Analysis Of Shine, Perishing Republic By Jon Loomis

Forecasting Doom for Loomis’ Thanksgiving and Jeffers’ America Feelings of impending doom naturally lead to uncomfortabiltiy, unease, and anxiety. However, the first step toward addressing this problem is the realization that impending doom is upon oneself. In Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers the speaker portrays Americans as unaware to their corrupt and decaying nation. A fear of this type of ignorance to one’s own impending doom is also seen in Thanksgiving by Jon Loomis. Here the speaker questions if sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with one’s family means sitting down to one’s future demise, as it did for the Wompanoag Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. At first glance of the title, Shine, Perishing Republic,

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The speaker suggests that unbeknownst to those inhabiting the country, America will rot and decay like expired fruit, giving rise to other nations. Here impending doom takes the shape of the natural order, decaying and producing new civilizations that cyclically arise from past nations. The demise of a great civilization is also portrayed in Thanksgiving. In this work the Wampanoag are described as greatly mistaken for having helped the Puritan settlers get accustomed to foreign land. The speaker regretfully remarks that the Wampanoag “should have gutted the Puritan freaks or let them starve” (2). The speaker does, however say that the Native Americans were unable to predict that the coming of the white men would result in their demise. Similar to Shine, Perishing Republic the ignorance of the Wampanoag is met with a description of the inevitability of their impending doom. The speaker says that even if the Native Americans fought and resisted the Puritan settlers the British were sending an unstoppable fleet to colonize their

A sense of paranoia is imparted onto the reader as the speaker sits down to his Thanksgiving dinner with his family. The speaker is grateful that as his family enjoys their meal no one mentions the “shadow” hanging over him (20). This shadow is the realization of the possibility that as the speaker sits down to dinner with his family he could be sitting down to his demise as the Wampanoag did at the first Thanksgiving. Unlike in Shine, Perishing Republic this poem suggests that one cannot hide from impending doom, and its onset could happen at any moment, even when one expects it