As I was reading Thomas Lux's "Tarantulas On The Lifebuoy" I started thinking about the prison system. The poem itself seems to literally be about tarantulas (Not a metaphor) but there is something about it.... in math it would be called an isomorphism. I think that is the best word for it, not an analogy but something with the same image in a different base, or in other words: in a different context.
"when the rain falls / relentlessly they fall" When situations and biology align in a certain way, brain chemistry gets very weird and problematic.
"...They can swim / a little, but not for long" People with serious brain disorders can be productive and brilliant members of society, but often something eventually happens to undo their hard work.
"They usually drown..." Many are never treated, are incarcerated instead, or are homeless because they are afraid of being trapped inside.
"the death of ugly / and even dangerous... creatures" Some people with real medical brain disorders actually are murderers and thieves, a vast majority only are those things because of that untreated condition. They are ugly and evil, but is it them?
The isomorphic nature continues: if "you would haul ashore" the survivors (treat the brain disorder medically) "these saved, / as individuals, would not turn up // again someday" (treating the condition rather than punishing a crime with prison would help prevent repeat offence) and "when your belief in justice / merges with your belief in dreams..." (In addition to making prison less full, lives could be saved and reborn).
The lesson of a "compassion leap" rung very true for me. Even as someone who has family members suffering from serious mental illness, people with brain disorders are scary (like tarantulas). That compassion leap is hard but important, to see the person not their disease, even when those two things seem so connected separation feels impossible.
--Hannah
This is a very unique interpretation of the poem and it makes a lot of sense. I agree this poem could transform people with mental disorders to spiders. This poem could indeed expand to a broader view of how individuals of power treat or mistreat those of less power. It is interesting though because, in class we were told that the poem does not have an extra meaning. It just goes to show that we have trained our minds to always find out the true message behind a poem.
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