Sonnet Analysis Final Draft

Pursuit for a Proper Place

Exhausting to part those once near my heart,
As if pulling my roots of life from soil,
Closing the door of my soul to depart,
I ever so insincerely toil.

Flee the false home I now find destructive.
Go, resentful child, and never come back.
Search for a new Haven Reconstructive,
After seeing skies of venomous black.

I consciously swallowed the bitter cure
To rid foolish habits of lingering
Dangerous playgrounds of peril obscure,
I leave without intent of returning.

Forsaking the old for anew rebirth,
I find my proper place upon the earth.




Sonnet Analysis


“Pursuit for a Proper Place” is a personal poem inspired by a personal experience of mine. But because I wanted this poem be flexible enough for readers to think of different stories rather than my specific experience, I composed the poem purely based on ideas of each event that took place in the course of my experience. The poem’s bleak mood and expressions are so much more exaggerated in comparison to the experience where I found the inspiration to write “Pursuit for a Proper Place.” There is a greater bleed of emotion from the poem due to the fact that I’ve written it to feel depressing and heavy, even if my experience may not have been described in the same extreme illustration.
A challenge I came across while composing this poem was the limit deriving from the format of a sonnet, because I felt that I couldn’t fit everything I wanted to write. Although I could go a syllable or two more, change the rhyme scheme or tweak small parts, I wanted to take this challenge and make every line exactly 10 syllables and follow the ababcdcdefefgg rhyme format. When I did, I was forced to write only the most necessary words. The poem seems much more defined now and pure in its substance with a good beat. Following basic sonnet format improved my poem rather than hindering it.
“Pursuit for a Proper Place” contains numerous metaphors, similes, and expressions that cannot be understood at a first scan. I don’t mind the fact that the poem cannot be fully grasped with a first read. The poem is rich with meaning and deeper expressions in its entirety, a compact poem of 14 lines, thus it cannot be understood by simply glancing at the lines, but thought over to capture the purpose of the words used.
My poem kicks off with a visual verb, “Exhausting to part those once near my heart.” This is the beginning of my story and the theme of the first stanza, a struggle to break off from certain people close to me. My experience was actually just making a choice to hang out with different people at school. I had been making a lot of close friends with a certain group of juniors since summer and staying close to them for the majority of my freshman year. But for a reason, which is to be explained further into the poem, I felt the need to stop being so attached to these juniors. The line “near my heart” rather than “in my heart” seemed more appropriate since these certain people were close but not so close that they held a place in my heart. “As if pulling my roots of life from soil” is a simile for breaking my habit of always hanging out where they hung out during breaks. “Closing the door of my soul to depart” expresses the process of making up my mind to do what I was going to do, to leave. But simply leaving people that I had gotten so attached and used to isn’t easy, which is explained in the line “I ever so insincerely toil.” Toil means to labor and to work hard, but I toil insincerely, because a part of me wants to stay rather than make the effort to depart.
So what’s the reason for this struggle to get away from people so close to me? The second stanza gives the answer. “Flee the false home I now find destructive.” This shelter I found in the group of juniors was never really a home, it is a “false home,” it only had only felt like home. During summer, I had bonded with these juniors while not knowing them all too well. They had been friends for years and I happened to jump in all of a sudden during a time where the stress of school didn’t exist and everyone was lighthearted. The way that they were very warm and fun during summer made me feel as if though I was the missing piece of the puzzle. But as summer went away and I started to see the true colors of people, I realized that I had ignored what could possibly be hiding behind the curtain of bliss that I had wrapped myself in. I found myself in a swirl of high school drama, the reason for the words “I now find destructive.” By this time and part of the poem, everything I had gotten myself into seemed unreasonable.
I was only a freshman in a group of juniors that had known each other for years. “Go, resentful child, and never come back.” My discovery was that being two years apart in high school made the biggest difference, so to them, I probably was a naïve, unknowledgeable freshman. And I discovered that I was. I was not just a child, I was a “resentful child,” because I wasn’t really an equal to these juniors and I felt that I didn’t fit in like they way I thought I did. It was time to “go” and “never come back,” coming back and getting just as attached to them again wasn’t a choice. I knew that I could find healthier friends out there.
“Search for a new Haven Reconstructive” is the line that probably puzzled most people. Along with my struggle for departure came the struggle to find new friends. I describe this search as the search for “a new Haven Reconstructive,” because I was looking for a new place where I belonged, somewhere safe where I could rebuild myself “After seeing skies of venomous black,” or after having gone through unpleasant episodes and drama. I capitalized “Haven Reconstructive” since I wanted to exaggerate my search as if I was on a journey to reach a specific destination point as solid as a landmark.
The third stanza is where I solidify my decision to leave, expressing how this decision is for the better. The line “I consciously swallowed the bitter cure” explains that I am leaving on my own will, not because I am being pushed away. I “swallowed the bitter cure,” meaning that although it is difficult, my choice to leave will be good for me like medicine. “To rid foolish habits of lingering-Dangerous playgrounds of peril obscure” was how I worded that it wasn’t smart for me to get so attached to these juniors, because being with them was like being in “Dangerous playgrounds” where it seems fun at first, but things turn into dramas and it’s no fun at all and people start getting upset. There are “peril obscure,” a metaphor for the negative impact that I hadn’t foreseen when I first started to bond with these juniors. The last line of the third stanza, “I leave without intent of returning” further solidifies my choice to depart and leads into my last, conclusive stanza.
“Forsaking the old for anew rebirth, I find my proper place upon the earth.” I end the poem with the lines that finally free me. “Forsaking the old,” I get to put everything that had bothered me and made me upset all behind me and find “anew rebirth,” so refreshing, a new start. Now, I can “find my proper place,” where I truly belong and fit in as equals with friends that have respect for me “upon the earth” where it is vast with an endless choice of people to be with, the earth that I cannot leave but must make a home in, and find true friends in.

Adding to my heritage paper...

These are youtube video clips for the beginning and end of the movie Teagukgi: The Brotherhood Of War.
In my heritage paper, I wrote about my grandfather and his experience as a Korean War survivor. This movie, a personal favorite of mine, is a historical fiction movie of the Korean War, a story of two brothers forcefully drafted. The movie portrays a very real story for many Korean seniors today.

Note: Jin-Seok is both the surviving young man and the old man. Jin-Tae is his older brother, who is shot dead and is found at the excavation site. *There's a somewhat graphic part at the beginning of the second clip where Jin-Tae stays behind and is shot to death in order to let Jin-Seok escape safely*