Kaitlin Dixon; Analyzing Story

Kaitlin Dixon

Prof. Cooper

CRWR 212

4/8/2014

My View on ‘Story’

My analysis of Lisa Jarnot’s piece ‘Story’ is that she was symbolizing the importance of the small things in life. In this piece, she speaks simply of the things in the world and linked them all together. She uses the third person point-of-view to tell her story, which to me reflected on the biblical story of Noah and the Arc. Jarnot speaks of how ‘they’ liked and loved the birds, sheep and the ship that rocked. To me that made me think of the Arc, which after 40 days of rain held all the animals until the water subsided and it managed to land. I liked her use of diction in the area that she used the repeating phrases of “They loved” and “They liked”, which emphasized what her subject was. I feel that Jarnot was keying on the things in life and how beautiful they can be if one lets themselves open up to it. Her imagery is simple yet beautiful, utilizing the shadows of the sun as key points of emphasis. She uses the sun as an important symbol in this piece, especially with its repetitive use. I feel that she uses the sun to symbolize the positive times in life, and uses the rain storms to symbolize hardships and struggle.

I feel that this piece symbolizes in many ways the path of life. From the lines “They told the stories of birds they knew” (p 32), I reflected on how everyone talks about other people. I connected this to the common saying ‘Oh, a little birdie told me’. I felt that Jarnot was spinning off a common phrase in order to pull out a real meaning. She wanted to key in on how we all talk about others, telling stories true or not for entertainment and bonding with others. She uses common themes that are universally known to connect her work with daily life. She also connects birds to human life by using them as ‘stars of films’, which would represent celebrities in our society. I feel that she is connecting, contrasting, and paralleling nature to humanity in certain ways. Her connection of all elements really became noticeable in the fifth and sixth stanzas when she stated what every part was doing, and what it had done. She really gave me a feeling of recognition of a powerful connection in the lines “before the birds arrived as birds, graceful, tired, burn down the burning little trees” (p 32).

I found her use of alliteration in the last line with “ships with sheep in shadows of the sun” to be interesting, as it also made me think back to the biblical story of Noah (p 33). I don’t know if this was intentional in her piece, or coincidental but I found the parallels between the works to be awarding to my analysis because it touched on my spirituality and history of my beliefs. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this because it made me think about life and how everything is so connected. It was really interesting how Jarnot connected her thoughts in such a simple way, but made the impact so real. That is one of many reasons I enjoyed her work. The pieces in The Black Dog Songs were all well thought out yet very simple and energetic at times. They caught my attention, especially with the wording used and how simplistic her style and diction was in many cases.