Farm Implements And Rutabagas In A Landscape

What is being dramatized? What conflicts or themes does the poem present, address, or question?

Blake Fletcher

AP English

November 3, 2011

Farm Implements And Rutabagas In A Landscape

The poem “Farm Implements and Rutabagas In a Landscape” shows a conflict between Popeye and his father. The conflict seems to be that Popeye’s father exiled him from his apartment and sent him out into the country. The apartment may be described to be “like a shoe box” but it is a domestic place that seems to be safe from whatever the conflict may be.

The fact that the conflict seems to be between Popeye and his “Wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment” only comes up once but it is a easy way to show why one of Popeye’s worst enemies is in his apartment. This wouldn’t make sense if Popeye were there because most likely there would be some fighting. Also, the use of the word “domestic” in the final stanza, which means family relations, the word links the conflict back to Popeye and his father. Also the word is used to describe thunder, which may be a symbol for physical violence between his father and himself.

Altogether, I think that this poems meaning has to do with Popeye and his father. His father is jealous of his shoebox of an apartment and so he exiles him into the country where miraculously he finds the power of Zeus and starts chucking “domestic thunder” around. The fact that the thunder is domestic shows that the major conflict lies within the family. So, the fighting must be between his father and himself.