“A Martian Sends A Postcard Home” by Craig Raine Essay

In “A Martian Sends a Postcard House, ” Craig Raine uses many metaphors to describe how Martian will see if he came to the planet. In the 1st stanza Raine uses metaphors to describe exactly what a Martian may think a book looks like. Raine makes reference to William Caxton, who had been the first to print books in britain, in the initially stanza; “Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings as well as and some will be treasured for markings.

A book would resemble a fowl when opened, the wings being the various pages, and lots of books possess marked a spot in history or perhaps is appreciated by the person reading that. In the next several lines the Martian observes the different emotions one may have got while browsing a “mechanical bird, ” and even though he’s under no circumstances witnessed one particular actually traveling by air, which is extremely hard, he notices that they are at times in someone’s hand. In stanzas five and six the Martian is trying to describe fog. “Rain is when the earth is usually television as well as It has the property of making shades darker, ” meaning if the colors happen to be changed on a television the picture would seem unclear, and cloudy also.

Raine just describes an auto as a “Model T, ” in the next two stanzas. Detailing a car to be “a space with the lock inside, ” is a very creative metaphor. By writing “But time is tied to the wrist / or held in a box, ticking with impatience, ” Raine is definitely expressing the Martian is usually encountering a wrist watch or a time.

In stanzas ten through twelve the Martian has come upon a telephone, which usually he identifies as a “haunted apparatus, ” which usually “sleeps, ” and cries, or rings until it finally is picked up. Raine likewise adds the element of humor to the composition, an example with the twelfth stanza when he produces, “And but they wake up it up / deliberately, by tickling having a finger. ” The Martian believes that humans “tickle” the keypad with their hands, when they’re making a call. “A punishment area / with water but nothing to to eat, ” is a bath room.

The Martian observes that “Only the young are allowed to suffer openly, ” which is really while i child will be getting their particular diaper changed, and adults must be only when they visit the “punishment area. ” Finally, in the last two stanzas the Martian is describing the nighttime program of human beings, “At night time when every one of the colours pass away / they hide in pairs / and read about themselves as well as in coloring, with their eyes shut, ” in other words all in all humans close their sight to fall asleep and desire. This composition uses a multiple metaphors to explain what a Martian would encounter if perhaps he stopped at Earth.

The poem is definitely interesting to read because it needs the reader to work with their imagination, the reader need to think in order to figure out these types of everyday items the Martian is discovering for the first time, it’s somewhat of a brainteaser. It’s obvious the fact that Martian is definitely seeing these things for the first time, this makes the target audience wonder how come a simple factor such as a enjoy or a time is not really found on his planet, can be time unimportant were he’s from?