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Summary Of For That He Looked Not Upon Her By George Gascoigne

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The capacity to feel betrayed has caused people to avoid certain situations because of deep embedded pain. The sonnet “For That He Looked Not upon Her” by author George Gascoigne is a sonnet that deals with the pain a certain man endured and why he does not “look upon her”. The man, or speaker, explains his emotions and thoughts on why he does not look upon a certain woman's eyes. The author conveys the speaker's complex emotions by using literary elements: diction, metaphors, imagery, and more. The attitude, or tone, of the poem is exemplified by the speaker's skillful word choice. Some of the words chosen were: louring, low, delight, and gleams. The words louring and low force the reader to empathize and visualize the speaker's distraught …show more content…

Line 5 and 6 describe a “mouse which once hath broken out of trap / Is seldom 'ticed with the trustless bait”, here the mouse has “learned the hard way” on grabbing foods that seem too good to be true. The same goes for the speaker; he is not enticed by the bait –love– because he has previously fallen into a trap –heartbreak. Bait is not a word normally used to describe humans; therefore, the author breaks from social norms and compares humans to bait in order to better describe his emotions through analogy. Another instance of animal imagery occurred in line 9 and 10. The author says that a “scorched fly which once hath 'scaped the flame / Will hardly come to play again with fire”, this time, instead of a mouse, the author compares his reasoning for not looking at a particular woman to a fly. Just as with the mouse, the fly has also learned to not trust the bait and will probably never fall for it again. Both animals parallel one another because they have suffered through a harsh, traumatic event which made both animals weary of doing certain things. The animals do not only parallel each other, but the speaker as well. Here, the speaker is giving us his logical reasoning for not wanting to repeat something which will ultimately hurt him in the end by comparing his situation with the behavior of animals. Animals will naturally avoid

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