İED 2001 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE I

FINAL EVALUATION
DR. ECE SAATÇIOĞLU
Jan. 20, 2021
Faruk
Dönmez
190925010

PART A (3)

The Bridge

Poetry has created an important place in the history of humanity. Due to its therapeutic

and satisfying form, writers and poets have been praising it and use to understand and appreciate

the world around us over the years. One of these writers, John Crowley, wrote The Translator

leading us away from hate to love, from violence to mercy and pity. He exhibits the importance

of poetry by creating a love story among chaos and war.

Crowley first sets the background of one of the main characters, Christa Malone, by

telling her childhood and her acquaintance with poetry. Her world is built upon a Peripatetic

family and its unusual bonds. Therefore, the birth of poetry in Christa's soul contains her

childhood wounds. Crowley emphasizes the power and importance of poetry by connecting

Christa's world with a darker, more challenging, and pitiless one: Innokenti Isayevich Falin's.

Falin is old Rusian poet who separated from his land, culture and language and came to

America. Throughout the novel, the position of Falin in a foreign country creates the dead-end

doubt. He found himself in the conflict between two dominant powers. Crowley combines these

two wounded children of two enemy worlds. Christa and Falin's feelings towards each other

build the bridge of poetry, and under this bridge, their feelings flow through the poets.

Throughout the novel, Crowley uses many vital poem pieces that strengthen lovers'

connection and build his emphasis. These poems include striking stanzas as well as calming

cantos. The symbolism in The Translator adds the feeling of every language's poets has its

world. Therefore, the poems contain their pain, happiness, and description of love. Crowley
argues the possibility of transform these feeling into another world without losing originality.

He also uses Alice and mirror symbols to question the likelihood of finding a mutual tone of

two languages. However, the story itself shows how hard to success it.

Crowley mentions the poets can be immortal. Therefore, poetry's other importance is

freezing time for poets. It turns its writer to an eternity hostage. Even after centuries, poets

created poems by transforming their pain or love into a legacy, are acknowledged as legislators

of the world. They discipline the nation's soul, protect them, keep alive. However, even the

poetry blesses the human soul, people who are drunk with power afraid the poetry and its power.

Crowley uses strong descriptions and historical facts to highlight this fear. Falin's life itself is

related to this fear, but he continues to write and put his soul inside poets.

In conclusion, John Crowley's way, he tells a love story between poetry and war

dramatically increases the plot's effects on the readers. The poetry reunites the hearts, tames the

wild human soul. Christa's and Falin's pains blow through their poems. Christa’s responsibility

and Falin's legacy create a place for the admiration about the importance of poetry in the reader's

minds. Despite two worlds or two languages, conflict and hatred, poetry ratoons the love and

passion in characters and the reader's heart.

PART B

-According to John Crowley, when we grieve for our own in poems, we grieve for all, for

everyone. To what extent do you agree or disagree?