has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else." - Rainer Maria Rilke
When I first read this poem, I didn't really put that much effort into deeply analyzing it. I just thought that it was about a panther trapped in a zoo, pacing back and forth against the bars, longing to escape the cramped space. Then when I came to class today and we talked about what the meaning behind most of these poems were, I received some very insightful thoughts from my classmates. My peers convinced me that this poem is actually about a prisoner trapped behind the bars of his or her jail cell, stuck in the cramped space in which he or she must stay, almost paralyzed, for a great length of time. I then got to thinking that maybe this prisoner isn't just confined to this jail cell for a great length of time, maybe he or she is actually on death row. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote how "An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone." This could be the prisoner's sudden hope that he or she might be freed. Just as quickly as this hope comes, though, it is lost.
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