Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Batter my heart, three-personed God...How can I explain the contradictions in lines 2, 3, 13, and 14? And i don't know the meanings of "enthrall"...

1. Blake decries the burden of free will, for his reason ('your viceroy in me') is 'weak or untrue'. His emotions, although leaning towards God, are impotent, for Blake is "betroth'd unto [God's] enemy'.

2. Blake thus wants God to take him by force, and uses the metaphors of a town and of a woman, both captive to an usurper. Their defenses should be battered and overwhelmed, so that both can be saved from the clutches of the enemy.

3. Blake makes liberal use of paradox and oxymoron, very effective literary devises in painting the human condition as one of uncertainty and mystery: "break, blow, burn and make me new." "that I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me". "Except you enthrall (enslave) me, [I] never shall be free". "Nor [will I] ever [be] chaste, unless you ravish (take by force) me."

No comments:

Post a Comment

In Act III, scene 2, why may the establishment of Claudius's guilt be considered the crisis of the revenge plot?

The crisis of a drama usually proceeds and leads to the climax.  In Shakespeare's Hamlet , the proof that Claudius is guilty...