Mythological Themes Essay, Research Paper
Mythological Themes
Many poems use mystical creatures to tell stories. From mermaids, to sirens, and
goat-footed balloonMen. A good example of the use of these mystical creatures can be
seen in the poem “In Just-.” The creature used is this goat-footed balloonMan. He helps
condense a story into a poem, while condensing the story this creature also attracts the
reader’s imagination and keeps him or her intrigued meanwhile maintaining a politeness
to the reader by taking vulgar words out of the poem.
This balloonMan condenses a story of a man that lured small children into his grip
to molest them. If a reader dissects this poem enough they can come to the conclusion
that a man disguise himself as a nice man an attracts small children, turns on them and
molest them. How else to describe a nice man other than a balloonMan. As young
children are intrigued with floating balloons. Describing this balloonMan as goat-footed
is very precise. In many myths goat-feet represent the devil. Using this myth of goat-feet
as a symbol of the devil shows that this “balloonMan” is not as nice of a balloonMan as a
child would expect. As you can see the writer uses the fraise the “goat-footed
balloonMan” to describe a nice man that lures little kids in and then turns of them.
The writer knows that he has to help the readers imagination develop into thinking
his way. He uses the term balloonMan to let us know this man is around kids and
interacting with them as well. By taking goat-footed and adding this before the title
“balloonMan” shows that you can associated the balloonMan with the devil or something
awful along that line. Now there is a deviled man luring children in by his balloons he is
associated with. Not only does the writer use goat-footed in the poem, he uses words
such as queer, and wicked. This gives the reader the assumption that this man is up to no
good with these children.
Politeness is a key factor to author in telling the story of this vicious child
molester. Not many people want to read of a man that disguises himself as fun, and with
some sort of child’s lure to help him hurt and abuse these innocent children. By using
this title balloonMan the writer keeps a discreet overview of this story. It lets the reader
use his or her imagination to determine what this creature is trying to do. Without any
disguise of a balloonMan and just using the title of a child molester the reader would have
to read no further than after the fact this man calls the children away from their tasks to
interact with him and his wicked ways. You are never reading a very descriptive story of
a child molester but that of a wicked goat-footed balloonMan. It is a little more
acceptable to the reader because at one point we were little children drawn to the man
holding the balloons at the circus.
This poem “In Just-” has a great use of a mythological creature to tell a story that
we would probably not rather hear. After all when you look at the story of a Mermaid
that comes and takes a man back into the sea with her, no man wants to admit that he is in
love that much with a woman to die for her. No person wants to hear of a child which we
all were children at one point get lured into a distasteful episode with a child molester.
The writer uses this awful creature in a remarkable way of describing this monster of a
man while not telling a story that is long and unentertaining to the reader but pleasing to
the reader.