Essay for Perfectionism

By: Anonymous

Have you ever felt like you are not good enough or that you want to improve yourself? The poem Perfectionism uses a tyrant to portray how important it is to live up to your own standards and not someone elses. This entire poem is a metaphor the author also uses a dark mood a certain structure to portray the importance of the message he is trying to get through to the reader. In Perfectionism the author shows the importance of living up to your own standards by making it a metaphor. Furthermore the reader can see this in the first and last lines when he says A tyrant ruling over my Kingdom, and As the blade falls I see my own face. Using these two lines the reader can see that by the tyrant the author is talking about himself and the kingdom being his body and he is working his body too hard to get to the standards that he is setting himself. On the other hand the author could be trying to say how he is like two people one that wants to get to a certain level of achievement (His mind) and the other that is trying to catch up to that level of achievement (His body). Tyrants are pretty depressing people which show the mood of this poem. The author really shows the struggle he is having with this tyrant by making the mood have a very negative feel. One of the lines the author uses to show this negativity is when he says Darkness overcomes me, this really depicts the struggle he is having to get on par with his standards and how he is losing touch in his life. Consequently he never gets to a high level with his life in this poem it is just completely negative which shows how there is no hope left and there is no light at the end of the tunnel it is just darkness. To help Improve this feeling that he is trapped in tunnel the author structures the poem in a specific way. The author makes it one long stanza this shows the feeling that there is nothing more to it. Consequently when the reader looks at this poem he will see that it is not unlike the end of a where the reader will rush through, it savoring every last word as if the poem is feeding him until the poem is finished where it slows down and the reader can realize that this poem is really about and how it is hidden through layers of words that are just there to put more emphasis on the most important lines. In addition the most important lines explain the whole poem. With all the language, the mood and the structure of this poem the reader can clearly see the message after looking deep into this poem and taking out all the unnecessary words to look at the first and last statements it is obvious that the message of this poem is about living up to your standards. The author of this poem really wanted to emphasis the message

Comment [JH1]: Great intro!

Comment [JH2]: Good topics sentence!

Comment [JH3]: Great transition word!

Comment [JH4]: Great first body paragraph! You need to have a conclusion statement to sum your ideas on the extended metaphor.

Comment [JH5]: Great organization of ideas!

Comment [JH6]: Angus, what do you mean h

without cluttering it with lots figurative language or lots of different stanzas instead it is just simple but it shows a big message.

Comment [JH7]: Great conclusion. I can see how you think the form, mood and language play important part in the poem.