PEC Literatura Norteamericana II

Part One

Compare the function of the speaker in two of the compulsory poems of the course’s reading
list.

➔ Hilda Doolitle’s “Sea Poppies” and Langston Hughes’ “I, too”

The speaker in a poem is the entity or persona conveying the narrative, emotions and images
expressed within the verses. In “Sea Poppies” and “I, too”, both the speakers have a central role
in identifying themes. In H.D’s poem, it addresses to the sea poppies in vocative mode. The
beauty and endurance are evoked in an emotional framework, similarly an eyeglass, through
which sensations are unfolded from the connection between the human experience and nature.

The speaker’s observations guide the reader along a vivid imagery and fragmentariness. Thus,
juxtaposition serves the contraposition between strength and fragility (“fire upon leaf”) as well
as the brilliance and colour of sea poppies and the darkness and peril of the sea, that drifts their
stem.

The images refer us to a female figure, a flower, resisting a harshness life -not being grown in a
garden but “among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea”- and strongly being able to
regenerate by means of her seeds -the “fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain”-.

The speaker of “I, too” is a representative voice of the so-called New Negro typical of the Harlem
Renaissance, embodying the resilience and the collective aspirations of African Americans in a
period of racial discrimination and segregation. The poem addresses the broader American
society, and the poetic voice claims to a sense of belonging by resorting to epiphora, a rhetorical
tool consisting of repeating a word or phrase in different stanzas, as it is the case of “I, too” and
“America” at the beginning and also at the close.

Furthermore, the extended metaphor of the speaker being sent to eat in the kitchen, together
with the aspiration of the protagonist of not being kicked out of the rest of the company's table
unveils the double consciousness experienced by subordinated racial minorities.

Part Two

Define the narrative voice and narrative perspective used in this particular fragment. Explain
the function of this excerpt within the complete work. Why is West Egg described in this
manner in the excerpt?
“Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling,
swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old -
even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams.
I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen,
overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the
sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the
side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house -the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s
name, and no one cares”.
Both, the narrative voice and perspective of this excerpt are embodied by the narrator of the
story, Nick Carraway. The use of first-person pronouns (“I”/ “me”) indicates that he is telling the
action from his own point of view, and that he participates in it. His account is biased by his
personal experiences, opinions and observations, and therefore it is a subjective perspective.

The excerpt corresponds to the final chapter of the novel, and introduces the closure of the story
at a time after the narrated events. It is a reflective moment, that synthesizes the experiences
of Nick in West Egg and mirrors his awareness of the moral ambiguity and decay hidden under
the glamor exhibited by the characters and society.

The “distortion” mentioned in line 4 is a recurring theme throughout the novel, as a suggestion
of something misleading about the world that the narrator perceives from the beginning and
subjectively unveils – “Even when the East excited me most, (…) it had always for me a quality of
distortion”-. The sophistication that the East represents, with its jewelry, men in dress suit and
a new kind of womanhood, turns out to be corrupt in contrast with “the bored, sprawling,
swollen towns beyond the Ohio”.