Blog 111814

word bank: "the child led him by the hand" "beast" "black" "ancient" "dead white and sightless" "eggs of spiders" "as if to take the scent of what it could not see" "pale and naked and translucent" "beating heart" "low moan" "turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark"

the poem is expressing that the creatures suffering most are those who are misunderstood by humans as inherently evil, like this creature. the child "led him by the hand" so the child knew that this creature was safe and was confident in taking it. The creature must have been safe with the child before. The tone of the poem is trying to convey what the average adult would think if it saw the creature, as in "beast" "black" "ancient" "eggs of spiders" - these phrases all convey situations we fear, things in the dark, things unknown, things known but that have yet to happen, but throughout the poem, all the creature does is act in fear for itself. It looks toward the light, but the words "dead white and sightless" show that the creature is actually blind and can't see without its nose (ex. "as if to take the scent of what it could not see". Beyond this, we see that the creature is actually very vulnerable. It is "pale and naked and translucent", so its skin can't be very thick and it is susceptible to most forms of attack. Its beating heart is visible as in the lines that the shadow show "its bowels, its beating heart, the brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell". The creature cannot protect itself. It has hidden in this cave for a long time. it releases a "low moan" possibly at pain from the light it doesnt normally experience, and it "turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark" as a final show of the creatures innocence and wish for peace, instead of attacking or being defensive, it simply flees without trying to be agressive toward the intruders. The creature is alone and unprotected, but the poem shows that as people we are supposed to fear it because of our own assumptions about appearance. The creature means no harm because it wants no harm done to itself.