In about 200-250 words, write a Critical Analysis (Title, themes, technique, tone,poetic devices) of the poem “The Cold Within” by James Patrick Kinney.
Answers
The poem begins with the narrator telling us about six humans who were trapped by coincidence (happenstance) in a”bleak and bitter cold.” The cold, hopeless setting is instantly sketched by the use of the alliteration ‘bleak and bitter“. An important feature of the first stanza is the use of the term ‘humans’ (Six humans trapped) because that is what the six people are, first and foremost. Before they are the members of one race or the other, one creed or the other, they are human beings. They are human beings who have physical and emotional needs and who are susceptible to both hatred and cold. Unfortunately the failure on their part to recognize this basic fact becomes a cause of their doom.
Each one of them has a stick of wood. This wood isn’t merely a physical object but is symbolic of a resource or potential that all human beings possess. It is our willingness to use what we have for the sake of others that will keep the fire burning. The words or so the story’s told implies that the speaker has heard it from somewhere else which makes this a part of oral parables and folk wisdom