Metaphor in Ruth Whitman's Castoff Skin

The word " erst" that ends the stanza excessively sounds like "s". Such physical exertion of alliteration mimics the bird or slithering sound often made by a snake. The earn "s" also helps roll sounds from adept word to the next in a fluid and prompt motion much like a snake moves. The use of alliteration to achieve this effect is also used in the second stanza: "she", "stretched", "transparence", "kissed", "snake", and "his", (Whitman 1966). Like in the startle stanza, the second stanza ends with a word that does not include the letter "s" but sounds like it does, "motion" (mo-shun).

The metaphor of the snake suggests that the speaker of the poem likens earthlyity to a discardding of our merciful " jumble". Much as Shakespeare used the phrase " mortal(a) coil", so the gray-haired cleaning woman leaves female genitalia her mortal path that has become thin and paper-like, like the shed fur of a snake. The essence of the snake continues on in a different form, but the snake's out-and-out(a) shell remains rump much

Though we get lone(prenominal) a few brief details about the woman in the poem, we can tell a great cross about her from them. She is very hoar, nearly 100, but she has a " intelligent figure" and is "girlish" like in her sleep, (Whitman 1966). The speaker tells us she kisses the woman's "paper cheek", (Whitman 1966).

This suggests that the woman is quite frail and her skin is transparent in tone much like the transparent skin left behind by a snake's shed skin. The speaker seems to take a friendly tone toward the over-the-hill woman. She has known the woman for a while, as she tells us that "once" the woman told her she had a "pretty good figure for an old lady", (Whitman 1966). She expresses affection for the woman and sadness over her passport in her kiss of the woman's cheek. Finally, the woman's death seems to have an impact on the speaker's thoughts on mortality, since she describes the woman as leaving behind her mortal skin much like a snake leaves behind its shed skin. This implies she takes some comfort in the knowledge that the old woman is reborn in some different form even thoug
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