Assignment 1

Images
-the boy
-ship burning
-child yelling
-father laying dead
-flag on fire
-thunder sounds
-pieces of the boat floating in the sea

The poem, "Casabianca" by Felicia Dorothea Hemans speaks about a child boy that is on a burning ship, which he will not abandon because his father has not given him permission to leave. However, the father of the child is already dead and would not be giving the child any such orders. At the end of the poem, although not explicitly stated, the child dies on the ship.

Hemans uses very vivid imagery throughout the entire poem. The reader can immerse themselves completely into the poem and feel like they are there on the ship with the child. I find the theme of respect in many of the images in this poem. The fact that the child will not abandon the burning ship until his father has given him permission is the biggest image of all. It is one that is repeated a couple of times throughout the poem. For example, in the third stanza the poet says, “The flames rolled on—he would not go/ Without his father’s word”. Then we see this image of the child asking and waiting for permission from his father in stanzas four, five and seven. A child is very easily frightened and for this boy to stay on a ship that was burning shows how much respect he has for his father and for the word that he had given his father to remain on the ship. You also see the image of the flag burning, “They caught the flag on high (stanza 8, verse 2)”. When a flag is to be disposed of, the only respectable way of doing it is to burn it. This shows that the ship and its captain (the child’s father) went down respectfully. The poet could have given us the image of the flag floating in the water along with the other pieces of the ship but it does not. One assumes that the flag is burned completely before the final explosion of the ship.