TS Eliot once observed that poetry must be difficult. The sentiments of this are expressed in much of his poetry and in his esoteric style, especially in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. If read literally, Rhapsody presents a bewildering scene of confusing, albeit beautifully written, nonsense. However, when read in terms of a series of lexicalized ideas, rather than a sequence of events that tell a story, broad and meaningful interpretations can be drawn. Therefore, I am convinced that a metaphorical attitude is necessary to appreciate the full value of Eliot's Rhapsody. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay A prime example of this is in the title; the reference to a "windy" night is not met with any direct reference to wind in the poem. However, if we look at the connotations of wind; change, transmutation and ephemerality, this links to the first line of the poem; "twelve o'clock" is the midpoint between one day and the next, often presented in literature as a time of change, perhaps most famously in Gothic fiction. Therefore the title is a foreboding that change is an important theme in the poem. The wind is also important in its ability to erode and deform; this is reflected in the repetition of the 'twisted', which pervades the poem. Distorted images are used to depict scenes of desolation; 'a twisted branch on the beach eaten smooth'. The sea also symbolizes change, and the fact that it erodes the branch, which is part of nature, may suggest that the poem is about the effect of change in subverting nature. Furthermore, the twisted is also used to convey the unnatural; "smallpox splits [the moon's] face, her hand twists a paper rose." The image of the "paper rose" symbolizing man-made beauty, juxtaposed with the personification of the moon as a sick and damaged woman, evokes the idea that industry and the artificial have a degrading effect on nature. Contextually, this makes sense since Rhapsody was written in the late 1910s; a period of great innovation and development, both artistic and industrial. Eliot's use of personification and reification blurs the line between the physical and the metaphysical, adding to the ambiguous, sleepwalking tone of the poem. The reification of memory (“dissolves the floors of memory”, “midnight shakes memory”) is particularly evident. This "captures the essence of an abstraction by reframing it as something more palpable"; the presentation of memory as a physical object suggests the vulnerability of memory as Eliot reminds us that, like physical objects, memory can be lost, degraded, and destroyed. If midnight is understood as a symbol of a time of change, then the fact that it “shakes the memory” could suggest that the new changes are “shaking off” the memory, causing us to forget. Furthermore, the fact that the "basics" and "clear relationships, divisions and clarifications" dissolve suggests that in the newness of innovation tradition is fading. Modern readers may be reminded of Santayana's famous aphorism "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", opening up various avenues of social and political interpretation of the poem. A metaphorical reading of Rhapsody on a Windy Night proved effective, as the reification of memory inspired the song Memory in the long-running musical Cats. In addition to the aforementioned personification of the moon, Eliot also personifies a street lamp throughout the poem. ; "the streetlamp crackled, the streetlamp grumbled." The streetlight forces the narrator tolooking at a series of different images ("look at that woman") and provides the poem's only dialogue. This highlights the narrator's loneliness and his alienation from the society depicted in these images. The anthropomorphic street lamp and the moon provide the only sources of light in the poem. This is as important as the strong connotations of happiness, hope and positivity; however the narrator's only source of this is artificial or reflected. This staging gives us the impression that the narrator's relationships with others and with society are tense and superficial, further amplifying the feeling of alienation. Eliot uses creative metaphors to create acroamatic and cryptic images. Readers must deconstruct these metaphors by looking at the combination of literal meanings, connotations, and context of the words in order to develop images of what is being described. For example: “I couldn't see anything behind that child's eye.” I saw eyes in the street trying to peek through the lighted shutters' is full of meaning that needs to be 'unpacked'. The statement of "seeing nothing" and "eyes" having contrasting literal meanings portends discord and dissonance. The eyes are often presented in culture as attributable to the character; Expressions such as the eyes being "the window of the soul" and "the mind's eye" are applicable here. Therefore the fact that the narrator can "see nothing behind that child's eyes" could suggest his inability to relate to others, expanding the arroyo that Eliot creates between his narrator and society. On the other hand, he also sees eyes "through illuminated shutters." In the context of the whole poem this is associated with "feminine smells in closed rooms", mentioned in a nostalgic tone towards the end of the poem. This, combined with the previously mentioned connotations of eyes and light, then leads us to interpret that the eyes he sees "through the illuminated shutters" suggest that his hopelessness and lack of connection to society may have been redeemed in a some extent in women. . However, the fact that the eyes only try to scrutinize, the physical barrier of the shutters and the retrospective with which female odors are mentioned suggest that this redemption has been lost and is confined to memory. poetry as a stream of consciousness with a free meter and stanzas of different lengths. The consolidation of these structural features, the use of creative metaphors and touches of magical realism ("moon spells") give the poem a dreamlike, nocturnal tone. However, the short, staccato lines of the penultimate stanza represent a return to reality. The poem ends with "the last twist of the knife". This is a conventional metaphor, showing that the narrator's transition to reality is complete. This further use of the word "twist" and the meanings derived from the phrase; pain and suffering suggest that reality is worse than any previous image of the "twisted". Throughout the poem, age is juxtaposed with degeneracy and the obsolete. For example, "her dress is torn and stained with sand." The sand may be an allusion to the "sands of time", or perhaps a reference to the "twisted branch on the beach". Although ambiguous, this image gives the reader the distinct impression of age and misuse. It has been "torn", so it no longer fulfills its use as clothing. Likewise, the “broken spring” is described as old and decrepit; 'rust sticks to the shape that force has left'. Its use as a spring is to withstand tension, however it has become brittle; 'hard and curled and ready to break'. This can be considered a symbol of tradition becoming obsolete and discarded, or in.