In Time of Plague

For this blog I chose to analyze “In Time of Plague” by Thom Gunn. I thought the word “fierce” was interesting because it’s a very sharp word like the needle and the looks of the young men. Another phrase I found to be interesting was “their mind is the mind of death.” The fact that there are two men symbolizes the appeal to both sex and the appeal to the drug. Both could end up deadly. “The flow of people through this bar” reminded me of the blood flowing through one’s veins, where a needle would need to be inserted into. I thought the phrase “thirst heroically together” was very interesting. In their own minds, these men are some kind of heroes. The poem reads that both men are after a euphoric state of being, nirvana almost. In this world one loses their differences to live in a “state of ardent life.” The word choices here are interesting and all together very ironic. It separates the fantasy world that they chase and the world society see’s their drug usage as. The reader is torn by these but inevitably chooses against both. The reader expresses this when he says “Am I a fool?” and also when he questions why he’s attracted to both men at the beginning. The use of the word glamorous also threw me off. This goes along with the men trying to almost justify their habit, expressing that this is where it takes them. The reader is unsure if they know they are on the verge of death (they know but they do not know.) Major themes of this work would be pushing boundaries, extreme risks, peer pressure, different realities, and more! The other all tone that I got was kind of dark, but almost in an eerie comforting way. I think the word choices the author uses is to make the reader feel comfortable so he will choose to engage in sex or in drug use.