Unachievable Perfection
Throughout the readings for Tuesday, John Milton’s “When I consider how my light is spent,” William Shakespeare’s “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and Elizabeth Gilbert’s “One Word”, imperfection is a common theme. The imperfections explained in each reading are seen in the same way by each author.
In John Milton’s poem, the rhyme scheme tells a lot about the emotions between the first two stanzas and the last two. In the first two stanzas, the rhyme is A-B-B-A. This scheme shows that the beginning of the poem John Milton focuses on his imperfection of being blind, and that he can’t move forward in his life. When he says “When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,” (Milton 639), he is describing how light is being wasted on him. In the second half of the poem the rhyme scheme turns to A-B-C. This is showing how he can take that third step and move forward, accepting the fact that he is blind and is able to move on.
Shakespeare’s poem stood out to me the most. It starts of being bluntly mean, pointing out all of the imperfections of this woman. He says how her eyes can’t compare to the sun, or her hair is like wires growing out of her head. But after all of his criticisms, he concludes by saying “and yet, by heaven, I think my love so rare,” (Shakespeare 248). This is saying that even though his love has all of these flaws, he loves her unconditionally.
The final reading was like the others, but without the conclusion of acceptance. It talks about how this woman is trying to describe herself in one word. She finds all these other things that can be defined with one word but is unable to define herself. The moral of this excerpt is that no one or no thing can be described with one word. People are too complex with both positive attributes and flaws to be simplified.