University:
Missouri State University
Course:
ENG 351 | Survey of American Literature II
Academic year:

2021
Views:

62

Pages:

2
Author:

Rylee Roach

“A Work of Artifice” Questions Name:_________________________ 1. What is the speaker rebelling against? The notion that a woman should be kept small and domestic. It becomes clear at the end of the poem that the speaker is referring to women. 2. Who is the speaker addressing? Anyone that believes it is better to dwarf someone’s potential than to risk finding out how great and powerful he/she can become. Men that believe they are superior, stronger, and bigger than women in every way. 3. Explain the metaphor. __bonsai tree_____ is being compared to ____women___________. 4. Describe the effect of the word “croons”. Look it up in the dictionary if you’re not sure of its denotation and connotation. Croons means to speak gently and intimately to. This idea makes it seems like the gardener is condescending to the bonsai tree in the way that you would console a child or a baby. 5. Do you notice any shifts in the poem? A shift in tone? A shift in point of view? The shift at the end of the poem makes it clear that we are talking about women (“the bound feet,” “the hair in curlers”). The tone is mostly belittling and condescending, but then it becomes a little more reproachful/accusing. *How does this poem relate to Kafka’s Metamorphosis? You need to think about this one☺ A Work of Artifice Marge Piercy (1936- ) The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch.