Analyzing The Hobbit Essay, Research Paper

After receiving the message that her lover is dead, the woman

begins to think back to her words her lover spoke to her while they were

still together.

He had a whim

That the sunlight carried blessing

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

Now he is dead. (lines 87-90)

She believed all that her lover had told her and now how can she trust

what is dead? All the patterns she followed while her lover was away.

Where they all a waste? “Christ! What are patterns for?” (line 107).

Lowell captures the love the woman in her poem holds for her lover

by having her follow a set of patterns. The pattern of her dress, the

tears she sheds for her lover, and the garden she paces through each day

give the reader a sense of this woman’s incompleteness. Lowell also shows

how these patterns are destroyed. The one event of the lover’s death

caused the once hopeful patterns to be useless. We all follow patterns in

our own lives. Most of these patterns, however, will constantly need

changing for the rest of our lives.