Oral Commentary Outline
Name: Ms. Lassila
Introduction:
Poem Title and Author: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T. S. Eliot
Thesis: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T. S. Eliot creates a visual portrait of society’s
breakdown through the eyes of a lonely speaker who communicates with a street lamp.
Context: The poem is centered in the Modernist movement.
(historical events/issues, literary movement, etc.)
a) Published in 1920 as part of Prufrock and Other Observations (written in 1911 and
first published in 1917)
b) Reaction to the downfalls of urbanization: prostitution (“Regard that woman/Who
hesitates toward you”), greed (“So the hand of the child, automatic,/Slipped out
and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay”), etc.
c) Includes elements of Modernism: isolation/loneliness, lack of
communication/personal connection
Form: The form of the poem enhances its story-like qualities.
(stanzas, lines, end-stopped/enjambment, punctuation, indentation, italics,
capitalization, etc.)
a) The stanzas are arranged in chronological order, and most begin by mentioning
the time, in order to tell the story of the speaker’s night from 12:00 am to 4:00
am.
b) Certain lines are enclosed in quotation marks to indicate where the street lamp is
speaking.
c) The last line of the poem is the only single-line stanza: “The last twist of the
knife.” It is set off because it most directly conveys the main idea on the speaker’s
mind throughout his lonely walk: death.
Language/Stylistic Techniques: The language of the poem further develops the mood
and the characters in the poem.
a) The mood/atmosphere is dark and haunting.
b) The diction “twists,” and “twisted” (x 2) is repeated to create an out-of-balance
feeling.
c) The French phrase “La lune ne garde aucune rancune” (The moon holds no
grudges whatsoever) is an allusion to writings by Jules Laforgue.
d) The diction of “female smells” implies that the speaker is a male. The female
seems like the “other.”
Figurative Language/Figures of Speech: The figurative language in the poem
personifies the street lamp and the moon, as it reinforces the speaker’s state of
alienation and depression.
a) The street lamp is personified throughout the poem and further reinforces the
speaker’s loneliness, as it is the only thing with which the speaker converses.
b) Many similes including, “Every street lamp that I pass/Beats like a fatalistic drum”
and “Midnight shakes the memory/As a madman shakes a dead geranium” convey
the ideas of death and insanity.
c) The motif of “memory” is carried throughout the poem, as the speaker seeks to
find solace in memories of the past but cannot: “The mood has lost her
memory./A washed-out smallpox cracks her face.” Here, visual imagery reinforces
the death-like nature of someone who lacks the ability to remember.
Sound: The poem follows a pattern of rhythm, and when it is interrupted by unexpected
rhyme, it causes the rhyming words to linger in the reader’s mind.
(rhythm, rhyme, repetition/incremental repetition, alliteration, assonance, consonance,
etc.)
a) Throughout the poem, a smooth rhythm is maintained through the use of similar
line lengths and strategically placed punctuation, such as in the lines, “And
cigarettes in corridors/And cocktail smells in bars.” In these lines, alliteration of
the letter “c” also helps create rhythm.
b) Anaphora and onomatopoeia in the lines, “The street lamp sputtered,/The street
lamp muttered,/The street lamp said…” help draw the reader’s attention, through
sound and repetition, to the fact that it is the street lamp who is speaking.
c) The fact that Eliot chose to rhyme the last two lines, “Put your shoes at the door,
sleep, prepare for life.”/The last twist of the knife,” causes the reader to have the
words “life” and “knife” together as lingering afterthoughts in his or her mind. The
words seem to imply that life and death are one and the same for this speaker.
Conclusion:
Restate Thesis: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T. S. Eliot tells the story of a speaker
on his four-hour wandering stroll through a deserted city in the wee hours of the
morning.
Wrap-up Comments: On his way, the speaker encounters a talking street-lamp and
many negative images depicting the disintegration of society. As evidenced by the last
two lines of the poem, he arrives home to a life that is the equivalent of death.
Discussion questions:
Why does the speaker of the poem choose to wander the streets of the city in the middle
of the night?
In what ways are the two poems similar?