Analysis of The Answer
He awoke in the depths surrounded by the dark,
Narrow and winding was the path;
He looked the other way, but to his dismay,
The path was all he had.
The cave was deep and dark as could be,
Burdened with memories and scars.
The answer lies at the end of the path,
The answer that brought him this far.
As he travelled deeper into the abyss,
He was ridden with problems and struggles.
He wished to turn to a being with power,
One who could destroy all his troubles.
But as he saw time tick by the hour,
More trammels he faced in the tunnel.
With no sight or sound, his doubts towered,
A thought came to him amongst the rubble;
"Does this supreme power even exist?"
Irresolute, he decided to keep moving ahead,
But seized by fatigue and hunger,
He sat down in the chasm, but he could barely fathom
A corpse in front ripped asunder.
A carcass lay in front of him
Feasted upon by the vicious beasts.
He thought about the misfortune of prey
Scurried for fear of the beasts unleashed,
Through no one fault thrown into the fray;
And though the hunter wills for his feast,
The law of hunger they must obey.
And the thoughts in his mind together pieced;
"Do we have the will to act, or are we all just destiny's tryst?"
He journeyed on with these doubts in mind,
To bear witness to simple and strange.
He felt he drew nearer to the end,
But suddenly things began to change.
The voices came to him from every direction,
He knew there was none but him.
He began to see impossible things.
To his logic, it all seemed grim.
Memories of his journey came recurring,
And his mind was filled to the rim.
Like blooming flowers in spring,
The question burst out from within;
"Was reality even real, or from the truth did I desist?"
Burdened with these doubts in mind,
He had no choice but to march on.
Then in the black night, he saw to his delight
The door towards he was drawn.
The door concealed behind it a light,
That answer he searched for with all his might.
He opened the door after his struggles and labor,
And laid eyes on what lay inside the chamber.
What he saw inside could not be unseen,
The truth that slipped in the lines between,
The truth that was by the silence spelt,
He entered to find only himself.
Scheme | XABC XXAX XDEDEFXF G XEXE HXBXBIBI G JKXK XHXHLHLX G JXMX MMEENNCX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001010101 10010101 11010111101 011111 011101111 10110001 0101101101 01011111 11101001001 1110110010 11111010110 111011110 1111111010 11110010 111111110 0111101010 1101101001 1110111001 11101010 11100101111010 01011010 01010111 100110101 1101001011 101110101 111110101 010101111 011101101 0010110101 11101111111111 110111101 111011001 111110101 110010111 0101111100010 1111111 1011101001 11101111 10011101010 01111101 1101001 01011101 11010111011101 1011101 11111111 10011111101 0101111 010101101 1101111111 1100110110010 01111101010 1110111101 011100101 011110101 110111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,213 |
Words | 478 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 8, 1, 4, 8, 1, 4, 8, 1, 4, 8 |
Lines Amount | 55 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 143 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 35 |
About this poem
I narrate the story of a man in dark cave who journeys into its depths to find an answer/treasure he has been searching for. I wanted to draw parallels between the journey in the cave and the journey of life. And the answer/treasure being the thing that all humans ultimately want to know, i.e. what is the meaning of life? In the first stanza, I wish to convey that like death, birth is also irreversible, and so he has no choice but to continue on the path of life. The second stanza is meant to highlight the purpose of his journey through the cave (and life). I then wanted to bring up the three big existential questions that all humans come to realize through the journey of life. Firstly, he begins to question whether this notion of a God is true (or is it just taught to us by society and hardships?). He then begins to question whether we have free-will, or whether everything in this world is predetermined. I draw parallels between this question and the predator-prey dynamic. I also at more »
Written on 2022
Submitted by kaushikprabhav on August 12, 2022
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 2:23 min read
- 523 Views
Citation
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"The Answer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/136732/the-answer>.
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