Herman Melville’s “Shiloh”Analysis

American War Poetry

Poetry Analysis Essay prompt

(Taken from Kaplan 2012)

Read the following poem by the American writer Herman Melville. In a well-organized essay, explain how Melville transforms a painful experience into something beautiful. In your analysis, consider such elements as imagery, tome, alliteration, symbolism, and end rhyme.

Herman Melville

(August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) He was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick.

BACKGROUND INFOThe Battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee, took place on 6-7 April 1862. Casualty levels were unprecedented: the 3500 men who died there amounted to more than the United States had lost in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War combined.

http://war-poets.blogspot.com/2009/10/herman-melville-shiloh.html

What the prompt asks “how Melville

transforms a painful experience into something beautiful”

The techniques transform the pain of battle into a song of peace and respect

Title and subtitle “Shiloh” = battle of Shiloh in the Civil

War A Requiem = a funeral song for the

departed Pays homage to those who died in battle Emphasizes the tragedy of war rather than

glorifying pain and heroic death

TONE Peaceful,

somber Swallows Clouded days Forest field Night Noon Eve Hushed

STRUCTURE Repeated refrain (lines 4,9,19) = musical

nature, suggests cyclical nature of life and death

Meter and rhyme = regularly irregular Soothing, peaceful Like a lullaby

alliteration “S” and “sh” (whole poem)

Soothing peaceful Line 11 “parting groan” – like a calming shhh to

the dying “F” (lines 13-15)

Puts emphasis on the idea that in death, they are all equal, no longer “foes”

Symbolism “April rain” (5)

Wash away the suffering “reborn” into afterlife

“night” (7) + “eve” (14) Symbol of death

“church” (9) Symbol of peace final resting place (graveyard)Shiloh Church before the

battle

Irony “April”

Springtime usually connotes new life, but here it is all death

Lines 13-14 “Of dying foemen mingled there-- / Foemen at morn, but friends at eve”

Enemies in battle, but all equal in death now Line 16 “(What like a bullet can undeceive)”

The bullet, or death is the “great undeceiver” – shows soldiers they are not enemies any longer—were they ever?

Irony continued Melville gives the fatally wounded the

opportunity to overcome their hostility. Americans all, they live as foe and die as friends: the schisms of civil war are healed in deaths which transform churchyard into graveyard. That the battlefield should have been a site of Christian worship emphasizes the appalling costs of this fratricide as well as the possibilities for its redress.

http://war-poets.blogspot.com/2009/10/herman-melville-shiloh.html

Lame introductions Be careful in your introduction of

simply repeating the prompt. I read essay after essay that started with “Melville uses x, y, and z to transform a painful experience into something beautiful.”

This is unoriginal and boring and starts your essay off poorly Make it more original.