Poetry Response 2

Poetry Response

Dora Williams by  Edgar Lee Masters

            This dramatic monologue describes all the different men that the woman, Dora, has married. The narrator does not spend more than two or three lines describing any of the men. She just mentions their names, how they died or left, and what she gained from them. The focus on all of material things instead of the actual relationships with the men shows how she, Dora, is flightly and trying to belittle the relationships. The shift in the poem comes when she moves to Paris. . This is when she really becomes her own person and stops relying on the men she is dating or married to.

This poem characterizes Dora through her speech.  The quote “I moved on…” is repeated throughout the poem. This shows how instead of dealing with issues, she continues to try to escape them. When she says “Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich” it shows how she is proud of her accomplishments, even through the majority of them come from chances outside of her control, like her wealth. However, she did cause her being “versed in the world” by her constant moving while trying to avoid life’s problems. It seems like Dora Williams is a person who spent her life ignoring everything, until finally she was forced to confront what was going on in her life. She finally does this after her apparent death. She says “Contessa Navigato Implora eterna quiete." which means something about death. This shows that she has come to terms with the fact that she has died. This contrasts with the other deaths in the poem, which are mentioned yet then basically ignored. Her death is another shift where she realizes that she can no longer "escape" life.