Hope: The Light Ending the Darkness
“Hope” by Lisel Mueller is poem about finding hope in the darkest moment. The poem explains that hope is difficult to find and maintain, but it is everywhere. It is alive in us and always supporting us through hardships. It is the light that can end the dark in our life. The speaker is encouraging people to hold onto hope during hard times. In order help people maintain hope, the speaker uses plethora of metaphors to elucidate and enhance hope in the poem.
In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker compares the “dark corners” (Mueller, 1) to the hardships of our life and “the lights are turned on” (2) to the content when we overcome our hardships. The light gives us the courage to fight our misery. The…show more content… She begins the stanza by talking about the metaphor that potatoes can not see (10), yet hope exist in the inconsequential potato giving it the strength to sprout from the dirt. In like manner, hope can not be seen, thus it bestows courage to one to sprout. In line 10-11, the speaker talks about the cruelty an earthworm has to go through. The earthworm can not see, yet they still have hope because when it is cut into “segments” (11), the body pieces still move. The speaker compares the cruelty that earthworm has to go through to our daily struggle that we face. Most people have to go through some kind of suffering at some point in their life, but hope gives them the strength to endure the pain and move on. We can also find hope in the dog who is wagging its tail (16) in hope to receive a reward for his good behavior. Similarly, people get excited when they hope they will receive a reward for doing something good. The speaker carries on by saying hope is present in the eyes of parents and doctors for the baby to cry because the cry of the baby will indicate if he/she will live or die. We can compare that anxiousness to the events that happen in our life and we hope for the best to
