A Mongoliod Child Handling Shells On The Beach by Robert Snyder :: essays research papers

Diction, Theme and Imagery in Richard Snyders Intro To poem"A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the beach"      When you firstborn read Richard Snyders narrative poem, "A Mongoloid ChildHandling Shells on the Beach", it may be perceived that the poem is indeed slightly a baby bird,happily gathering shells upon the shore. However, if we closely consider the diction andconnotations that Synder uses, we displace speculate that the meaning of the poem depicts adeeper and darker theme. The title itself gives us an judgement from the beginning. The jointMongoloid, as identified in Websters New World lexicon (675), is an early term forDowns Syndrome, a state of mental retardation. at that placefore I believe that the poemrepresents the churl as an outcast from the norm of society.     There are several words in the text that refer to the child that we usually wouldntassociate with youth. An early clue would again be effec t in the title, "A Mongoloid ChildHandling Shells on the Beach". Notice that Snyder used the word "handling" instead ofplaying or collecting, words wich we might think of charm envisioning a preteen girlinvestigating sea shells. Snyder also uses the word slow to describe the child on morethan one occasion, as we see in draw off one and line eight "She turns them over in her slow workforce/ ...hums back to it its slow vowels." Yet another guinea pig could be in line four,which reads " they are the calmest things on this sand." Calm is yet another word that wewould not most likely use to portray a schoolboyish child. It very well could be that the author istrying to paint a picture of her impairment and symbolize her condition th abrasive heractions.     Considering Snyder depicted the marine as "..the mazarine maze,"(3) instead ofsimply stating that it is the "deep blue sea", it is tardily to speculate that t he ocean representslife itself. Her being outside of the water while all the other children are swimming is a keyexample of her being isolated. The way that she is presented, which is slow and rathersolemn, contrasts with the other children who are "rough as surf, gay as their nestingtowels."(6). I feel that this kind of symbolic representation is repeated throughout the remainder of thepoem.      The sea shells, for instance, are another most-valuable representation of her isolation.It reads in line three " broken bits from a mazarine maze,". If we understand at the mazarinemaze as being life, and the shells are broken bits of it washed ashore, it becomes clear that