Poems with the Theme of Death - Essay Example

Barbie Doll refers to the chilling stereotyping a young girl, growing up, is subject to. She is expected to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty and behavior, to become a pleasing, plastic, plaything, and to forget her individuality. In the process, the girl loses her self-esteem and resorts to suicide. The only time that she can conform to society’s norms is after her death—which implies that these norms are killing.

“Doesn’t she look pretty? Everyone said
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.”(Barbie Doll)

This urge to be stylish is referred to in Titanic as well. The urge is so strong that it is not unlikely that people, if given a chance might choose to voyage again on the doomed Titanic, just to be able to go down grandly!
“There will be the books and movies
to remind our grandchildren who we were
and how we died and give them a good cry.”(Titanic)
After all, it’s not everyone can go down “first class”! (Titanic)

Both Barbie Doll and Titanic use an emotionless style—the former chronicles events as they happen, without adding any comment on how wrong it is to bring up a girl thus.
“This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.” (Barbie Doll).

There are only two instances in the poem, where the poet uses some kind of literary flourish, by characterizing puberty as “magic” (a metaphor) and describing the girl’s good nature wearing out “like a fan belt” (a simile). However, beneath the mere presentation of facts lurks a suppressed emotion, which the reader relates to, and the result is therefore an evoking of similar emotion. Titanic, however, has no underlying emotion. The poem mocks people’s tendency to pursue blindly, that which is considered fashionable—like lemmings rushing to a mindless death. But it certainly invokes in the reader, by its mocking style, a horror of our tendency to want to conform to the fashion of the day, irrespective of consequences. The poem highlights how modern media romanticizes even the most terrible of events and the power of the media over our lives.
Both Titanic and Barbie Doll are written in the third person, to achieve distance in the presentation, while Philadelphia, in the first person, immediately establishes emotional proximity with the reader. However, the first two poems have a certain tension, which evokes further layers of meaning. Philadelphia, on the other hand, offers no hidden emotion—anything more than meets the eye at first reading.

All three poems offer a commentary on how life is lived and how death comes, and on the shallow values, which underlie daily life in modern times.