The analysis is on WB Yeats poem "Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop" It gives the summary of the poem first and the message that is embedded within the poem. The theme that is discussed by the poet is also discussed in details as well as the styles and the form employed in the poem. It them looks at the theme of conflict between religion and daily lifestyle in a specific manner.
¶ … Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop" by WB Yeats
This is one of the shortest poems by WB Yeats though has a lot of consistency with the other poems that he wrote before and even after this poem. He is known to be preoccupied by the conflicts and the frictions that exist between cultures, religions, races, classes and the several other categorizations that exist among human beings. He has often used the mouthpiece called Jane in many of his poems and Yeats employs the same character here as the persona. The life that one chooses to live is the satisfying life that the person would like to remain in and no one should try to make them forfeit the chosen life as Jane indicates by rejecting the invitation by the bishop to change her life.
Apparently Jane is an old woman who is not very sane but the insanity gives her the confidence and courage to speak some truths that many would rather be left untouched or unspoken. Jane is the persona in this poem as well and she happens to meet the bishop somewhere along the road and they get into a long conversation.
From the onset of the poem, it is clear that the three stanza poem is not the full conversation that the bishop and Jane had, as it indicates that 'much said he and I', but just a summary of the most important parts that the persona thought were worth talking about. In the first stanza, it is the bishop that speaks trying to convict the old lady into religious living as she is advanced in age and should not feel that she is growing any younger. Jane takes over the conversation through the second and third stanza hence dominating the talk between the two of them.
The conversation can be understood at face value since there is use of simple language without much of the poetic figurative language. However, the underlying emotionally charged atmosphere which is very personal is also apparent and is difficult to ignore particularly when Jane begins her rejoinder to the Bishop's proposal. It is easy to pick out that she actually was living an unholy life or life without chastity taking from the defensive and defiant tone that she uses to reply the allegations. She seems to have some lesson of her own that she would like the Bishop to learn as well and not her to learn from the bishop.
Jane paints a lucid scene of conflict between religion, ostensibly Christian here due to the bishop, and the realities of the daily lives. She indicates that good and evil will forever co-exist and there is no way the bishop will convince him that she can change to be chaste as a measure to curb evil. She says "fair and foul are near of kin. And fair needs foul." There is an apparent clash of lifestyle and difference in view of the two standards presented in the poem. The bishop insinuates that fair can exist without foul, but Jane insists that the two have to exist side by side.
At a lesser level, there is depiction of the clash between sanity and insanity as there seems to be no point agreement between the two people. Indeed if it were that the bishop was to be there persona here, he would have introduced the poem as 'I met Jane, and much clashed she and I' since there was no harmonious stanza throughout. However, this is a depiction of the difference in view of events between the two people.
Literary devices
From the first line of the poem, the reader has the feeling of media res (an existing history) between the two since Jane introduces "…the Bishop…" meaning he is a person she has known for some time. This gives it the effect of a ballad that allows the persona to carry on talking about issues without having to do much introduction.
The rhythm of the three stanzas of the poem is iambic and keeps alternating between trimester and the tetrameter. The last two lines of each stanza are not regular but with a rhyme on every other line of the stanzas. The heavy presence of rhythm and rhyme in a situation that is supposed to be a conversation between two people is intended to show the plastic nature of the conversation and to indicate that in the real sense there is a general artificiality in the whole conversation. In the real life, no two people talking serious issues, heart to heart can express themselves in a rhythmic manner.
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