Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 10.1
Unit 10 Metaphor and figurative language
Section 3 Attributing meaning

This activity will focus on Toru Dutt’s ’Our Casuarina Tree’ (India, 1878):

Like a huge Python, winding round and round

The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars

Up to its very summit near the stars,

A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound

No other tree could live. But gallantly

The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung

In crimson clusters all the boughs among,

Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;

And oft at nights the garden overflows

With one sweet song that seems to have no close,

Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.

When first my casement is wide open thrown

At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;

Sometimes, and most in winter, - on its crest

A gray baboon sits statue-like alone

Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs

His puny offspring leap about and play;

And far and near kokilas hail the day;

And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;

And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast

By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,

The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.

But not because of its magnificence

Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:

Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,

O sweet companions, loved with love intense,

For your sakes shall the tree be ever dear!

Blent with your images, it shall arise

In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!

What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear

Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?

It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,

That haply to the unknown land may reach.

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!

Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away

In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,

When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith

And the waves gently kissed the classic shore

Of France or Italy, beneath the moon

When earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon:

And every time the music rose, - before

Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,

Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime

I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay

Unto thy honour, Tree, beloved of those

Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,

Dearer than life to me, alas! were they!

Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done

With deathless trees - like those in Borrowdale,

Under whose awful branches lingered pale

’Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,

And Time the shadow’ and though weak the verse

That would thy beauty fain, oh fain rehearse,

May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.

(Note: in the last stanza, Dutt alludes to and quotes from Wordsworth’s poem ’Yew Trees’ (1815).)

1 Highlight or underline all the uses of figurative language that you can find in this poem and give each usage its appropriate label (similie, personification, etc.).

1.1 Choose one of the metaphors you have identified and analyse it by using the methods described above: (a) identify vehicle, tenor and ground; (b) is it implicit or explicit? (c) is it concretive, animistic or humanizing? (d) is it extended - i.e. are there other vehicles or nonliteral terms in the poem that come from the same semantic field?

2 Try to rewrite the first stanza in order to eliminate all similes and metaphors. What is the difference between your stanza and Dutt’s?

2.1 What kind of image of the tree do Dutt’s similes and metaphors create in this stanza?

3 In the third stanza (line 23), the speaker stresses that the tree is dear to her ’not because of its magnificence’. Focus closely on the metaphors and similes of the third stanza in order to find out why the tree is dear to her. (You could also look at the first four lines of the last stanza.)

3.1 Do the vehicles of the important similes and metaphors in the third stanza come from (a) the same semantic field, or (b) related semantic fields, or (c) different semantic fields?

3.2 Where would you locate these important metaphors on a scale ranging from vitally new metaphors at one end and dead metaphors at the other end? What do you learn from this?

4 In what way does the use of apostrophe in stanzas three, four and five confirm or challenge your interpretation of the poem?

5 Is ’deathless’ (stanza five, line 50) metaphorical or literal? How will the tree become deathless? How does the wish that the tree should become ’deathless’ relate to the overall meaning of the poem?

6 In the course of answering these questions have you: (a) discovered more metaphors and similes than you did when you answered question 1? or (b) realized that some of the metaphors and similes you identified in answering question 1 are not actually metaphors or similes? What do you learn from this?

Reading

A brams, M.H. (1993) A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th edn, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

F urniss, T.E. and Bath, M. (1996) Reading Poetry, London: Longman, Chapters 5-6.

Glucksberg, Sam (with Matthew S. McGlone) (2001) Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Kovecses, Zoltan (2002) Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, especially pp. 3-40.

Leech, G. (1969) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, London: Longman, pp. 147-65.

Lodge, D. (1977) The Modes of Modern Writing, London: Edward Arnold.

Richards, I.A. (1936) Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapters 5-6.

Sacks, S. (ed.) (1979) On Metaphor, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.