The “Record of a Room” Essay Example

The “Record of a Room” is both a lyric and narrative poem written in the first-person perspective. This poem is about two lovers lying in a room having a verbal and non-verbal conversation, perhaps expressing the intention of wanting to part ways. The narrator of the poem describes how her lover longed for something or someone who was not present at the time, meaning that perhaps her lover had fallen in love with someone else. Her tone is sad, and the mood is somber. The narrator's exclamation "it's just one of those things" indicates that the decision to part ways was unexpected and shocking to her. In the third stanza of the poem, the narrator states he did not verbally express his longing for another, but his actions led to such a conclusion. It is a poem of lost love, a story of two people who were once in love but drifted apart due to newfound interests or love.

The poem has four stanzas with six lines each. The stanzas' structure is the same, in each of the stanzas, the third and sixth lines are indented perhaps to emphasize those phrases. The use of indented lines allows the audience to give more attention to these lines in each paragraph; perhaps each paragraph's central message is emphasized within those lines. The poem has an alternate rhyme scheme, which creates a musical feel to it. Also, each stanza ends with a refrain or chorus that helps establish musicality in the poem. The refrain "it's just one of those things" emphasizes that every occurrence described in each of the stanzas was unexpected. Authors commonly use refrains to create lyrical poems such as this and emphasize the poem's main idea.

The author of the poem employs several figures of speech such as imagery, personification and metaphors. The author uses imagery to create a visual image of the poem's setting and the things co-occurring; for instance, in the first and second stanza, the narrator describes to her audience what type of environment they were in and what was happening. She states that within the room they were in, there was a glass of water whose reflection disfigured the orange that was beside it. The room had ceilings and "venetian blinds"; from the room, one could view the sea, and it was a sunny day in summer. The author also uses personification; the narrator states that "A glass contorts an orange." The author uses the metaphor "the eyebrow of a lie" to mean that the narrator's lover was lying from how he raised his eyebrow. Many times, one can tell that another is lying from their facial expression.