Saturday, September 21, 2013

"Storm Warnings" Poem Explication



In the poem “Storm Warnings” by Adrienne Rich, a storm beats down on a house while the people inside struggle to last through the storm.
            The poem begins by setting up the scene, saying “glass had been falling all afternoon”. This shows that the storm had been going on for long time, and the rain had been falling so hard that it sounded like glass on the windows. The narrator describes the storm as having winds that “are walking overhead”, showing the amplified sound of the thunder. Clouds are described as “gray unrest…moving across the sky”. This shows the constant movement of the grey storm clouds.
            In the second stanza, it becomes clear that the narrator is talking about a hurricane when she says the storm “moves inward towards the silent core of waiting”. Here, she is talking about the eye of the hurricane, which is known for being calm. These hurricanes are often and unexpected, shown through the narrator’s description of the hurricanes coming “regardless of prediction”.
                        The narrator says that the only thing her family can do for protection against storm is to “close the shutters”. Time and special weather-proof glass cannot alter the course of the storm, nor can they make the storm go by any faster.
                        As night falls, the narrator draws the curtains and lights candles, while trying to keep out “the insistent whine of weather through the unsealed aperture”. However, despite the precautions, they are also the narrator’s “sole defense against the season”. When talking about the “season”, the narrator is referring to hurricane season. The narrator ends the poem with the statement: “These are the things that we have learned to do who live in the troubled regions”. From this statement, it is made even clearer that the narrator lives in an area that is frequently plagued by massive hurricanes. However, the narrator’s community, shown through the use of the pronoun “we”, has learned how to cope with the storms.

No comments:

Post a Comment