"Old Photograph of the Future"

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the poem "Old Photograph of the Future" written by Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) which describes a picture from his childhood. It examines how the poet is caught in the spiral of time that makes him go back and forth through the past, the present, and the idea of the future. It discusses how, from this perspective, the poem, as a literary creation, fails to work as a time-machine that would enable the poet to rediscover the unity of his family and his own being, to go back to the origin.

From the Paper:

"The most striking thing in the first three quatrains that deal with the description of the photograph, that is to say the past, is actually the unity of the family represented. Indeed, from the very beginning, the emphasis is on the baby; he is the "center of attention" even more so through the repetition of the phrase that operates as an anaphora (l. 1 and 5) and the use of dashes that visually put the newborn in the reader's own center of attention. The unity is remarkable by the bond between the three members, the baby being the common point. In fact, in the second quatrain, the reader still focuses on the child and only shifts to the mother because the run-on line (l. 6) puts the stress on the copula 'to be' and the meliorative adjective "precious" that links the baby to his mother. "

More papers on "Old Photograph of the Future":

• Analytical Essay # 148035 : "The Division Between Old and New: The Veldt and Ray Bradbury's Fear of the Future"
• Essay # 33833 : "The Shape of the Future"
• Article Review # 107482 : "The Warehouse of the Future"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: