Helen Of Troy Poem Analysis
Helen of Troy Poem Analysis In Greek Mythology, Helen of Troy was the daughter of Zeus and Leda and was infamously known as the most beautiful woman on earth. Her beauty is claimed to be utterly amazing to those who behold her, but this beauty also causes various problems, such as causing the Trojan War when Paris takes Helen for himself from the Spartan king Menelaus. Thus, various questions arise about her beauty, most specifically regarding the worth or harm of such a beauty. In fact, in Edgar Allen Poe’s To Helen and Hilda Doolittle’s Helen, the two poems express two contrasting messages involving Helen’s beauty using literary elements such as tone, diction, the author’s background, different stanza form, and imagery. At a first glance at the two poems, the difference in tone clearly shows the contrasting themes of the two poems. In Poe’s poem, diction such as “brilliant”, “glory”, and “grandeur” helps to establish a joyful and revering tone, and by comparing Helen to ships and people returning to their native land as well as Psyche (the human soul who married Cupid), it is clear that the speaker’s tone and attitude toward Helen is venerating and positive towards her exceeding beauty. However, the tone in Doolittle’s poem is quite different. While Poe uses positive diction, Doolittle uses diction such as “hates”, “reviles”, and “past ills”, to suggest that there is an alternate view of Helen – that her beauty can be a cause of strife and hatred towards Helen, contradicting the glorifying message of Poe. Thus, merely through differences in tone and diction, the reader can already sense the differences of opinion between Poe and Doolittle, and it is clear that the speaker in To Helen has supreme admiration of Helen and her beauty, while the speaker in Helen sees the negative aspects and effects of her beauty that can cause hatred and revulsion. Furthermore, merely the background of the author in the poem most likely has an effect on the differences in themes