Blog Post #5: Thou Blind Man's Mark

Blog Post #5 Poem Essay

The speaker of “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” uses metaphors, repetition, and periodic sentence structures to convey his message that, even though he has conflicting emotions about his desire, he has one, constant mission towards it.

The speaker opens the poem with a series of metaphors spanning the first five lines. Desire is portrayed as a, “blind man’s mark…fool’s self-chosen snare…fancy’s scum…band of evils…cradle of causeless care….” Each metaphor relates desire to an object that is either a temptation or an object that is impossible to obtain. A “blind man’s mark,” is something that a blind man will never actually find, as he will always be unable to see his target. A “fool’s self-chosen snare,” portrays desire as something that a fool will always voluntarily choose as his own downfall.

The metaphors are prefaced with a repeated, “thou.” “Thou blind man’s mark, thou fool’s self-chosen name…thou web of will,” sets the tone that the speaker is accusing desire of being these things. The repetition of thou allows the speaker to confidently and directly tell desire that he doesn’t like it.

Thou is repeated throughout the rest of the poem in similar manners, appearing in lines 7, 9, 10, and 11 when he says, “…asleep thou hast me brought…but yet in vain thou…” Each time the speaker uses thou, he attacks desire for being these terrible things to him. 

Following the repetition of thou, the words ‘too’ and ‘in vain.’ By repeating ‘too’, the speaker emphasizes how much time he’s spent agonizing over his desire. The speaker wants the reader to side with him, not the desire, by pulling on pathos and trying to get the readers to sympathize with how much rejection the speaker has had to endure. 

When the reader gets to the repetition of “in vain,” the reader shifts the tone. At the beginning of the poem, desire is portrayed as the attacker, leaving the speaker as the victim. In line 9, the speaker admits that, “in vain thou hast my ruin sought; in vain thou madest me to vain things aspire; in vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire….” Now, the speaker repeats the phrase, ‘in vain thou,’ emphasizing the fact that desire is losing the battle. Desire has done the exact opposite of tempt and corrupt the speaker, “For virtue hath this better lesson taught.” When the tone shift is complete, the speaker becomes the attacker and desire the prey. This tone shift is clearly shown through the repetitiveness combined with parallel structure. As soon as the speaker deviates from the parallel structure, it’s indicated to the reader that a different idea is going to be proposed.

The final line is set aside from the rest of the poem by a dash. After listing metaphors and his constant battles, the speaker says he really just wants to kill it. Although somewhat in love with his object of desire, the speaker just wants to be rid of it. The dash indicates that this goal is different from his previous thoughts.

By using a myriad of poetic devices, Sir Philip Sidney allows his speaker to convey his complex and conflicting feelings about desire followed by his final statement—he wants it destroyed.

Poetry Essay Reflection:

I’m not where I want to be, but I’m also not doing terribly. After norming the essays in class, my essay identified most with the essay my group gave a 6. This particular essay earned a 6 because she used specific examples and cited poetic devices used within the poem and identified the meaning. She did not, however, create an incredibly complex thesis and following essay. Her diction wasn’t incredibly high and her interpretation didn’t delve completely beneath the surface.

I’m still struggling with the complexity. If I could pin down the complexity element of my responses, everything would follow. But I can’t seem to pick up the complex meaning while reading the poem. It’s not that I don’t understand the passages, I just can’t identify the underlying meaning. 

I’m going to start reading the passages three times within my 40 minutes. I know this will cut into my writing time, but I think it’ll simplify the writing process by simply giving me a clearer idea of what I need to write about. I also am going to start completing two essays out of the 5 Steps to a 5 book on my own each week. This way, I’ll be able to relax a little bit more when I take the graded ones and my vocabulary will increase as I study more and more devices.

 In addition to simply practicing, I need to familiarize myself with classic poems. The more I read them, the more I'll be able to easily understand them which will merit a stronger grasp on the analysis of the poems. Right now, I think of the poetry essay as an unconquerable monster-- something I'll never be able to fully understand or relate to. This is not the case and I know that if I were to become more familiar with poems in general, I wouldn't find them to be such an enigma.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my scores into the higher range by practicing these exercises.