Miniver Cheevy Analysis

Prosody People have a habit of romanticising the past. We love the 1950’s aesthetic, with it’s milkshakes and poodle skirts, the girl who adores The Beatles was “born in the wrong era.” But often we fail to realize the shortcomings. In the 1950’s racism was rampant, and conformity was everywhere. In the 60’s and 70’s a lot of great music was written, but the war and the drugs were as undesirable as meeting a legend would be fabulous. In “Miniver Cheevy,” Edwin Arlington Robinson criticizes the romanticisation of the past using simply rhymes and a bouncing meter to solidify the absurdity of wasting one’s life away longing for what once was. Robinson begins by introducing the character, Miniver Cheevy, a man who “wept that he was ever born.”

While Minive has been dreaming of long lost days, as he’s “thought, and thought, and thought, and thought about it,” he’s been wasting his life away. “Miniver Cheevy, born too late, scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, and kept on drinking.” Here the reader realizes that Miniver, himself, is the only thing holding him back from the greatness he sees in the past. Instead of making something of himself he “scorned the gold he sought,” and got drunk instead of working. The past was full of harder work than Miniver does, yet he wants to be a part of it. The irony here, is that had he been born in the time periods he loves, he would not have received any of the things that make him linger in the past so long. If he cannot amount to anything here (though it’s most likely only for lack of trying) he would not have amounted to anything in the time of knights and kings. In his poem, “Miniver Cheevy,” Edwin Arlington Robinson uses the character of Miniver Cheevy to mock the romanticisation of the past. Through a simple rhyming scheme and bouncing meter, Robinson invokes a tone of mocking, showing that a head in the clouds will not succeed, and recognizing that both the present and the past have negative aspects. As much as I would have loved to wear medieval gowns, or attend a Beatles Concert, I know that I’m more at home here, in 2016, when I was born. I’m not suited to the past, no matter