The Plot Against The Giant - Analysis

Introduction and overall impression

The poem reads like a playful, theatrical tableau in which three girls propose gentle, nonviolent ways to subdue a "yokel" or "giant." The tone is teasing, ironic, and lightly sensual, shifting from confident civility to aesthetic charm and finally to intimate persuasion. Mood moves from whimsical and deliberate to softly erotic and linguistically clever.

Authorial and historical context

Wallace Stevens, a central figure of American modernism, often explored imagination, perception, and the transformative power of language and art. This short dramatic poem reflects his interest in how aesthetic acts—scent, color, and sound—reshape experience and social encounters rather than direct force.

Main theme: Art as soft power

The dominant theme is that art and beauty function as forms of persuasion or control. Each girl offers an artistic strategy: scents from "geraniums and unsmelled flowers," visual displays of "cloths besprinkled with colors," and the suggestive play of speech. These sensations are presented as effective alternatives to violence—“It will check him,” “The threads / Will abash him,” “It will undo him.”

Main theme: Gendered performance and seduction

The poem frames influence through female performance: the girls enact roles that use conventional feminine arts—domestic scent, cloth decoration, and intimate speech—to disarm a masculine presence. The third girl's whispered "Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals" contrasts delicate, labial sounds with roughness, suggesting seduction by refined language and voice.

Imagery and symbolism

Recurring images—flowers, colored cloth, and vocal sounds—function as symbols of refinement and aesthetic agency. Flowers symbolize cultivated civility; cloths signify visible craft and patterning that "abash" the yokel; whispered labials stand for intimacy and linguistic charm. The yokel/giant is less a detailed character than a foil whose roughness defines the girls' subtle powers. One might also read the "giant" as a metaphor for brute reality or unrefined perception subdued by art.

Language, tone, and ambiguity

Stevens' choice of words mixes the colloquial ("yokel," "maundering") with the poetic ("diffusing," "abash"), creating ironic distance. The French interjection "Oh, la...le pauvre!" adds theatricality and cultural contrast. Ambiguity remains about intent—is this playful mockery, genuine strategy, or a poetic fantasia on conquest through beauty? The poem invites multiple readings.

Conclusion

In this compact piece Stevens stages a sly argument for the efficacy of aesthetic and linguistic finesse over force. Through vivid sensory images and a shifting tone from civic charm to intimate persuasion, the poem celebrates art's capacity to transform and disarm, leaving a final image of subtle surrender rather than violent defeat.