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Essay / Evidence of the “Greatness of God” in “Filling Station”
In his essay “Action and Repose – Gerard Manley Hopkins's influence in the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop,” Ben Howard notes Hopkins' strong influence on poems like “The Prodigal” and “The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop. Another poem by Bishop that seems to draw heavily, both thematically and stylistically, from Hopkins is "Filling Station", which describes a dirty gas station and the family that owns it. In its exploration of the filth that man spreads throughout his environment, the poem seems to imitate several elements of Hopkins' "God's Grandeur." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The most obvious connection between “God’s Grandeur” and “Filling Station” is their shared subject matter. The first line of Bishop's poem, "Oh, but it's dirty!" (1) directly reflects the world “burned by commerce, soiled, smeared by toil” that Hopkins describes (6). Furthermore, just as Hopkins' poem focuses on the fact that it is "man" who is the originator of this filth (7), Bishop describes the "Father" and the "fat sons" as l incarnation of the station's filth (7, 11). Finally, the most compelling image that Bishop takes from Hopkins is that of the greatness of God as “ooze of oil / crushed” (3-4). The words “oil” and “grease” permeate the poem, and Bishop even uses the word “crushed” in the third stanza, directly evoking Hopkins’s line. However, Bishop takes the image of Hopkins' oozing oil and turns it on its head, using it to represent not the power of God (as is the case in Hopkins' poem), but the influence of man. Additionally, Bishop's use of the oil image differs from Hopkins' in that in "God's Grandeur" it is the action of crushing the olive and producing the oil that gives to the image its meaning; in “Filling Station,” however, the oil stagnates in a “disturbingly black, all-encompassing translucency” (4-5). In addition to appropriating Hopkins' subject matter of human filth, Bishop also employs some of his well-known stylistic styles. features. The most important of these is the creation of hyphenated compound adjectives. They appear in Bishop's poem in lines like "oil-soaked, oil-soaked" and "grease-soaked" (3:17-8). Although these compound adjectives do not appear specifically in "God's Grandeur," they feature prominently in many of Hopkins' other poems. “The Windhover” offers perhaps the best examples of these compound descriptors in that it features a “drawn hawk at dawn” and ends with the image of “blue, dark embers” (2, 13). Bishop and Hopkins also both use strings of adjectives to describe the same noun: for Hopkins, the world is "burnt...stained, smeared" (6), while for Bishop, the oil around the station is "disturbing, generally black” (6). 4-5). Finally, Bishop's poem perhaps seems to make some use of Hopkins' skipping rhythm. All verses have 3 or 4 major accents, suggesting a more organized metrical pattern than free verse. At least some lines, like “Someone has embraced the everyday.” / The same person waters the plant, / or lubricates it, perhaps. Somebody,” with its consistent pattern of three accents and its varying number and patterns of unstressed syllables, appears to be in a sprung rhythm, unequivocally reflecting Hopkins' influence. While “God's Grandeur” and “Filling Station” begin by describing dirty scenes, both poems feature a volta or turn at the last stanza. In Hopkins, this turn occurs at the beginning of the seset with the phrase “And for all this” (11). The sestet is.