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Kenneth Slessor Five Bells

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It is true to a satisfactory extent that Modernist texts are concerned with and reflect on shifting realities, as the historical context of Modernism was a time of radical change. Modernism sought to outline the crisis dominated part of the 20th century as well as proposing a solution, which was to simply reject the traditional values currently in place. This created one reality shifting to another; the old ways of doing things were suddenly being replaced by new ‘abstract’ methods. These changes in reality where reflected in the texts of the time. The poem Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor and the short novel The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemmingway reflect on shifting realities, both reject traditional notions, through ideas of time, memory …show more content…

This seen the quote ‘And hits and cried against the ports of space, beating their sides to make its fury heard’ Here is a reference to death and the ‘other side’ where Joe has become a mysterious entity trying to communicate. Slessor talks about the two shifting realities of life and death but struggles because he, himself, can’t cross them, shown in this quote ‘But I was bound, and could not go that way, But I was blind, and could not feel your hand’. By using repetition, polysyndeton and alliteration Slessor empathizes the fact that he can’t connect with Joe, who’s dead, and that they are in two separate realities. On the other hand, in Snows of Kilimanjaro reflects society’s transition from hope to despair through the final thoughts and pessimistic realizations of its protagonist, Harry. For Harry, his reality is that a rescue plane has come, and he has been rewarded, when in fact he has died. There are several images of Harry ascending from death to spirit, one, “it crouched now, heavier, so he could not breathe. And then, while they lifted the cot, suddenly it was all right and the weight went from his chest.” The ‘it’ is the hyena, pressing on Harry’s chest, signifying his death. It had been surrounding Harry’s camp along with vultures, a symbol for his inevitable death. The cot being lifted and ‘suddenly it was all

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