Tuesday, 1 October 2013

Exploration of Texts: "Turtle Soup" by Marilyn Chin

1.       Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”?
“Cauldron” is an ancient pot that usually use by ancient Chinese to boil the medicine or soup.  Through this word chosen we know that she is someone that very appreciate every single things about her ancestor land.

2.       Chin refers to “the Wei”, “the Yellow”, and “the Yangtze”. Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?
She refers to “the Wei”, “the Yellow”, and “the Yangtze” because these rivers are the river where the Chinese civilization had started. The turtle represents as an ancient animal for the Chinese as their symbol of tradition. Through those references, we might say that the turtle had witnessed lots of glorious achievements in China civilization like “grazed on splendid sericulture”, through its journey in that river. She could not refer to the river like Mississippi, Nile, and Amazon because there is no big event that ever happened there. There are non-glorious cultures that we could dig among those rivers.

3.       What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is sadness and disappointments. We could see in the entire poem that the mood of the speaker is full of sadness because her mother no longer interested in preserve their sacred culture. The turtle. In the last stanza the speaker questioning about where are their ancestor belief had gone. “The songs, the rites, the oracles?”.

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