will mourn over. We will write a custom essay sample on Losing a Language Explication or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Strangely, we are not given any information about the breath, even though it becomes the subject of the poem. It was simply mentioned in the very beginning and is now gone, and all we know is that it used to exist. This sets up the nostalgia that resonates in each line. Also, when something is lost, there is a chance that it may be found again, but the speaker lets readers know that it will not come back, creating a sense of loss and its finality. The choice to use â€Å"breath† is not insignificant. A single breath is light, delicate, unnoticeable, and vanishes quickly. The speaker may wish to convey the fragility of communication. The first two lines essentially introduce the main conflicts that are present until the end of the poem. The speaker continues using words that illustrate irrevocability. In the second and third couplets, â€Å"no longer† shows up twice, and later readers see the word â€Å"nothing,† all of which adds to the idea that the words that were once known are absolutely gone. In addition, the speaker maintains the delicate image of communication. In the tenth couplet, we see that â€Å"the day is glass,† again showing us that language is breakable. A second conflict introduced in the first couplet is the gap between the old and the young due to the loss or change of language. The speaker states that the â€Å"old still remember† and contrasts this with the young, who â€Å"have fewer words. † In the fifth couplet, we see a similar situation with parents and children. The speaker gives us two ends of a spectrum to demonstrate the distance that the change in language has created. We see a physical representation of this with the line, â€Å"farther and farther away. † The gap is also represented in the sixth and ninth couplets, particularly in the lines â€Å"we are wrong and dark / in the eyes of the new owners. By referring to one side as â€Å"we† and the other as â€Å"them,† â€Å"new owners,† or â€Å"somebody,† we can see two sides and that what was once familiar to the speaker is now replaced by something â€Å"foreign† (line 21) and an â€Å"us vs. them† gap is formed. Because the speaker is direct and clear, we are able to recognize the nostalgic tone simply because of what the speake r is explicitly telling us. However, the structure of the poem also contributes to the tone. There are no punctuations throughout the entire poem, yet we still read it slow enough to create a dramatic and sad mood. The poem is divided into fourteen couplets, each with a substantial gap between them. At the end of a couplet, we are forced to slow down and fully pause before moving on to a new section. In addition, most of the lines are complete clauses or thoughts, which inhibits our need to immediately move on to the next line. Moreover, there are no rhymes throughout the poem. For the speaker, there is nothing carefree or amusing about losing a language, and when he portrays this to the reader, he does it in a way that is not musical, but solemn and dramatic. The last two couplets are not unlike the preceding ones. This is what the words were made / to prophesy† is again a demonstration of how the loss is definite. Language could have been used to warn people of its loss, but it is impossible to do so if we lack the means or the words. The last two lines, similar to the first two, also present us with something that once was existent but is now gone. Like the breath, the â€Å"extinct f eathers† and the â€Å"rain we saw† are things that we will not know more about or have a chance to see, possibly because we are too young. It seems as if the speaker is referring to himself as â€Å"we† and we as the audience have become the â€Å"new owners. †