summary of poem ethics by linda pastan....
Answers
A poem is made up of several different components. One very important component of a poem is its theme. A poem's theme is its foundation; it is what everything else is built on. Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines theme as, "a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation." In Linda Pastan's poem, "Ethics" the theme is that understanding the meaning of ethics occurs over time through growing older and maturing. Pastan shows us this theme through poetic techniques.
The poem is about Pastan's teacher asking her class an ethical question, "if there were a fire in a museum/which would you save, a Rembrandt painting/or an old woman who hadn't many/ years left anyhow?"(Pastan lines 4-6). Pastan showed that at a young age children don't fully understand what ethics means, they would just do what felt morally right. Pastan showed how she felt as a child by saying, "Sometimes/the woman borrowed my grandmother's face/leaving her usual kitchen to wander/some drafty, half-imagined museum."(lines 9-12). Pastan used a metaphor to relate what she had to choose between with the ethical question.
One year Pastan decided to answer her teachers question with, "why not let the woman decide for herself?"(line 14). Her teacher responded to her question that she, "eschews/the burdens of responsibility."(lines 15-16). Her teacher is pointing out the fact that she is running away from her responsibility of choosing between the painting and the old woman. Ethics is not about which choice you make, but about why you would make that choice.
Pastan learns and understands the meaning of ethics when she is older and more mature. She is standing in front of a real Rembrandt painting and noticing its beauty, "The colors/within this frame are darker than autumn/darker even than winter-the browns of earth, /though earth's most radiant elements burn/ through the canvas," (lines 19-24). Pastan used imagery to show the audience what she saw in the Rembrandt, what a child would not be able to see. Pastan realized that a beautiful painting, and an old women were, "all beyond saving by children" (line 25). Pastan understands that a child would choose to save an old woman rather than a painting because the child feels that it is, morally, the right thing to do.
Throughout Pasten's entire poem we learn how a person must grow and mature to understand what ethics is. In the beginning of the poem Pastan is a young girl who doesn't fully understand what ethics is. At the end, we learn that Pasten understands completely what ethics is. She used poetic techniques to aid the theme in relaying it to the audience. The audience can relate to Pastan comparing the painting with her grandmother because everyone knows of, or has had a grandmother. When Pastan describes in detail the painting the audience can relate to it because everyone has seen something in their life that they would describe in the same in-depth way that she did. By using poetic techniques to support her theme, Pastan showed the theme is understanding why you would make a choice.
The world is full of crime and suffering, says Linda Pastan in her poem “Ethics.”
Explanation:
- But she also knows that we can do something about it by working together.
- As she explains in the first stanza, there are three things we must do if we want to have a better world: We must become aware of the problems, we must take action to solve them, and we must communicate our solutions to others.
- The second stanza describes some of the problems we face, including animal cruelty and human trafficking.