Leda and the Swan Rhetorical

Leda and the Swan

Rhetorical Analysis of "Leda and the Swan"

The Irish poet W.B. Yeats' poem "Leda and the Swan" revolves around a literary allusion to the myth of Zeus' affair with the mortal woman Leda, whom the god came to in the shape of a swan. Like a myth, the poem begins in media res, or in the middle of the action, assuming that the reader understands the classical reference. It begins not with an explanation, but a striking, kinesthetic image. "A sudden blow: the great wings beating still/Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed./by his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,/He holds her helpless breast upon his breast" the repetition of the word breast highlights the sensuality of the bird's action. The "dark webs" of the bird's feet also have a dual significance, for they function as kind of a pun on how Leda herself is caught in Zeus' web. The blow which begins the rape also foreshadows the war to come, which will be referred to in greater detail, later in the poem.

The poem suddenly unfolds in a fire of rhetorical questions, to suggest the overwhelming, thrusting power of the god in the form of the bird: "How can those terrified vague fingers push/the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?/How can anybody, laid in that white rush,/but feel the strange heart beating where it lies?" The white rush refers to the bird's sexual parts. The feathers become a euphemism, or a stand-in for the rape that is actually occurring, just as Leda's fingers, described pathetically as terrified and vague are powerless to resist and become a stand-in for her attempt to extract herself from the god's embrace.

The nature of the questions: 'how can anybody' have a hyperbolic intensity, suggesting that no one can possibly resist the force, strength, and glory of Zeus. Then there is the consummation: "A shudder in the -- , engenders there," for engenders refers to the fact that Leda becomes pregnant by the encounter. And suddenly the rape of Leda becomes a synecdoche, or a part that stands in for the larger whole, for the fall of Troy. "The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / and Agamemnon dead." Leda's body is broken through penetration, and Troy's wall also becomes broken. Zeus' desire burns, like the roofs and towers of Troy will burn. And men will die, including the great general Agamemnon. Time rushes forward in an instant.

Leda's pregnancy resulted in Helen, for whom the Trojan War was waged. Yet the future war is also a kind of synecdoche for the violence done to Leda. The violence of war and the violence of sexuality are intertwined, and become metaphors for one another. The reader is suddenly aware that he or she has been reading an extended metaphor, both for how one sexual act can lead to violence, and also how violence is at the heart of all sexual activity. The poem reaches its climax with the sexual act, which foreshadows the horror to come.