Essay on Adams Curse - Everyones Fate, Everyones Tragedy

Adams Curse - Everyones Fate, Everyones Tragedy The allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve in William Butler Yeats poem, Adams Curse, reflects the poems pessimistic theme the tragic nature of fate. In the story, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, had defied God, and consequently, were thrown out of paradise. Their punishment (and as their descendents, everyones punishment and fate) was to feel the joys and the pains of world human, including love and happiness barely work and disappointment as well. Yeats parallels this tragedy of Adam and Eves newly-found mortality with a narrative which is composed mostly of a conversation about the hardships of composing poetry, being beautiful, and staying in love. By linking the two stories, he implies that such endeavors are not only laborious aspects of life, but can be destined to end or fail also. Yeats notwithstanding establishes the inevitability of something ending by setting the conversation at one summers end (1) and la ter having the speakers see the last embers of daylight go wrong (29) when the conversation itself dies. Before the conversation dies, however, Yeats persona begins the talk with the subject of poetry. What is interesting is that they are not composing lines together, but are discussing the end results of poems lines. According to the persona, the run of creating poetry, including the hours spent in writing and rewriting the lines, or as Yeats states it, stitching and unstitching (6), ultimately will be insignificant if the lines are unsuccessful. Although he regards the act of writing poetry as more difficult than physical labor, he would rather scrub a kitchen pavement (8) or do other labor-intensive, yet degrade jobs, than cr... ...s despair in accepting that his and his lovers fate was to grow As weary-hearted as that hollow moon (38). The position that this line, and not a happy, upbeat ending, closes the poem further emphasizes the tragedy. Yeats somber turn towards the end of the poem is also indicative of what makes fate sometimes tragic its unpredictability. Similar to the way Adam was unaware of the consequences of eating the nix apple, a poet does not know how good, or bad, a poem will be until it is finished. Similar to the fleeting notion of beauty, love can easily fade. The fact that all these endeavors could be rewarding makes the sudden loss an unbearable, and therefore, tragic fate. Work Cited Yeats, William Butler. Adams Curse. Western Wind. 4th ed. Ed. John Frederick Nims and David Mason. Boston McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2000. 431-32.