Robert Lowell's Fall 1961 crystallizes in words the sense of nuclear paranoia that lurked in both the private and public spheres of the United States during the Cold War. From a dark and personal perspective, the poem offers a disturbing look at the individual's distress during this time. Despite its self-centered perspective, however, Lowell allows the poem to make vague allusions to the larger political situation surrounding the nuclear threat. Through these allusions he frames the speaker's individual experience of the poem in a larger political context. Like the foggy background of a watercolor painting, this background is indistinct from the clear individual presented in the foreground of his work, but nevertheless its presence contributes to the latent weight of nuclear paranoia that gives the poem its atmosphere of uneasiness and uncertainty.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The movement of the poem is rather arrhythmic, with sporadic and unpredictable rhymes. The effect is a deliberate awkwardness in sound and the creation of a feeling of anticipation as the reader waits for every possible rhyme to be uttered. In this way the form of the poem captures the discomfort of the individual and society as a whole during its historical period and plays on the anxiety of the people of the United States as they await the inevitable first missile attack. Rhyme is also used to inject moments of personality into the poem. The half-rhyme of the couplet "minnow" and "window" on lines 9 and 10 creates an almost whimsical effect, a darkly humorous chuckle that undermines the three ominous lines that precede it. Sometimes, the rhymes in the poem bring together loosely connected details of the scene being described. This loose connection occurs in the half-rhyme of “shield” and “savage” that ties the image of crying spiders to the helplessness of a protective father in protecting his son from a nuclear threat. Another example is found in the half-rhyme of “mirror” and “summer,” which connects the mirrored clock face to the metaphorical mirror of introspection that nature provides in the world of poetry. In addition to the use of rhyming connections, Lowell ties together his thematically linked images and ideas through the recurrence of certain motifs throughout the poem. These motifs find their commonalities in shielding qualities and circular and spherical images. The “bland face, ambassador/of the moon” shares its shape with the aquarium side of the study window that isolates the speaker from the outside world. The circular and spherical images extend to include the diver's "bell jar", which is linked by its shape and function as a protective barrier to the study window, the father's shield, and the "oriole's swinging nest" to the end of the poem. The result of this thematic connection is an egocentric view of the world of the poem; the reader feels as if he is seeing through the speaker's eyes as he freely associates all elements of his surroundings with the all-pervading paranoia he feels. In this way, the poem feels personal, very insightful, and complete in its foreground depiction of the individual's apprehension over the possibility of nuclear war. The primary way this personal anxiety is projected across the poem's assorted catalog of images is through jarring earthquakes. of poetic interruption that propagates through the thoughts of the speaker. The face of an alien orange moon reflecting on the clock disturbs one of the speaker's expected sources of familiarity and comfort as he looks towards it.Metaphorically, this disruption of comfort is extended to the political level by the connotations evoked by the additional descriptions of the moon's reflection as "bland" and "ambassador." These descriptions metaphorically suggest that the higher political issue represented by the moon has been hidden behind a bland and insensitive face in the form of political discussion. The monotony of such discussion is encapsulated in the whirring “tock, tock, tock” of the grandfather clock. Thus the government's direction on the possibility of a nuclear attack is indirectly criticized as insufficient back-and-forth chicanery and the previous comfort offered by higher politics is thus removed as a source of comfort for the individual. The disturbing loss of comfort in light of the ominous new nuclear threat again reaches a political climax in the third stanza: Our end draws near, The moon rises, Glowing with terror. The State is a diver under a glass bell. room the comfort and protection offered by the state against a nuclear attack proved to be as inadequate as a transparent glass bell that excludes the "terror" of moonlight. Lowell rephrases this same sentiment elsewhere in the poem in line 8, "we talked to the death of our extinction," a line that reminds the reader that, no matter how many political jokes one follows, the immense destructive potential of a nuclear threat is too big. dangerous and unpredictable to deter. A further disturbed image comes with the lines: "We are like many wild spiders crying together, but without tears." The most jarring component of these disturbing images of the fallout shelter is the bizarre idea of ​​crying without tears. Through this idea the jokes metaphorically silence the audience's anxiety in a sort of disruptive stasis that transforms fear into a silent role. The silence of the audience therefore changes the very purpose of fear, placing anxiety in individuals but not allowing them to share the burden with each other, resulting once again in the removal of a possible source of comfort in poetry. A third removal of this kind occurs through the interruption of fear. the father's ability to protect his son, reduced to inadequacy against the massive destruction of a nuclear attack. Yet another breakdown in comfort comes from the phrase “One swallow makes summer.” This reversal of proverbial wisdom upsets the reader's expectations, thus allowing the poet to declare that, under the looming threat of nuclear war, the truths from which we take comfort may reverse into their opposites - in this case, the detonation of a single swallow head. it could certainly lead to an entire nuclear summer. The thoroughness with which the world of the poem is disrupted shows the extent to which the nuclear paranoia extends beyond the level of the poem's individual speaker. The disturbance of reality in poetry affects the entire society through the alteration of even the most fundamental and universal truths, sources of comfort. Even the passage of time is seen through a displaced and paradoxical perception as the agonizing "knock, knock, knock" of the seconds continues indefinitely from the frozen hands. Furthermore, the connection of the clock to the passing of the months through the reflection of the moon and the setting of the poem in autumn suggest that this arrest of time extends upward into an entire era of paralyzed paranoia. time period through metaphorical political criticism and universal connections is important to create a complete picture of the nuclear threat in the fall of 1961. The poem requires the entire situation to be at least loosely framed to create a true sense of the weight and grandeur.