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Eden Philpotts:
"The Learned." Alright, before we begin this poem,
I want to say that its often productive when analyzing poetry
to try and figure out what is literally going on in the poem
Just like with short stories, we try and figure out
what is going on in a plot. . .
there's a plot, sometimes, to poems too, and it pays to try and figure out what's
going on at a very literal. . .
at a very literal level. So
in "The Learned," the very first line: "the graybeards wag,
the bald heads nod," so right away from
beards and bald heads, we know we're talking about a group of men,
and old or older men too because the beards
are gray and the heads are bald. So
graybeards as a a term is something that is sometimes used to talk about
teaching professors, so we move to the next line:
"and gather thick as bees." Bees work
all in a colony towards the same task,
so we have a group of old or older men
who are all of the same mind or working towards the same task,
and then we have "to talk electrons, gases,
God," and so
these electrons and gases. . .those would be things that
college professors, scientists, would
discuss. Then we move to "each
specialist dry as dust and professional
oaf," so Philpotts himself,
he wrote plays, he
wrote novels, obviously poetry,
and even in this short poem, there's there's a lot of
richness. So between plays, novels, poetry,
Philpotts was pretty prolific, and he also, by the way, lived to be almost
100 years old. He was an educated man,
he attended college, but in this poem,
he seems to be taking some shots at the educated.
So all these a heads simply nod in agreement,
and so,
bees too. . .they perform the same tasks
over and over almost mindlessly, so he seems to be suggesting
with the line "and professional oaf"
that all these educated
teaching (probably) professors seem to be looking at the same material, performing
the same tasks
mindlessly, over and over, and he tells us that each of these professional
oafs
holds up his little crumb of crust
and cries "behold the loaf!" So
it's not just a crumb but an entire loaf.
In other words, every one of these professional educators. . .
whatever their idea is. . .whatever way they view
something, whether it's a an electron
a gas, a piece of literature, their reading
of it. . .it's not just a little crumb, a little
observation. It is everything and all things
because that Professor himself is the one
who came up with this observation, so it must be brilliant to that individual.
so here we have Eden Philpotts
taking a shot at people who are very educated
and are supposed to be teaching all the rest of us.
That's the analysis of Eden Philpotts
"The Learned."