Themes For Verbatim In The Fly By Karl Shapiro

Not every opinion within our heads is original often we hear or read something that is the opinion of someone else and incorporate it. The worst thing to do when analyzing your opinion is to follow another’s for verbatim. When an individual adopts another’s belief on a subject their actions become untrue to that person’s fundamental character. In “The Fly” by Karl Shapiro, the author cautiously manipulates different literary devices to indicate the unsettling occurrence of unorthodox individuals being swayed by social norms to confirm their viewpoints even when considering the most insignificant creatures.
When the narrator in Shapiro’s poem reflects on the fly’s appearance and life circumstances the speaker demonstrates an abnormal mixture …show more content…
Within the last few stanzas, a collection of intense verbs appears such as “slap”, “mangle”, “expose” and “tear”. These verbs together demonstrate the speaker’s new overwhelming rage towards the fly. The speaker describes his action as if “one beats a rat”. There is so much importance placed on this small fly that the speaker has escalated its importance in the big scheme of things. The speaker is also proud of his destruction of the creature demonstrated through him referring to himself as Gargantua walking about the dead insects. As a whole the last few stanzas is a hyperbola for what the speaker believes is socially acceptable on how to react to the small creature. Although based on the speaker’s feeling towards the fly at the beginning, his pride now is just a false exterior. He studied this fly’s most minute details and pondered its life, the speaker’s profound connection with the fly could not allow for such a prideful feeling about killing a creature he once felt affection for. The controlling societal pressures caused the speaker to suppress his compassion for the fly and give in to his violent nature. Finally, Karl Shapiro ends his poem with “and dies between three cannibals” which could suggest that the speaker is alerted to his own frightening savage impulses like the rest of society.
The troubling idea that extraordinary thinkers when pushed to conform end up over compensating with their actions is evoked in “The Fly” by Karl Shapiro through the obscure manipulation of literary devices. Individuals that consider society’s opinion when determining their own results in fabricated ideas that transforms the individual. Although not every opinion within our heads is original be cautious when incorporate foreign views because it could alter what makes you,