Literary Analysis of the Main Features of Emperor of Ice Cream
When we look at Wallace Stevens poetry , it is very easy to identify Stevens being a Modernist. Stevens’ works match with Modernist thought much more than Frost’s. He is completely Modernist. When we take a look on his poem ” Emperor of Ice Cream” we see that he tells us how a modern funeral is being done. He wants to say that , death is a normal thing that we all going to experience one day; In addition he talks about the bitter moment of choosing life over death, at a time when life seems particularly lonely, self-serving, lustful for that women in his poem .
He says that we should be aware of the real concept of death , which means that one day we would go to better place leaving our wealth , beauty , health , work , family and every thing we spent our life on ,the writer encourages everyone
to go on with life – enjoy your ice cream because only the pleasures of life are really important , he also says that the only person who has real power is the one who controls pleasure and happiness. To me, the Emperor of Ice Cream is Ice Cream itself , also I believe Stevens is telling us that no matter what we accomplish in life, and no matter how respected we become, in the end we all become the dead woman, “cold” and”dumb,” when death comes for us. Stevens was also called Supreme Fiction because he was thinking that poetry as a way of understanding reality.
Wallace Stevens sees poetry as a way of understanding reality. So he uses Modernism as a response of social troubles like , being poor , alienated , loneleness and culture .As a result he wrote and criticize about this theme.
