Author Question: What connotations does the color white usually possess? Does it havethose same associations here? ... (Read 56 times)

joe · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

What connotations does the color white usually possess? Does it havethose same associations here?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

At what point in the Troy narrative does this poem appear to be set?

What will be an ideal response?

fffftttt · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Traditionally, the color white connotes innocence and purity, symbolized most notably perhaps by the white wedding dress of a presumably virginal bride. In the poem, it carries associations of a cold, almost lifeless pallorassociations that are intensified in the last lines reference to the white ash that will eventually be the residue of her burnt corpse. In using whiteness to conjure up negative and deathlike implications, H.D. engages in the same reversal of the colors traditional connotations that we find in Robert Frosts sonnet Design and, of course, Herman Melvilles masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

Answer to Question 2

That point is not specifically indicated in the text, but a close reading of the poem, coupled with a knowledge of the events of the Troy narrative, can lead us to an answer. It is clear from the text that Helen is physically present in Greece, since there are frequent references to her facial expressions and other mannerisms being observed by the people there. Since the hatred of Helen that the poem describes is based upon the feeling that she is the cause of all the suffering and death occasioned by the Trojan War, the poem must be set after the end of the war, when she has been recaptured by her husband, Menelaus, and returned to Sparta.