Assisi :: essays research papers

Critical Evaluation-Assisi A poem that I have been studying recently is Assisi by Norman McCaig, which I found very interesting to read because it made a statement which relates to our world today even though the poem was wrote about thirty or forty years ago. The poem has lots of ideas including effective figures of speech, good choice of words, important images and irony. The statement that McCaig makes is, where ever there is great wealth it always exists along side great poverty. The poem is set in Assisi in Italy around the 1970’s were all the rich tourists are coming in hundreds from all different countries far and wide to see the frescoes painted by Giotto in Assisi’s huge cathedral. McCaig mainly focuses on the dwarf outside of the three-tier cathedral built in honour of St. Francis. McCaig then proceeds to the priest guiding the tourists around the cathedral telling them the history of Giotto’s frescoes and how they individually teach people the goodness of God and the suffering of his son. McCaig uses effective littery techniques to describe the tourists and to describe the dwarf. He then goes on to explain that the tourists are not studying the frescoes and are just there to boast about being there. Then he goes on to tell of the dwarfs voice when he says â€Å"Grazie† for the money one of the tourists have given to him outside the cathedral. McCaig uses juxtaposition by situating the dwarf outside of the huge three tier cathedral. McCaig also refers to the dwarf as a â€Å"ruined temple†. By saying this he creates a huge contrast between the dwarf and the cathedral, he also uses irony to compare the dwarf to St. Francis were he says: â€Å"Outside the three tiers of churches built in honour of St. Francis, brother of the poor, talker with birds, over whom he had the advantage of not being dead yet.† This is saying that the dwarf had an advantage over one group of people, the dead. I think that it was a good idea to situate the dwarf outside the huge cathedral and create the image of a great, strong, beautifully designed building standing over a small, weak, deformed person. McCaig gives the reader a graphic description of the dwarf in both stanzas 1 and 3 where he uses many littery techniques to describe the dwarf. In stanza 1 he uses alliteration, simile and metaphor to give the reader a graphic view of the dwarfs deformed body: