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Narrative Situation on "Garden of Love"

Is there a clear narrative in William Blake's "Garden of Love?" Using evidence from the poem, talk about the speaker and kind of experience the poem is trying to capture. What stage of life has the speaker reached?


"I came home, after the war, and saw my house in ruins. It was burnt down; nothing was left behind. I noticed that not only my home was gone, my neighbor's and his neighbor's homes were also in ashes. I went to look for refuge shortly after."
These may possibly be words coming out of an apathetic soldier after a war, such a characteristic that may likely have emerged due to what he's witnessed during the war. Don't get me wrong, however. I do agree that his 'narrative' of the scene was not one that would need any heavy analysis to decipher. That is, anyone can easily depict the setting in which he is describing without ambiguity, but I would view it as one that lacks the technique for the elicitation of sentimental human modes, such as sensitivity and empathy, if you will.
Comparing the above dull yarn to William Blake's sort of touching and moving, yet clearly narrated "Garden of Love," we notice a huge difference in the emotion that readers experience due to Blake?s usage of certain elements or techniques.
Certainly, we can tell from the poem that the speaker is not an innocent happy-living child. From the context of the poem, the central region of the Garden of Love was where the speaker ?used to play on the green.? Play what, you ask? Well, probably some children's game that was popular in his early childhood, and hopefully not a solitary game, though no mention of friends were made.
The speaker may very well be a grown-up, possibly of an old age, wandering back to his/her childhood ?play-place' (his Garden of Love). The speaker of the poem clearly states that ?it was filled with graves, and tomb-stones......and binding with briars, my joys and desires.? Only a mature man or woman, having personally experienced the truth and existence of mortality (death, simply put) can utter such indecorous words.
The sophistication or experience of the situation portrayed in the poem gives the reader a sense of mental devastation and possible disbelief on behalf of the speaker. ?So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, that so many sweet flowers bore, and I saw it was filled with graves'' is to me, a great outcry and reminiscence of his childhood experiences. While ?so many sweet flowers bore? may propose to us a beautiful and animated sight, yet it may also convey the possibility of the speaker?s involvement in a cute kiddy-romance story once transpired in this Garden of LOVE that gave the speaker strength or purpose to recollect himself to visit the Garden again.
But the condition of the current Garden of Love causes the speaker to reveal a sort of contempt for what has happened. He tells us that ?the gates of this Chapel were shut, and "Thou shalt not" writ over the door.? The word ?shut?, as I interpreted it, was used as a sort of subtle outward proclamation of his contempt and curiosity for the Chapel's existence on ?his green.? Even more frustrating to the speaker were the words "Thou shalt not," written on the Chapel's door. In my opinion, when the speaker saw these words, his heart must have felt halfly horrified and halfly curious as to why this Chapel, having already disrupted his Garden of Love, and even more so, having landed exactly on the very part of the ground in which he used to ?play,? had to even shut out his/her only question of "WHY ARE YOU (Chapel) HERE?" I can almost hear from his angry heart: "Does that mean I shouldn't even ask why you (stupid Chapel) are even here? Does it mean you don't want me to even think about tearing you down, even though you have polluted and contaminated my childhood play-place, where I used to be happy and joyful?!"
Adding to this muddling situation were those 'Priests in black gowns' (priests, by the way are sort of mediators between the common people and God). They were not wearing white, however, like they usually would when giving sermons. They were wearing black, a color most probably intended to be related to death! These priests weren't giving their sermons nor sitting around; they were ?walking their rounds,? (a round as being a route or a circuit habitually strolled by officials). ?And binding with briars, my joys & desires,? shows that the priests' existence is rather harmful to the speaker's happiness; they've conceptually caught the speaker's childhood joys and desires and are restraining or tying them to briars! Briars I say! Briars are not beautiful plants! They are thorny and prickly, and are practically lifeless!
The speaker's attitude to his experience can very well be summarized by: 'The once beloved gift of happiness God had given me while I pleasured in this Garden of Love, as fate holds it, is now resting, most likely not in peace, with those spirits in the graves, underlying those tomb-stones!'
You can even see (or sense) the speaker changing his mood or tone by the way the poem is structured. The first stanza basically reveals what he sees as he visits the Garden. All of the first stanza's lines have 8 syllables; lines 2 and 4 rhyme. The second stanza gives us a sense that what he sees is not pleasing to him. All of the second stanza's lines have 8 syllables, still; lines 6 and 8 still do rhyme. As we get to the third stanza, which talks about his reaction to what he sees, we don't see a consistency in the number of syllables anymore, and we certainly don't see any rhyming patterns either (besides the last line's ?briars and desires?). This switching of ?modes? reveals his rather disbelieving or regretting ?attituded? response to what had happened to his Garden.
The speaker may very well be replicating, with excellent choices of images, what Adam and Eve may have reminisced after they were banned from the Garden of Eden, destined to death. The speaker's attitude may be that of sorrow for Adam and Eve and for all humanity, for we all have to face the same fate of death, leaving all our ?joys & desires? just hanging on briars.
The next time you read a narrative poem, and forgive my crummy introducing narrative (which isn't even a poem, by the way), make sure you 'choose' one that is, most important of all, clearly narrated. And secondly, choose one that gives you a sense of affection and the drive for empathy for the speaker of the poem because it would make it more enjoyable and you might learn something about yourself, just as I have after reading Blake's poem, but let's not get into that; it's confidential.




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