Introduction and Outline

Edwin Arlington Robinson uses the character Miniver Cheevy to show that people are always going to have challenges in their life, but the best way of handling these situations is to accept them, so they receive positive results. He uses characterization to prove that issues in life should be embraced, and people should live life in the present instead of dreaming and living life in the past. Certain things that cannot be controlled, and he uses them to show that people should embrace them instead of trying to change them. In the poem “Miniver Cheevy”, Edwin Arlington Robinson depicts Miniver Cheevy as a child reminiscing about life in a different time period to send his readers a message about living in the present and accepting situations that people have no control over.

I.               Robinson characterizes Miniver Cheevy in this way, to illustrate that certain things in life cannot be controlled, but people create their own happiness by accepting the circumstances and finding a way to turn a tragic situation into a positive one.

a.     “He wept that he was ever born”

b.     “Coughed, and called it fate, and kept on drinking”

II.             Robinson depicts Miniver Cheevy as a character romanticizing about the past to prove to his readers that people should embrace their lives and challenges, as opposed to feeling sorry for themselves and trying to live in the past.

a.     “Miniver loved the Medici”

b.     “He would have sin incessantly could he have been one”

III.           Robinson portrays Miniver Cheevy as this character to show that life is not always going to go accordingly, and there is no reason to try to change the things that people have no control over, such as when and in what time period a person is born.

a.     “Born too late”