Out of the blue is a poem which is based on the tragic events of the September 11th attacks in New York City, USA. The poem takes view from an English trader working in the world trade center’s and his understanding of the world he lives in this point of his life is deepening as he is entering the final curtain of his life.
The Poem as a whole is quite a disturb and sinister as it does come straight from the point of view of somebody who is going to face the inevitable and die from this attack on both New York and his own mindset of what he has grown to know about life and his experiences sofar in his life. The poem also gets across to the reader that this event is completely taken off guard to all the citizens as it was a normal day in New York City and this event happens which shows that events in life can come out of nowhere and death can come across to you at anytime. This is significant and is backed up with parts in the poem like ” Do you think you are watching watching a man shaking crumbs or pegging out washing which is an everyday task in a usual day of somebodies life. At the same time the person in the poem doesn’t seem to get to grips with what is going on as he suddenly goes off topic and say ” A Bird goes by” which sounds as if he is being distracted by something so trivial as a bird passing by him, however this could just back up my previous statement about the piece and how the events that took place happened on a seemingly usual day.
The content of the poem with its changing sentence length could also show his changing emotions in this piece as the poem is build up to his death and the emotions that come with the mindset of the fact that you will most likely not get out of the situation the trader is in during the duration of the poem
Finally the poem in many ways uses clever language devices to its full advantage, One major element i realized in this poem is the continuous use of “ing” in the piece, when researching what this could show i found out that this could picture a suspension of time and how the continuous use of “ing” could show how time is not moving and how the same three letters are being repeated in the piece, Ironically enough this could as represent the fact that he is suspending from a window sill watching the world go by before his inevitable death hits him.
React!