Question

after the flood lesson. summery​

Answer 1

Answer:

after the flood lesson. summery

Answer 2

Answer:

Summary

The speaker in "After the Flood" imagines the world after the end of a great flood. The flood in question is described in the book of Genesis in the Bible, the sacred text of the Christian religion. A hare gives thanks to God while the streets of a nearby town become busy again as life returns to normal in the markets and the shops. The poem suggests that humanity has not learned its lesson about morality and quickly slides back into a sinful existence. The streets are described as dirty and blood flows readily through the society.

The young boy stretches out his arms and feels the rain falling in a "brilliant sudden shower." The springtime thaws the "chaos of ice and polar night" which allows life to return to normal. The speaker recognizes that spring has arrived but nothing has changed. He calls on the flood waters to rise up again and wash away the world. Humanity will never learn the truth about life as the society always settles back into the same sinful existence even in the wake of a world-changing event.

Analysis

"After the Flood" imagines a world after humanity has nearly been wiped out. The book of Genesis in the Bible describes the flood sent by God to teach humanity a lesson. God sent a flood to kill everyone and allow society to start fresh because he felt that humanity had strayed from the moral teachings of religion. The speaker in "After the Flood" imagines the world after such a flood has subsided. He capitalizes the word "Flood" to illustrate that this event is not just a regular occurrence. The speaker notes that "the idea of the Flood had subsided." The important difference is drawn between the idea and the Flood itself. The poem suggests that the idea of the Flood is the moral lessons learned from the event. In the poem the humans forget the "idea" or the meaning of the event and allow themselves to return to their wicked ways. An important distinction is drawn by the speaker between the idea of the Flood and the Flood itself. The waters have disappeared but so have the lessons that God had tried to teach the humans. The people in the poem revert to their old ways "as soon" as they forget the idea and the reasoning for the Flood.

The poem is a series of images which do not necessarily develop. The speaker moves quickly between the scenes, describing a hare, then a "dirty main street," then the boats on the sea, and then the windows in a house. Each image is presented for just a moment and the quick movement between the lines reflects the hustle and bustle of life returning to the dirty streets after being shut away inside during the Flood. The speaker also creates a distinction between humanity and nature. The hare stops to give thanks to God immediately after the flood while the humans' first instinct is to set up the market stalls and try to make money. Only later do the cathedrals fill up with people. Commerce and money are placed before God in the world after the Flood. The humans are just as greedy and self-centered as before. Their greed and thanklessness contrasts with the gratitude of the animals and plants. Nature thanks God while humanity focuses only on itself. This failure to appreciate God and the lessons of the Flood is why the speaker is convinced in the final lines of the poem that humanity "shall never know" the secrets of existence