Men in Chains Essay Example

handcuffing someone means taking away their freedom.

Our hands are our connection to everything else, once they are taken away or limited to action, so is our connection and freedom. “Ankles manacled” is an extension to his already proposed point of a tie up of one’s freedom using force. If we pay attention to the speed of the two lines, they have very short breakneck notes. This creates a sharp rhythm to the verse, which throws across his point more distinctly with more violence. Something quick is something sure, definite, and expressive. Almost aggressive.

Men in Chains similes

The peot to further portray his disgust and sadness towards the state of these men uses a simile; “like cattle at the abattoirs”; this is an intense statement. He compares the tragic case of the forced men naked of any dignity to the sight of cattle at abattoirs. At the slaughter houses these cattle are about to face death. The atmosphere is never exciting or heart-lifting. Cheer absent from every face, the saddened men wait their turn for whatever there is to come. They are helpless and lack control over their next move, their next decision, their future as a whole lies between the hands of another.

Words like “trapdoor”, “handcuffed” and “manacled” express the trapped life they face. They represent the very minimum freedom they obtain from life. Furthermore, two lines I find particularly interesting; “One man with a head shaven clean as a potato”, the poet again uses a simile to examine in contrast the man’s shaven head to a clean finish of a potato. The man’s head is bare, identical to all

the rest, like “cattle”. Secondly, the poet uses aural imagery to enunciate the happening. He does this when he quotes on of the prisoners; “Go away!

Cold wind! Go away! ” Here the poet not only uses exclamation marks in order to exaggerate the saying and make it stand out, but he uses repetition. Repetition is an interesting way to create a dramatic effect, it increases intensity and creates a determined idea. When the man exclaimed “Go away! ” twice, this constitutes a scream of desperation and anger. The poet put this quote in to indirectly grab the reader’s sympathy, as it did his. Finally, the poet includes another quote; “Oh! Dear Sun! Won’t you warm my heart with hope?”

This constructs a needy, helpless nature to the feelings of the prisoner. He asks the sun for hope, as there is no other light in his life but that stray of gleaming sun through the dense clouds and deeping shadows drowning the skies in sadness. He has no other help to seek, so he seeks the sun’s, in a rhetorical question. The poet feels just as helpless to provide help as the prisoners do to seek it. He has a substantial amount of sympathy towards their situation and wished to express this in the above ways.