Summary of Ethics Poem and Interpretation

Summary of the Poem Ethics

Ethics is a beautiful poem in which the speaker tries to express the meaning and value of human life and art. The writer raises the question of which one is more important? She remembers her school life in a class when the class teacher in an ethics class used to ask her a question. If there would be a fire in the museum, would you save either painting or an old woman? The speaker tells us through the theme that ethics and moral values can be only learned from reflection which comes through experience and maturity.  In this poem, imagery, diction, and figures of speech contribute to the development of the theme.  The speaker takes a year to answer the question and tells him why don't they let the women choose.

Now the speaker is in front of the painting in the museum. She represents the old woman. She now realizes the value of life and art which is beyond the understanding of the children. In conclusion, this poem is not just about a lesson of ethics learned in school by a student.  Instead, this poem is about the life of an old woman, the view of life children have of old things and old people and of life, and the true beauty and importance things of age have, either for being wise and experienced or just for being there for so long. 

Interpretation:

The speaker presents her childhood experiences and present realization. The poet may be trying to tell us that it is useless to argue about the mystery of ethics with juvenile (Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity) minds. The children lack maturity, patience and logical inference, hence, there is no point in asking such questions to children.

Explanation:

Understanding the meaning of ethics occurs over time through growing older and maturing. Throughout Paston's entire poem we learn how a person must grow and mature to understand what ethics is. By using poetic techniques to support her theme Pastan showed the theme in understanding why you would make a choice. 

She uses metaphors to give us the impression that the painting is not just a simple drawing but it is something alive, something connected to the earth which is worth saving thus making the dilemma more balanced. In addition, the idea of a colour burning through the canvas puts more emphasis on the painting thus increasing its status in the poem to be as high as the old woman. 

The fall is an important symbol in this poem signifying time and change when things start to die and days become shorter.

Extensive Reading:

"Ethics" appears in Linda Pastan's sixth volume of poetry, Waiting for My Life (1981), a title that hints at the tensions for which the New York-born poet is best known: the challenges of living in that "waiting" place between the magic and the tedium of the ordinary; between the artistic and the domestic life; between the rewards and the losses of ageing and death. A kind of "aesthetic ethic" itself emerges from the body of her poems, one proclaiming that simple language and images of the ordinary are especially capable of bearing mystery and of resisting easy answers.

"Ethics" itself embodies this resistance. The poem takes shape first in a memory from school days and is then bridged, through images of frames and fire, to an understanding acquired in the poet's older years. The question the ethics teacher poses "so many years ago" is unanswerable partly because it is not "real"; the students answer it "halfheartedly," at best. Having posed a hypothetical fire in a museum, the teacher wants the students to make a clear choice, between saving "a Rembrandt painting / or an old woman who hadn't many / years left anyhow." The surprising answer for the poet arrives years later, in a "real museum," as the poet stands "before a real Rembrandt."

In her poem "Ethics," Pastan leads the reader through an uncomfortable struggle with a value-testing philosophical question. Pastan uses the structure of her poem to bend the questions so that they are not as easy to answer. This poem fits the characteristics of a narrative poem. A reason it is considered a narrative poem is a climax and conclusion exist in the poem. Another reason it is a narrative poem is, that the reader knows who the main character is. The character's name is Linda. “Linda, the teacher would report” (15). The final reason it is a narrative poem is readers read a story of an event in Linda’s life. 

The speaker of the poem is a student in an ethics class. The student is the author, Linda. We know the author is the speaker because she refers to her name as Linda, inside the poem. “Linda, the teacher would report, eschews/ the burden of responsibility” (15-16). We know the speaker is asked a question about what her ethics are like. The question refers to an old painting and an old woman, and which you would rather save in a fire. The speaker, caring little for the question, answers without giving the question a lot of thought. Later in her life, the speaker has the event that happened in the question happen in real life. The speaker then figures out what the teacher implied by the question. Things we can learn from her personality are, to take the time to figure out the meaning of a question, they often mean more than what is implied. 

Considering the tone of the poem, the reader first learns the speaker is bored when the speaker states, “Restless on hard chairs/ caring little or pictures or old age/ we’d opt one year for life, the next for art/ and always half-heartedly” (6-). Next, we learn the speaker is imaginative when she states, “One year, feeling clever, I replied/ why not let the women decide herself” (1-14). Later on the speaker figures out the lesson, the ethics teacher was teaching and the speaker is more appreciative of what the teacher had been trying to teach to her all along. The speaker states, “I know now that the woman and painting and season are almost one/ and all beyond saving by children” (4-5). No fundamental differences exist between what you get and what you expect. Irony plays an important role. The irony in the poem is the question that was asked her when she was little, and later in her life, the question turned into a real-life situation. 

An apostrophe in the poem is the speaker refers to the old woman borrowing her grandmother’s face. “The woman borrowed my grandmother’s face” (10). Another figure of speech in the poem is personification. The personification in the poem is, “Woman/ and painting and season are almost one and all beyond saving by children” (-5). Sound doesn’t play a very important part in the poem. No rhyming scheme or alliterations takes place in the poem. Some assonance is involved in the poem. One instance of assonance the speaker uses is “hard chairs caring” (6-7). The words receive extra emphasis because the “ar” sound in the three words put together sounds the same. Another example of assonance is when the speaker says, “always half-heartedly” (). The words receive extra emphasis because of the “al” sound in the two words. The last assonance in the poem is “drafty, half-imagined” (1). The words receive extra emphasis because of the repeating “a” sound. Another element of sound that is involved in the poem is euphony. The euphony is, “The browns of the earth/ through earth’s most radiant elements burn/ through the canvas” (1-). 

Imagery is very powerful throughout the poem. Many words in the poem refer to a sense. The first image sentence is, “Sometimes/ the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face” (-10). This shows the inability of the children to actually picture the events that take place. Other words referring to our images are in the line, “Restless on hard chairs/ caring little for pictures or old age” (6-7). The image refers to our sense of sight. A person may visually see himself or herself sitting in a classroom listening to something they don’t particularly care for. The last image the reader receives is the description of the painting. The speaker states, “The colours/ within the frame are darker than autumn, / darker even than winter - the browns of the earth, / though earth’s most radiant elements burn/ through the canvas” (1-). The image allows readers to envision the painting. A meter exists in the poem. The meter is in iambic pentameter. One example of this meter is, “In ethics class so many years ago” (1). Another example of the meter is, “One year, feeling clever, I replied” (1). All lines in the poem follow this meter. 

This poem is in closed form. There is no rhyming scheme, but there is a meter that exists. The author doesn't use stanzas in the poem. This would make the poem black verse. The poem doesn't fall into a type of closed form. At the beginning of the poem, the audience listens as the speaker takes us back to a time in her life. She is having a flashback of a time she had in ethics class. The speaker says, “In ethics class so many years ago” (1). The speaker is asked a question pertaining to her ethics or beliefs. The question is, “If there were a fire in a museum/ which would you save, a Rembrandt painting/ or an old woman who hadn't many/ years left anyhow” (-6)? 

Now the speaker is in their early teenage years when she is sitting in this class. Characteristics of a typical teenager are they usually start caring less during school and start to think that everything is dull and boring, except for what they are interested in. A normal teenager might say, “Restless on hard chairs/ caring little for pictures of old age/ we‘d opt for life, the next for art/ and always half-heartedly” (6-). The speaker uses the word “half-heartedly” to stress she isn't trying to understand what the teacher is trying to tell her. A reader may get an image of when they were younger sitting through a class they might not have enjoyed. When thinking about the question, the speaker is daydreaming about her grandmother wandering through this museum, as she takes the place of the old lady. The speaker says, “Sometimes/ the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face/ leaving her usual kitchen to wander” (-11). The teacher soon becomes frustrated with the class and starts to ignore some of the comments the students say. “Linda, the teacher would report, eschews/ the burden of responsibility” (15-16). The author uses the word “eschews” and “burden” in the poem to give a sense of what the teacher’s intelligence is like. 

The reader is then brought to the present time. The speaker soon encounters a situation that occurs to her that happened in the question when she was a kid. Only she is the old woman. “This fall in a real museum I stand/ before a real Rembrandt painting, old woman, / or nearly so, myself” (17-1). She is older but doesn't consider herself as old, only “nearly so.” The speaker knows that the painting is old and so has she, which tells a story of coming of age in two different ways. The speaker says, “I know now that woman/ and painting and season are almost one/ and all beyond saving by children” (-5). Children cannot save the experience and wisdom that an old lady has. Therefore, if a child saves the old lady, the painting will burn and kids will never see the beauty and get the wisdom in the painting. If the child saves the painting, they will never see the beauty and get the wisdom in the old lady.