Compare And Contrast The Leap By Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell’s “Wait” and James Dickey’s “The Leap” both share tones of depression and suicide, however, the first poem is attempting to talk a person a person out of suicide and literally telling them to wait and look at how great life is, whereas the latter poem is speaking about a man’s former childhood crush and how she unexpectedly committed suicide. While both of these poems are speaking of the most devastating and heartbreaking things in life, they both have different stories behind them. Depression is one of the hardest obstacles that a person can face in their life and sometimes when a person does not receive the help that they need it can often lead to the depression becoming more manic and possibly lead to suicidal thoughts.

Kinnell’s “Wait” is much different compared to Dickey’s “The Leap” starting off with the structure of the pieces and the syntax. Just by looking at Kinnell’s and then at Dickey’s piece a person can easily see that the first piece is much shorter than the latter piece. This is due to the imagery and description found in the pieces. I believe that Kinnell had an idea to keep his poem brief and simple to get across the message. After every line, Kinnell wanted the reader to literally wait a few seconds to comprehend what the poem is trying to say about suicide. He wanted to let the reader know that if a person who is thinking about ending their life waits a little bit longer to look around and think about how much better everything were to become in their life if they waited and got help that they could comprehend and understand why, as humans, we go through these tough times that we sometimes think we can never get through. This is just like how people when they read poems because they feel that in order to understand the deeper meaning of the poem that they must rip it to shreds and struggle to find the

As for Galway Kinnell’s “Wait” the tone was said to be depressing just like James Dickey’s “The Leap” however, the idea of depression in Kinnell’s piece is much different. In “Wait” the idea of depression was spoken about as something that takes all of the joy out of everything that a person suffering from depression will see. By having the author speak to a person with depression it gave off the idea of reassurance and that everything is going to be okay and they are trying to talk this person out of committing suicide. This piece was written in order to help anyone who is going through a tough stage in life and struggling to get through it and it almost seems to me as if the speaker of the piece knew exactly what it was like to have suicidal thoughts and they shared their experience with how once they got help that everything becomes interesting. When the author wrote “Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting” they were explaining that when a person suffers with depression they sink into a state where everything feels bland, boring, and just like it had the previous day - nothing exciting was happening in their lives and they felt that if nothing good or fascinating was going to happen that maybe they had no meaning to live in a world of only negatives. As for Dickey’s “The Leap,” while it did have a tone of depression and