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Monday, January 14, 2013
LITERARY GENRE: POETRY
THE PIG
Roald Dahl
New Criticism Theory focused on the text of a work of literature and tried to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis. New Critics often performed a "close reading" of the text and believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately connected and should not be analyzed separately. Before the New Criticism became dominant, English professors in America focused their writings and teaching on historical and/or linguistic scholarship surrounding literature rather than analyzing the literary text itself.
The Poem
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"
"They want my bacon slice by slice
"To sell at a tremendous price!
"They want my tender juicy chops
"To put in all the butcher's shops!
"They want my pork to make a roast
"And that's the part'll cost the most!
"They want my sausages in strings!
"They even want my chitterlings!
"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!
"That is the reason for my life!"
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
"I had a fairly powerful hunch
"That he might have me for his lunch.
"And so, because I feared the worst,
"I thought I'd better eat him first."
THE INTERPRETATION:
Roald Dahl has portrayed an interesting conflict between the “meaning of life” and “survival of the fittest”. The poem outlines the story of an intelligent pig that knows every single thing on Earth but astonishingly is unaware about the real meaning of life. The Pig simply has no clue as to why he was placed on the Earth and what is the motive of his life.
The pig has been compared to a normal individual who despite being knowledgeable about everything in the society including mathematics, flying an aeroplane, knowing how an engine works, having almost all the information his massive brain can fill in.
Despite knowing everything about his surroundings, despite having read all the books when it comes to knowing the meaning and significance of life, his knowledge is zero. The lines “What was the reason for his birth? Why was he placed upon this earth?” Reveal the curious nature of the young masses today who has puzzled their life to such an extent that they cannot understand what the simple thing called life is? This is the reality of each and every individual today. They plan everything in their life, every single event is pre-planned; but they fail to understand the essence of life.
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