| Term Paper Title | Some Things Can Only Be Learned Through Time |
| # of Words | 886 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 3.54 |
Some Things Can Only Be Learned Through Time
In Linda Pastan's poem "Ethics," the speaker recounts a moral dilemma that her teacher would ask every fall, which had been haunting her for a long time. The question was "if there were a fire in a museum / which would you save, a Rembrandt painting / or an old woman who hadn't many / years left anyhow?" This question contributes to the theme that ethics and moral values can be only learned from the reflection, which comes through experience and maturity. Imagery, diction, and figures of speech also contribute to the development of the theme.
Linda Pastan uses images to help to support the theme. For example the statement that "sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother's face" displays the inability of the children to relate the dilemma to themselves, something that the speaker has learned to do as she grew older. In this poem, the speaker is an older, more mature woman, who places a high emphasis on the burden of years from which she speaks by saying "old woman, / or nearly so, myself." "I know now that woman / and painting and season are almost one / and all beyond saving by children." This clearly states that the poem is not written for the amusement of children but somebody that has reached the speaker's age, thus supporting the idea that children cannot help or understand her or anybody of her age. Also, when the speakers describes the kids in the classroom as "restless on hard chairs" and "caring little for picture or old age" we can picture them in our minds sitting, ready to leave class as soon as possible, unwilling and unable to understand the ethical question that the poem poses.
The choice of words that the author uses also contributes to the development of the theme. For example, the use of words like "drafty," "half-heartedly," and "half-imagined" give the reader the idea of how faintly the dilemma was perceived and understood by the speaker when she was younger, thus adding to the idea that the children cannot understand the burden the speaker has upon herself. In addition, referring to a Rembrandt as just a "picture" and to the woman as "old age," we can see that the children consider these two symbols, which are very important to the speaker and to the poem, trivial. To add to the idea of the old age of the woman, and to define the point of view more clearly, the speaker uses "old woman" a number of times.
The speaker also uses metaphors. For example, "The colors / within this frame are darker t...Read entire document
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