numero due (domanda due)

The first thing I noticed about William Yeats poem was the amount of imagery he uses. Almost every line paints a picture in the reader’s mind of what is taking place. I feel that he used so much imagery because rape is a brutally violent act, but Yeats would not have been able to illustrate that without using description. The poem made me feel indifferent. Rape is a touchy subject and not something most people want to read about. I would like to known if Yeats had some sort of personal experience that drove him to write this poem. The poem was easy to understand the general concept that a rape was occurring, but he used a wide variety of vocabulary and he made an allusion to mythology that the average reader may not have picked up on. I knew who Agamemnon was, but I didn’t know that he was murdered by his wife upon his return from the Trojan War, which may have been the very reason why Yeats included him in the poem.
I think Yeats used mythology in this poem because it symbolizes the rape that is taking place. The City of Troy was invulnerable in its citizen’s mind until the Greeks conquered them. The broken walls, burning towers and burning roofs symbolize the raping of the women just as Troy was raped. When Agamemnon returned home after defeating the Trojans, he was murdered by his wife. This parallels the anger and hatred that the woman has for her rapists. Yeats tries to have the reader understand the scale of the dead taking place. A rape is a horrible thing, but he wants to put it on the same scale as an entire city burning to allow the reader to understand how heinous an act it is. The poem has some archetypal themes. Despair and loss has always been a theme through the history of literature. The desperation the Trojans felt is the same desperation that the woman felt, and is the same desperation that people in the future will experience when put in similar situations. Another theme in the poem that is illustrated through the past is loss of innocence. The Greeks lost their innocence in destroying the city. Agamemnon’s wife lost her innocence when she murdered her husband. The rape victim lost her innocence when the event occurred. She will never know what it feels like to not have been raped, just as the Greeks and wife will no longer exist without the knowledge of murder.