Summary Of Carnival By Rebecca Lindberg

The poem “Carnival” by Rebecca Lindenberg focuses mainly on the themes of disguise and loss of identity. Alongside these two themes is the theme of artificiality. This creates an overall hollow and almost sad feeling poem, it gives the reader a sense of disconnect from emotions and human characteristics which normally accompany a piece of writing like this. She uses words which give the whole poem a tone of melancholy. “Carnival” is a rather dismal and somber poem which appears to be about how people hide who they truly are with something that takes over their life and replaces their true personality. In the process of writing of this poem, Lindenberg gives very little description of any kind of action outside of the descriptions of the masks.

However, this poem has breaks in many places where poems do not normally have breaks, and this causes a sense of fragmentation when reading the poem. She uses these breaks to juxtapose consistency and fragmentation in an unusual way when she interrupts the flow of the poem but keeps it all as one stanza.
By using juxtaposition such as “the mask that sighs like a woman even though a woman wears it” at the end of each line, she disrupts the flow of her poem and disfavors the “wholeness” taken from looking at the structure of the poem. The uniformity and length of the sentences within the poem creates a sense of wholeness throughout the poem but the breaks in the words and use of grammar creates a choppy, unconnected disposition within the poem. The lack of an individual focus in the poem emphasizes the idea of disguise and loss of identity. It really brings to light the evasiveness of somebody in a mask, as though we are not allowed to focus solely them but rather everything around them. Limiting the description of the masks provides great contrast between gaudy masks and the void hiding beneath them. The passive tone in this poem (used in addition to leaving out the wearers) gives a sense that those wearing masks gradually lose who they are as their masks take over and manifest as their new identity. As a result of her wanting this affect, Lindenberg focuses more on the masks and less on who’s wearing