Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

How does the poet present memory in "Horses" ?
The poet presents memory as a non concrete idea that can seem very different in different times
...
The poet is also trying to convey how memory is not like a true account of the
past but is heavily influenced by other things such as the beliefs and literature with which the rememberer is familiar
...

The way the poem turns form reality to a memory is very sudden as the only thing to show that
what is now being described is a memory is the use of the past tense when the narrator says that
the horses "seemed terrible"
...
The sense of non reality is compounded by how the horses are compared to
"magic power" which is a very odd way to describe a horse unless it seems to be a strange unknown creature
...
In this past the horses
seem terrible and scare the narrator which is developed by pathetic fallacy as this is watched
though "blackening rain" which shows how everything seemed to be more powerful and frightfully
when he was a child
...
This however contrasts with the idea of an "ancient mill" and shows how time can seem strange in a
memory as when the narrator was a child a mill seemed ancient
...
This shows how the poet is suggesting
that in many ways a memory is more like a dream than an account of what happened
...
The biblical imagery is made clear
when the horses are called "seraphim", which are a type of angle, which shows that although they
are terrifying they must be in some way good
...

This sense of biblical power is developed in the fourth stanza which starts with " and oh the rapture" which gives the reader as sense of how amazed and enthralled the narrator is by the horses
...
The sense that the memory is being affected by the bible is even
more pronounced by how the horses "march off [
...
This gives reader a sense
that the horses symbolise he four horsemen of the apocalypse and are marching to the sun which
represents judgement and the end of the world
...

This biblical image is even further developed by how the field's furrows are described as "struggling snakes" which have been trampled by the horses
...
This shows how the horses are like angles
vanquishing evil
...

In the fifth stanza the horses go back to being symbolic of a nearing apocalypse as they seem to
be "glowing with a mysterious fire" which represents judgement and righteousness
...
The dusk
symbolises the dusk of the world as the world is ending
...

The poem ends with sadness as this memory fades from the narrators mind and leaves him only
with bland reality
...




---