Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

and passion are so intrinsic to our nature that even our body approves and it becomes obvious

that “kisses are a better fate than wisdom”. Similarities can be drawn to anyone lived in a pretty

how town 1 , in which adults are swept away by overthinking and forget how to experience life

as it should be. The finality of the concluding lines promotes an air of candor, as if the narrator

has come to a final conclusion – “life’s not a paragraph/ and death i think is no parenthesis”,

hence his rejection of traditional syntax. The use of contractions and the interjection of “i think”

adds to the informality, supporting the disregard for tradition. As one tries harder to structure

their life, they stray further from the ultimate truth – that life is not a thing of structure, but a

tangled mess of feelings and emotions. No matter how hard one tries, life cannot be captured

in words on a page. Youth is the closest we come to understanding that the key to life is not to

understand but to accept.

Like many of cummings’ other works, since feeling is first 8 harbors its message within its

technique. The poem follows no clear structure, with complete disregard for capitalization and

correct sentence structure, serving as a metaphor for the rebellion against reason in favor of

emotion. Parallels can be drawn to TS Eliot’s The Waste Land , where cummings is said to have

drawn inspiration. Like The Waste Land , the free form and messy structure creates a metaphor

for life in the post World War One world. There is a sense of irony present in since feeling is

first 8 , as cummings seems to acknowledge that not even he can capture the youthful passion

for life for which one should strive. The acknowledgment that “death… is no parenthesis” is

perhaps a reference to the inadequacy of his own writing, strewn with parenthesis, at capturing

the full extent of life. It seems cummings also believes that the most important things in life

cannot be conveyed through written text. There is evidence in all his works of the value of

youthful passion over reason within his nonsensical structure and word choice. Although the

phrases are not technically correct, they appeal to one’s emotions instead of intellect. In anyone

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