What do the landscapes of winter contribute to the poems ...

[mrsjacobs44]

What do the landscapes of winter contribute to the poems effectiveness?If Stevens had chosen images of summer lawns, what would have been lost?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

What is the speakers attitude toward the men of Haddam? What attitudetoward this world does he suggest they lack? What is implied by calling them thin (line 25)?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[jjorrostieta]

Answer to Question 1

Even though the poem stresses the oneness of the blackbird with humanity and with nature, its focus, as the title proposes, is on the blackbird itself. By placing the blackbird in a setting of snow and ice, Stevens allows the contrast with the white background to bring the bird into sharp relief, in a way that could not have occurred had the bird been swallowed up in a green landscape.

Answer to Question 2

• Stevens chides the thin ascetic men of Haddam who would ignore good blackbirds and actual women for golden phantasms. Their thinness suggests a failure to accept and enjoy the bounty of pleasures that the world provides for us. He also chides that asinine aristocrat who rides about Connecticut (of all places) in a glass coach as if thinking himself Prince Charming.