Linda Pastans Poem Ethics :: Pastan Ethics

  Linda Pastans numbers Ethics          In Linda Pastans meter Ethics, the speaker recounts a moral predicament that her teacher would ask every fall, which has been haunting her for a long time.  The dubiousness was if there were a fire in a museum / which would you save, a Rembrandt painting / or an old woman who hadnt many / years left anyhow? and the speaker tells us through the theme that ethics and moral value can be only learned from the reflection which comes through make love and maturity.  In this poem,  im agery, diction, and figures of speech contribute to the study of the theme.                         The speaker in the poem uses images to help to support the theme.  For example the statement that sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmothers front displays the inability of the children to relate the plight to themselv es, something that the speaker has learned later on with time and experience.  In this poem, the speaker is an old woman, and she places a high idiom on the burden of years from which she speaks by saying old woman, / or nearly so, myself. I know now that woman / and painting and gentle are almost one / and all beyond saving by children. clearly states that the poem is not written for the amusement of children but individual that has reached the speakers age, thus supporting the idea of the theme that children cannot help or translate her or anybody of her age.  In addition, when the speakers describes the kids in the classroom as restless on hard chairs and caring little for picture or old age we can picture them in our minds sitting, ready to leave the class as soon as possible, unwilling and unable to read the ethics dilemma or what the speaker is feeling.             The choice of words of the author also contributes to th e development of the theme.  For example, the use of words like  drafty, half-heartedly, and half-imagined give the reader the idea of how faintly the dilemma was perceived and understood by the children, thus adding to the idea that the children cannot understand the burden the speaker has upon herself.  In addition, referring to a Rembrandt as just a picture and to the woman as old age, we can see that these dickens symbols, which are very important to the speaker and to the poem, are considered trivial by the children, thus contributing to the concept  that the children cannot feel what the speaker is feeling.