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Summary Stephen Spender - "The Double Shame" - Analysis
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This is a summary and analysis of the poem "The Double Shame" by Stephen Spender.
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“The Double Shame” is a poem by Stephen Spender. This poem waswritten after his separation from his first wife - Inez Pearn. The poem
reflects the anguish of his separation and painful honesty of pain.
The Double Shame is a poem in which the narrator confronts their
own “end of the world” in the form of a marriage break-up. The first
stanza exudes confidence in the claim that there is life after the painful
time when the world is made of glass and ready to shatter.
The rest of the poem is just as powerful but not as reassuring - rather
the narrator embraces the bitter truth. He enters a wistful reverie, and
the poem captures the shadowy feelings within a household that is
one short while all the furniture and clothes are still set out.
The closing lines are an accusation cast even as the last spadeful is
thrown over the dead relationship. It leaves no room for any
self-deception about what transpired. It makes the reader question -
how many of us have had the courage and honesty to face the truth in
those lines?
The language of this poem is too tightly packed with abstractions and
symbols to be effective, but the poet's stance against pointless and
petty grief is nonetheless clear.
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STANZA ONE
The first two stanzas are the best in the poem because there Spender
sets up the "poetIc" and "real" facts about losing love.
The first stanza shows us the world as it is transformed by the lover's
paranoid distress. The narrator's attitude toward the suffering lover
appears sympathetic here.
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