How women is represented in the poem a musical instrument?
Answers
Stanza One
An unidentified third-person speaker begins the poem with a question about the actions of the poem’s subject. The speaker immediately draws the listener in by recounting the myth of Pan, a half-god (part man, part goat) known as the god of hunting, rustic music, and shepherds. The speaker uses a reverent tone in the first two lines by describing Pan as a “great” god.
However, the tone shifts suddenly by the third line when the speaker describes a scene of chaos and destruction. Pan goes down by the river—his natural domain—but he disrupts everything there. His animalistic demeanor causes him to splash about and harm everything close by, such as the peacefully-floating lily pads and the dragonfly resting upon them.
Stanza Two
The speaker continues the narrative of the myth by describing the next scene. Pan tears a single reed out of the riverbed. As he does this, the natural world surrounding him changes suddenly. The speaker describes an image of decay and death. The once-clear water turns muddy, and the once-perfect lilies now lay broken and dying. The dragonfly first mentioned in stanza one is startled to the point that it flees the river. All of this happens just before Pan pulls the reed out of the river.
Stanza Three
The speaker’s narrative continues with Pan now sitting on the shore of the river. The murky river still flows: a victim of his sudden act of tearing out the reed. The tone is somber and thrilling, as the reader anticipates what will come next. The next scene describes the violent behavior which ensues. Pan does not leave the reed alone. Rather, it becomes clear that he wishes to create something out of it. Pan proceeds to mangle the reed by hacking it with a steel tool. Throughout the process, the reed is depicted as patient and calm. Eventually, the reed loses all its leaves and becomes virtually unidentifiable. The speaker says that one can no longer tell that it has just come out of the river.
Stanza Four
The speaker explains how Pan begins to cut the reed shorter. Once again, the speaker repeats the “great god Pan” to continue the rhythm of the poem and its narrative structure. In the second line of the stanza, the speaker takes a sudden break from the narrative to express his/her sentiment. The speaker seems to lament the fact that the reed no longer stands tall in the river, as Pan has torn it out and cut it short.
Pan is then described as hollowing out the reed by removing its inside. His actions are still depicted as rough and methodical, as he seems to have planned this act all along. The hollowing of the reed is compared to removing the heart of a person, giving the scene a truly violent tone. Eventually, Pan cuts notches into the reed.