Summary for Seagull by E. J Pratt
E. J. Pratt
E. J Pratt is the first Anglo-Canadian
poet to use a distinctively Canadian subject matter, create Canadian genres, employ
a Canadian idiom and thus set up a poetic tradition embodying national experience.
By resurrecting and commemorating a heroic past as an alternative to the European
past he has succeeded in creating a Canadian myth.
Pratt was born in Newfoundland where the
struggle for survival was particularly harsh and death at sea was frequent. In his
works Newfoundland Verse (1923), The Great Feud and Cacholot, where he created myths
of struggle for supremacy between land animals and sea animals. Pratt had not yet
created a specifically Canadian myth located in Canadian history, but his tales
of elemental forces locked in conflict are suggestive of Canadian explorer and pioneer
experience.
Pratt in this poem Seagulls narrates about
the bird and it also tells about the Canadian people. The poem in the outward sense
about the bird says that “ for one carved instant as they flew, it” language cannot
be compared. The colour of the bird can’t be compared with the colours silver, crystal,
or ivory. They flew upon horizon blue of the sky. They lift their wings hard as
if though “ the driff of stars against a tropic indigo or dull the parable of snow”.
After that they again settle one byou one ‘ within green hollows”. The sun's spectrum
falls on the crests and now the bird roll up their wings. They seem as though they
are like ‘ clay-born lilies' and ‘ wild orchids of the sea'.
This poem can be interpreted in another
way by the Canadian people’s life. The people for one instant moved to another country,
their language had no comparisons. They were tarnished into different groups. They
raise the heads hard against the survival in new land, but it went unchallenged.
Their survival is compared to the stars that moves against a tropic indigo. Even
their lives were dull like the parable of snow. Now one by one they began to settle
in their native land. They are able to get God's blessings, so they settle in thousand
rolled up their itself. They are like day born lilies, which struggles hard to blow
and are like wild orchids of the sea, which depends sea foe it’s livelihood.
Thus this poem has inner sense about the
Canadian people struggle against nature for their livelihood. If they think to leave
also they cannot. Pratt has used the simple life of a sea bird Seagull to illustrate
the life of the native Canadians.
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