Pyramus and Thisbe

The wall is literally the boundary between Pyramus and Thisbe, it keeps them apart when all they want is to be together. Even though it separates them, it provides a passage for them to talk. A crack that was made previously in the wall, enables them to whisper sweet nothings to each other. Yet, they are still not able to touch or see each other. The wall can also symbolize the young lovers' parents and the young lovers themselves. Their parents refuse to let them see each other or to become married and Pyramus and Thisbe will do anything to get the opposite. The wall can symbolize the refusal of their parents and the rebuttal of the young lovers. It keeps them apart, but in a sense they are together. The wall may also symbolize safety. The wall is the yards of their two houses, so it is a part of their homes. When you think of you home you usually consider it as a place where you are safe and secure. Immediately after leaving those walls, and her home, Lesbia is confronted with danger. The wall can have many different meanings, it just depends on how you look at it.

Pyramus and Thisbe

Ovid uses a rhetorical question in line 68. "What does love not percieve?" is a question that he does not expect an answer to. He uses the question to make the reader think.

In the same line he uses apostrophe. He directly addresses the wall when it is not really there. "- you saw the lovers first, /and you made a passage for their voices;"

He uses pleonasm in line 72. Ovid uses an excess of of words to express an idea. He does not need to use the word mouth when he says "gasping mouth" because the mouth is the only part of the body that can gasp.

Catullus 75

Catullus I still don't understand,
You have been slapped with the back of a hand,
Yet willingly you go back
After her brutal attack,
Now you should leave her as fast as quicksand.

Catullus 8

This poem reminds me of Catullus 51. In the end of 51 Catullus is addressing himself, just like in the beginning of this poem. He does this when he is trying to forget his emotions. In 51 he wanted so badly to be with Lesbia, but when he thought about it he reprimanded himself. He told himself that idleness is a problem for him, because he thinks of Lesbia, and that it had destroyed both kings and cities. In this way he is almost predicting the outcome of their relationship, he spends all his time and effort on Lesbia and then she destroys everything he thought they had. In poem 8 he is reprimanding once again for loving Lesbia. He is telling himself that their relationship is dead and to tell her goodbye. He talks about the sun shining brightly on him which reminds me of poem 5. He talks about the sun dying and in this case it did. He also talks about the sun being able to come back everyday, but in his and Lesbia's case it could never come back. He begins to sort of insult her like he did with other people in many of his poems. He says that no one will want her because she commited a sin, which lets her be held to a lower status. Catullus hates people who are not of the upper class. In the end he starts to trail of and getting sad that Lesbia will be with someone besides him, ut once again he comes back to reprimand himself. This poem is neither in hendecasyllabic meter or elagiac couplets. It is the logest poem we have seen so far and it shows many of Catullus's feelings instead of just one.