The Ideal Synthesis
The story of Adam and Even in Genesis depicts the ideal model of life: the perfect balance of natural order. Yet man's natural towards destruction and sin causes the ruin of this utopia. The fate Adam receives can directly be related the shortcomings of the military and society's loss of stasis with nature which are both described in Reed's poem. The numerous connotations of words and phrases in Reed's poem help bring out this theme of imbalance. In "Naming of Parts", Henry Reed compares the garden and the soldiers by use carefully worded imagery to portray the unfortunate effects of war on the lives of many men. In the poem, Reed portrays the soldiers in two roles: namers and occupants of a garden. These two different roles are clearly and repeatedly contrasted to establish a comparison between harmony with nature and the discordant role of the military in the natural world. A strong theme of the poem is that war disturbs the balance of the natural order. Reed offers a vision of the appropriate equilibrium of the world through his descriptions of the garden. The garden is a symbol of life and beauty: a magical place, at once \"silent\" and \"eloquent\". Their \"blossoms are fragile and motionless,\" not to mention better
Comparing and contrasting guns and gardens, soldiers and bees, this poem relates the unrelated in order to draw a clear difference between the forces of life and the forces of death. However, the poem goes further than merely contrasting opposites. The structure and language of the poem combine to demonstrate how one should synthesize with the natural order. More generally, the poem demonstrates that war is contrary to nature. The disruptive effects of war on the natural order are shown through contrasts between the soldiers and the garden. The bees are compared to the soldiers and parody them by their \"assaulting and fumbling the flowers\". Bees assault flowers to the benefit of the flowers. Men assault men in battle to the detriment of the other. Where the assault of the bees brings life, men with guns bring death. A second comparison is implied between the fresh immaculateness of the garden, whose \"Japonica / glistens like coral\" and the soldier's guns with their need for \"daily cleaning\". The ironic contrast is that the garden, grounded in dirt, is effortlessly clean while the soldiers must clean their guns repeatedly. The structure of the poem also serves to make the comparison to nature's advantage. Each stanza is split between the dry, unimaginative language of the first speaker, presumably the drill sergeant and the poetic language used by the second speaker, perhaps one of the men in the squad, to describe natur
Some common words found in the essay are:
Furthermore Reed, Henry Reed, Adam Genesis, using finger, / using finger, / using, assaulting fumbling flowers, japonica / glistens, fumbling flowers, natural world, , soldiers bees, letting / using, assaulting fumbling, reed's poem, / glistens coral, language speaker, glistens coral, backwards forwards,
Approximate Word count = 969
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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