Commentary on Sonnet ¨Atlantis¨ - 638 Words

â€Å"Around 350 BC, Plato wrote about a beautiful island in the Atlantic Ocean that went under the ocean waves in one day and one night†. â€Å"Atlantis – A Lost Sonnet† by Eavan Boland does not follow from head to toe the standards of a sonnet, being able to identify it by the length of 14 lines and its GG rhyme scheme at the end. This poem is able to move from a question about Atlantis to a memory of the author and finally to the overall meaning about memories. Boland is able to create a close and personal atmosphere throughout this sonnet through a first person narrator, the use of word choice and rhetorical questions. It is the type of narrator in a poem that helps the reader identify itself with. In this case, â€Å"Atlantis† is written in first†¦show more content†¦So why is a rhetorical question applied in this sonnet? It is primarily to achieve a stronger and direct statement with no need of answering the question. In this poem there are two questions at the start and middle part; â€Å"one fine day gone under? (4)... Surely a great city must have been missed?† (6), both of this are talking about Atlantis. In a sort of way, the author is being sarcastic because neither she nor we will ever know the true answer since it is a legend with thousands of explanations but neither one is 100% accurate. At the end, this types of questions cause the reader to connect to her judgments in a stronger way since they would also want to know how a city may disappear right under our noses. As a final point, the message of this powerful poem is understood in its last two most important li nes, â€Å"to convey that what is gone is gone forever and never found it. And so, in the best traditions of †¦ where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name and drowned it.† (12-14). Boland ´s simple rhyme, imagery, and use of personification create the final resolution of the author’s feelings and thoughts towards a past which cannot be recovered except with your