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Nam (1101)
“Truth of Life”
According to Marie Curie’s quote, “nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to
be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less,” people
view life as dissatisfaction to be worried about. That is true; life is unpredictable,
people do not know what will occur in their lives. As they have experienced, they
realize that life is unstable. As they can get things, they can lose them, too. People
focus more on what they will gain or lose too much; in consequence, they are scared
of living their lives. It is because they do not understand and accept that nothing in
life is permanent and they can get all they want to. Permanence of life and having all
they desire cannot bring them to the real happiness. That is what people
misunderstand. The real happiness is when people understand how life goes and can
deal with the changes of things in their lives happily. Thus, in Wallace Stevens’
poem, “Sunday Morning”, he introduced the truth of life: life is not easy, real
happiness could be found only in reality, and nothing in life is permanent.
Life is not simple. Every one’s life has experienced difficulties. Every one has
responsibilities; some might be little, but some might be great that a person could not
handle it. As in the first stanza of the poem, “Stevens says about a woman not going
to church, but doing something else with Sunday morning,” (Hammer, Langdon)
when he writes,
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. (1-5)
At this point, he talks about a religion, Christianity, which Christians should go to
church for rite every Sunday morning. She is not going, but she is lying on a ‘sunny
chair’ enjoying a cup of ‘coffee’ and ‘oranges’. Also, she is wearing the peignoir,
meaning she is not going out anywhere very soon. With freedom she feels around her,
she could forget about the rite she should join. The words, ‘complacencies’, ‘coffee’
and ‘orange’, used in the poem to identify relax that the one has in Sunday morning.
Additionally, the sacrifice can refer to responsibility of a person, which they have to
hold it all the time. Therefore, from the first line to fifth line, Stevens describes that
lives are difficult since people always bear our obligations and cope with unexpected
obstacles. When they reach the point in which they can no longer stand for, they want
to get away from this mess, from the hardships to peace, which the poet mentions,
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
……………………………………………………………….
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet” (6-13).
For that reason, people do not do what they are supposed to do as ordinary. Instead,
they try to avoid realness and they get peaceful as, in the poem, Stevens uses ‘dream’
to create an image of escaping reality. When people can escape tiredness and mess,
their day or time will be calm as ‘wide water’ (12).
However, no real and long lasting bliss exists in one’s dream. Stevens gives an
idea that dream is just a dream that people never get to what they actually want in his
or her dream,
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth, (17-21)
Dream can identify one’s deep desire or thought which people always see when they
are sleeping; nevertheless, when they get up, all they found in their dream are lost.
Then, when time passes, people will totally forget them. Thus, what Stevens is
introducing here is people could find true delight only in realness, which he uses
‘divinity’ to refer to happiness in life. In the poem, he is telling that the woman
escapes from reality for peace of her mind, which is actually not there. Instead, she
should enjoy what surrounding her such as “…pungent fruit and bright, green
wings…” (20), which are oranges and cockatoo mentioned in the first verse. Real
happiness is always with people because it lives within everyone like what Stevens
writes,
