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10/07/08
Siren Essay
Through comparison of tone, diction, and point of view, of “Siren Song”
images and others come from the pervasive use of nouns. Use of adjectives
such as in the phrase, “my two strong hands” are used to intensify the scene
and build up the heroic tone. In contrast, “Siren Song” has much more
Song” has only two main images, the “beached skull” and the “bird suit.”
The skull imagery is brutal and fatal while the “feathery maniac” image is
the pride of a hero who only sees the sirens as damsels in distress who need
the protagonist of the poem and recounts through his hero’s perspective as
exemplified in lines 3-5, “Now with a sharp sword I sliced an ample wheel of
that he performed a heroic one, to save his men from the lure of the sirens.
“Siren Song” is also in first person, but that is where the similarities end; the
piece is through a siren’s perspective. The siren is the antagonist in the
poems and she uses an alluring and self depreciating voice to bring the
references to her ridiculous “bird suit” and then appeals to the hero’s pride
by displaying her helplessness and crying out for help to “Only you, only
you….”
The tone of “Siren Song” is very deceptive. The siren is crying out for
help but we learn in the last lines starting on line 26 that her cry is “a boring
song but it works every time.” She doesn’t truly need help, she is only trying
to appeal to the pride of the hero who will come and save her. The tone of
man of action.
The hero’s pride comes out in both poems. In “Siren Song” the siren
lures the hero in through his pride. “Odyssey” recounts the pride of a hero
through intensifying and glorifying the hero’s actions and leading the reader
to believe that one day he may be the “pride and glory” of his own city.