Na’imatul Muflikhah, an English teacher from Malang Regency, analyzes a free form poem entitled The Mouse’s Tale. She comments that “The Mouse’s Tale” is a good example in teaching our students about concrete poetry, because it has an interesting shape and the language used in the poem is simple. The use of denotation words can help the students understand the message easily. Moreover, some of the words can help students to enrich their vocabulary mastery by find out their synonym, for example the word “Cur” same as “dog”, “condemn” same as “punish” or “blame”. The modern conception of concrete poetry is a poem in the form of a picture, and then Lewis Carroll helped to shape this idea with his poem.
The Mouse's Tale
Fury said to a mouse,
That he met in the
house, 'Let us
both go to law:
I will prosecute
you.-- Come, I'll
take no denial;
We must have
a trial: For
really this
morning I've
nothing to do.'
Said the mouse
to the cur,
'Such a trial,
dear Sir, With
no jury or
judge,would
be wasting
our breath.'
'I'll be
judge, I'll
be jury,'
Said cunning
old Fury:
'I'll try
the whole
cause, and
condemn
you
to
death.'
1. The overview of the poem and the poet
The above poem is considered as a concrete poem which belongs to free-form poem. This poem, appears in chapter three of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In Wonderland, Alice begins talking to a mouse who wants to tell her a “long and sad tale.” Alice remarks that his tail (notice the difference in spelling) is rather long, and as he tells his poem, it takes shape on the page in the form of a mouse’s tail, long and curled. The original representation of the poem had the words at the end beginning to become smaller as the tail becomes narrower. While, Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Dodgson arrived at this pen name by taking his own names Charles Lutwidge, translating them into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus, then reversing and retranslating them into English
2. Paraphrase
In the tale, the Mouse explains how a dog called Fury plotted to condemn it to death by serving as both judge and jury. Although the Mouse claims that the "tale" will explain why he hates cats and dogs, the only villain in the poem is a dog; there is no actual explanation for the Mouse's animosity toward cats. However, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the original version of Alice in Wonderland, contains a different poem at this point in the story (which begins, "We lived beneath the mat,/ Warm and snug and fat./ But one woe, that/ Was the cat!") which includes both cats and dogs as the enemies of the mice.
3. Poetic Devices Analysis
a. Rhyme
The shape of the poem made us difficult to find the rhyming of the poem, besides this poem belongs to free form poem. Its means it can be free from the rhyming pattern. On the other hand, some experts said that the poem has a tail rhyme. Tail rhyme is a verse form in which rhymed lines such as couplets or triplets are followed by a tail—a line of different (usually shorter) length that does not rhyme with the couplet or triplet. Actually one of the sentence in above poem is rhyming, we can see, ’…I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial:”It is a kind of end rhyme.
b. Rhythm
This poem free from the fixed pattern of rhythm
c. Alliteration
No alliteration
d. Onomatopoeia
No onomatopoeia
e. Repetition
The repetition occurs in this poem is in the form of word repetition. The words repeated here are “judge” and “Jury”.
f. Comparison
The comparison used in this poem is personification. The poet gives human qualities to the cur. The cur said, ”I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury”.
4. Poetic Diction
Carroll uses denotation words in writing the poem, the meaning of the words can be easily checked in dictionary. The words in the poem is simple, it shows us the conversation between a dog and a mouse.
5. Theme
The theme of the poem is the dog is the mouse enemy.
6. Tone
The tone of the poem is animosity
7. Message
People should try to keep the fairness although with their enemy
8. Symbol
The symbols in this poem are dog and mouse, the dog symbolizes a strong people and the mouse symbolizes a weak people.
9. Comments
“A mouse’s tale” is a good example in teaching our students about concrete poetry, because it has an interesting shape and the language used in the poem is simple. The use of denotation words can help the students understand the message easily. Moreover, some of the words can help students to enrich their vocabulary mastery by find out their synonym, for example the word “Cur” same as “dog”, “condemn” same as “punish” or “blame”. The modern conception of concrete poetry is a poem in the form of a picture, and then Lewis Carroll helped to shape this idea with his poem.
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