summery on the poem the cold within by james patrick kinney
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Simple yet powerful this poem is all about the consequences of 'letting your prejudices control your decisions'.It opens with six people trapped by chance in the biting cold weather and each had a stick of wood.The fire which is keeping the. warm is about to die anytime but none is ready to keep his stick in it.
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The Cold Within Summary of the Poem:
Simple yet powerful this poem is about the consequences of ‘letting your prejudices control your decisions’. It opens with six people trapped by chance in the biting cold weather and each had a stick of wood. The fire which is keeping them warm is about to die anytime but none is ready to put his/her log to use. The people have different reasons for this. Beginning with the lady who didn’t wanted to save a black man in the group.The next man saw a person not being of his religion. The third one being poor dressed in rags, envied the rich. The rich man did not want to give anything to the undeserving poor. The black man thought it to be a chance to take revenge on the white people and the last man was full of selfishness who would help only if there is something beneficial in return.
In the end, it appears as the sticks they all held tightly in their hands, stood as the symbol of revenge and hatred. They lacked the aura of humanity. The selfish souls invited the death and they died by the coldness of their hearts.
Poem's message:
The poem displayed a strong message against racial discrimination, because of which it was called "too controversial for the time" before it reached the heights of fame. The poem is a simple but powerful reminder that if we selfishly hold on world's resources, and the wealth offered by it and we persist in discriminating on grounds of race, religion, caste, gender and ethnicity, we are all lost.
The message James Patrick Kinney gives is that harboring prejudices against each other will ultimately prove fatal. The poem teaches how in today's generation prejudices, malices, biases, discrimination and racism can destroy human beings and eventually the world. Therefore the title was given to show that the group lacked the "warmth of humanity" in them and hence they died from "The Cold Within".
The Cold Within Summary About the Poem:
“The Cold Within” was written in the 1960s by the American poet James Patrick Kinney. In almost five decades since its publication, the poem has achieved great popularity, appearing in countless church bulletins, websites and teaching seminars, as well as magazines and newspapers.
The poem was first submitted to the Saturday Evening Post, but it was rejected as “too controversial for the time”. Kinney sent it later to Liguorian, a Catholic magazine, which was the first commercial publication to print it. At the outset, the poem was read at an ecumenical council meeting, after which the ministers, priests and rabbis in attendance requested copies of it. They read the poem to their congregations and, before long, The Cold Within became well known throughout the United States.
The Cold Within Summary Critical Analysis:
The poem “The Cold Within” by James Patrick Kinney consists of 8 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyming pattern is abcb for all the stanzas. Each stanza presents a person who has a different prejudice against someone else around the fire. They all make the same decision and all pay the same price for that decision as seen in the end.
Here, the poet employs diction, figurative language, and rhyme to project his point that certain prejudices control people’s lives and actions. Due to these prejudices, we often tend to lose sensitivity towards others regarding them as inferior, hostile or different.
Happenstance means an event that might have been arranged although it is accidental. This use of diction is important because by saying that it is accidental, it almost seems arranged, and gives the reader a sense that they are supposed to be there. The fact that he says they are trapped suggests that they do not want to be in the situation, but also they cannot escape.
Unfortunately, they are so much blinded by their prejudices against one another that their survival becomes impossible. The rhyme of the poems sets up an easy read. This allows for your eyes to simply guide and take in Kinney’s message: the frigidness of people is what ends up killing them. The rhythm is important to the theme of the story because it makes reading the poem faster. This is important because this indirectly shows how fast arrogance, greed, and sin can. “kill” you.
James Patrick Kinney effectively portrays his point about hatred killing. His persuasion in this poem is really helpful in understanding the entirety behind his point. This poem really makes us think about ourselves and the heights to which we would go to either hurt someone else, or save ourselves. The poet uses symbolism to help the reader understand the consequences of holding back their “logs.” The logs represent their prejudices. And because they can’t give them up to keep the fire going, they all die.