Eden Richman Week 1 - "Complainers" by Rudy Francisco
In the poem "Complainers" by Rudy Francisco, Francisco encourages the reader to not get beaten up by their problems but to overcome them and stop complaining. This poem can be broken down into three sections; the first being a list of people who have had terrible things happen to them (terrible would actually be an understatement) and then encouraging us to not let our everyday problems get us down, lastly what we should do instead of complaining.
Francisco grabs our attention with a story about a man who had to amputate his own arm after a boulder fell on it. Then he tells us more stories about people who got extremely hurt. Instead of telling the entire story with detail for each person, he brings out the same effect just by saying short sentences like "Matthew Brobst was hit by a javelin." Because of the detail he went into earlier, we feel the same sympathy even with a story with fewer details. This allows him to fit more stories in and keep the poem short.
Then he gets on to the main point of the poem. He tells us that the people he mentioned before said "I guess things could have been worse" yet we still say that we are having a bad day. He uses the phrase "tell me" repeatedly to express his anger on humanity that we complain about such minuscule things. He ends this angry repetition of "tell me" by saying "Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedies so small it can fit on the tips of our tounges?" to change the subject from the anger of people telling him about tragedies to what he thinks about tragedies.
He ends the poem by saying that we should be grateful to be alive. Ending with
"You are still alive
Act like it"
I think that this message is very powerful, and it is true that we shouldn't only dwell on the bad things in life. On the other hand, it is often healthy to complain and let something off your chest. It is hard to live life if you can't stop thinking about something bad that happened to you, so I think there should be a balance of complaining and living, not just all one or all of the other.
Link to the Poem: https://genius.com/Rudy-francisco-complainers-annotated
Wow Eden, that was a brilliant analysis. I did not pick up on many of the these things in the poem, but now that you pointed them out they seem so obvious to me. When you explained the workings behind the phrase "Matthew Brobst was hit by a javelin" I was blown away. That is an interesting way of thinking about the way he starts with a detailed explanation of the man who's hand got cut off and then ends that section with a short sentence. Also, the shift in tone with the "tell me" section is also interesting. You did an excellent job of pointing out what the poet was thinking with his choices!
ReplyDeleteHi Eden, I love your interpretation and analysis of this poem. I think the message is super important because we really should appreciate life as we know it, instead of focusing on the tragedy that occurs. This poem highlights a positive outlook on like, and demonstrates that your positive or negative attitude can change how you live your life. I also appreciated the way you pointed out his strategy of starting with a detailed story so that he could include more quick stories while still giving the reader the same reaction.
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