The complexity of the human brain is something frequently taken advantage of by the majority of humanity. It is quite natural for man to not think of the mind’s fantastic powers; for as long as one remains in health there seems to be no meaning in contemplating what works so efficiently. However, poet T.S. Eliot argues in his poem “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” that these inner workings of the brain are in fact not so elusive, rather they are just so obvious it is easy for man to overlook them and thus lose perspective on what it is that keeps people regulated and sane. Yet, although one inevitably possesses these tools, humanity is still fundamentally part of nature; a force which is commonly perceived as uncontrollable. Therefore, remaining
…show more content…
While the text has previously introduced “the street lamp,” it now begins to talk to the speaker; guiding him on his journey to find cohesion. Based on the way in which the lamp interacts with the speaker, it suggests that the lamp is explaining to him the implications of memory loss and how this could be reversed. It asks him to take note of a woman in her doorway, whose “border of her dress/ is torn and stained with sand.” One typically thinks of a border in the context of a nation; in which case it is a manmade boundary designed to regulate the distribution of territory. Therefore, depicting the edge of the woman’s dress as a border is a metaphor for memory as it does for a country what a memory does for the mind; that is shape it. However, the naturally free-flowing consistency of sand has ruined the structure a border would normally possess. Sand is indeed a material which moves quite easily and tends to attach itself to objects, and there is not much one can do to prevent that. This makes it somewhat uncontrollable and thus chaotic. If the border can be interpreted as the memory, it is the irregularity of nature which has caused destruction to the mind. This same idea is expressed elsewhere in the poem as well, such as when the speaker claims that memory “throws
While the text has previously introduced “the street lamp,” it now begins to talk to the speaker; guiding him on his journey to find cohesion. Based on the way in which the lamp interacts with the speaker, it suggests that the lamp is explaining to him the implications of memory loss and how this could be reversed. It asks him to take note of a woman in her doorway, whose “border of her dress/ is torn and stained with sand.” One typically thinks of a border in the context of a nation; in which case it is a manmade boundary designed to regulate the distribution of territory. Therefore, depicting the edge of the woman’s dress as a border is a metaphor for memory as it does for a country what a memory does for the mind; that is shape it. However, the naturally free-flowing consistency of sand has ruined the structure a border would normally possess. Sand is indeed a material which moves quite easily and tends to attach itself to objects, and there is not much one can do to prevent that. This makes it somewhat uncontrollable and thus chaotic. If the border can be interpreted as the memory, it is the irregularity of nature which has caused destruction to the mind. This same idea is expressed elsewhere in the poem as well, such as when the speaker claims that memory “throws