Over the past two weeks, I’ve found poetry a bit challenging to understand but I’ve been trying hard to improve my understanding. Ive been focusing more on the emotions and deeper meanings behind the words, even though its not always easy. This approach has helped me with reading Oedipus the King. One poem that connects to the play is Natasha Trethewey’s “White Lies”. In this poem, the speaker talks about the ” white lies” to fit in, pretending to be wealthier than she actually is, while also hiding parts of her identity. For example, she says, “I could easily tell the white folks… that we lived uptown… not in that pink and a green… shanty fled shotgun section along the tracks” (Trethewey, lines 5-8) This is similar to Oedipus the King, where Oedipus hides the truth about his identity and his past, and these lies shape his life without him realizing it. In both the poem and the play, hiding the truth leads to trouble. In “White Lies,” the speaker’s mother punishes her for lying by “washing out (her) mouth with ivory soup,” saying it will “purify” her (Trethewet, lines 13-15). This punishment shows the consequences pf the lies told, like how Oedipus’s ignorance of the truth causes his downfall. Both demonstrate that hiding the truth can cause bigger problems in the end.
Daily Archives: March 17, 2025
I would understand my ability to read a poem a 5/10. I love reading poems and I try to grasp the concept of it, but I always find myself over reading it multiple times. I definitely need to work open the tips to improve my reading skills for poems. I still need to search up certain lines because to understand what they are saying because no matter how many times I read it I will just not be able to understand what they are saying. My tips with poetry can help me read Oedipus the King by helping me understand old time language and figurative expressions. The line “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”These lines are saying even though May is supposed to be a beautiful time of year with fresh, new buds, the winds can still mess things up and shake them around. He’s pointing out that nothing is perfect or permanent, even in the best seasons.
