Wednesday, February 11, 2009

“Ghosts and Drunks”
Disillusionment of Ten O’ Clock by
Wallace Stevens

In the poem Disillusionment of Ten O’ Clock, the poet suggests that certain words are imperative to describe and contrast the characters and imply certain fragments in the poem. The handling of connotations through color, diction, and dreams clues the reader in to find the purpose of the poem. Stevens uses these implications to depict the townspeople who dwell in their “haunted” homes as ghosts and how their lives are without stimulation or dreams that translates to no prospect towards the future. In addition, Stevens creates a dichotomy between the townspeople and the “old sailor”. The “old” sailor is ironically embodied as the lively, imaginative and dream-wise; prospective person among the haunted souls. The purpose of the poet is to convey the message of man’s pursuit for that dream and how others would abandon theirs and settle into a dull and haunting life.
The first stanza introduces the “haunted” townspeople who are laden with “nightgowns”. Through this text, the visual imagery of “white nightgowns” dwelling through the “haunted houses” gives strong resonance to have the reader connect the vision of nightgowns to an image of a ghost. From there, the connotation of the word “white” hints a relation ship with the ghost. The term refers to the clear, characterless, bland, and naïve. The poet uses these associations with the word to deepen the meaning if the look the towns people being referred to as ghosts. The second stanza, develops form the first to give more description to the townspeople being naïve and characterless.

One example is the poet mentioning none of the residents is “strange”. The choice of pointing this out to reader would insist that the residents of the city are without any quirk, that they are not weird in any way. Through this choice of words, Stevens implies that these people are the bland and characterless people. The idea of a human having any foibles would insist their originality, in short; what makes them unique. Stevens justifies his position to label them as “white nightgowns” .In the last two lines of the stanza, the poet explains that the inhabitants of the houses, do not dream reveries of eccentricity or their own unique concepts. The poet intends to defend why he would choose “baboons and periwinkles as a definition for a dream. The whole implications of the word baboon would interpret in a the inference of a “clumsy, oafish, person

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