Gargoyle
Gargoyle - meaning Summary
Violence Meets Grotesque Laughter
The poem depicts a grotesque, repetitive confrontation between a laughing mouth and a pounding fist. Both are rendered in stark, metallic images and framed as a "child's dream," which gives the scene a warped, uncanny quality. Repeated blows make the mouth bleed yet only increase its mocking laughter, producing a cycle of violence that feels both futile and inexorable. The closing insistence on pounding and answering emphasizes relentless, reciprocal force.
Read Complete AnalysesI SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child's dream of a mouth. A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's dream of an arm. The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling. And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.
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