Mythological Themes Essay, Research Paper

Mythological Themes

Many poems use mystical creatures to tell stories. From mermaids, to sirens, and

goat-footed balloonMen. A good example of the use of these mystical creatures can be

seen in the poem “In Just-.” The creature used is this goat-footed balloonMan. He helps

condense a story into a poem, while condensing the story this creature also attracts the

reader’s imagination and keeps him or her intrigued meanwhile maintaining a politeness

to the reader by taking vulgar words out of the poem.

This balloonMan condenses a story of a man that lured small children into his grip

to molest them. If a reader dissects this poem enough they can come to the conclusion

that a man disguise himself as a nice man an attracts small children, turns on them and

molest them. How else to describe a nice man other than a balloonMan. As young

children are intrigued with floating balloons. Describing this balloonMan as goat-footed

is very precise. In many myths goat-feet represent the devil. Using this myth of goat-feet

as a symbol of the devil shows that this “balloonMan” is not as nice of a balloonMan as a

child would expect. As you can see the writer uses the fraise the “goat-footed

balloonMan” to describe a nice man that lures little kids in and then turns of them.

The writer knows that he has to help the readers imagination develop into thinking

his way. He uses the term balloonMan to let us know this man is around kids and

interacting with them as well. By taking goat-footed and adding this before the title

“balloonMan” shows that you can associated the balloonMan with the devil or something

awful along that line. Now there is a deviled man luring children in by his balloons he is

associated with. Not only does the writer use goat-footed in the poem, he uses words

such as queer, and wicked. This gives the reader the assumption that this man is up to no

good with these children.

Politeness is a key factor to author in telling the story of this vicious child

molester. Not many people want to read of a man that disguises himself as fun, and with

some sort of child’s lure to help him hurt and abuse these innocent children. By using

this title balloonMan the writer keeps a discreet overview of this story. It lets the reader

use his or her imagination to determine what this creature is trying to do. Without any

disguise of a balloonMan and just using the title of a child molester the reader would have

to read no further than after the fact this man calls the children away from their tasks to

interact with him and his wicked ways. You are never reading a very descriptive story of

a child molester but that of a wicked goat-footed balloonMan. It is a little more

acceptable to the reader because at one point we were little children drawn to the man

holding the balloons at the circus.

This poem “In Just-” has a great use of a mythological creature to tell a story that

we would probably not rather hear. After all when you look at the story of a Mermaid

that comes and takes a man back into the sea with her, no man wants to admit that he is in

love that much with a woman to die for her. No person wants to hear of a child which we

all were children at one point get lured into a distasteful episode with a child molester.

The writer uses this awful creature in a remarkable way of describing this monster of a

man while not telling a story that is long and unentertaining to the reader but pleasing to

the reader.