In the poem “Miniver Cheevy” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, we
view Miniver Cheevy as a child, who wants to be a part of a different time
period. He does not like or appreciate the life that he is living, and he
wishes that he could go back to a different time, where he would be a lot
happier than he is now. He dreams about all of the things that he
would want to be a part of, if he were in that time period and thinks about who
he would be. “He would have sinned incessantly could he have been one.”
Robinson uses this line to help the audience understand how badly Miniver
Cheevy desires the past. Instead of embracing the present, he craves the past
and wants to be a part of something that he is currently not. He believes that
his life in another time would be better than the life that he is currently
living.
Robinson might be trying to send the audience
a message about acceptance, and living in the present and future, as opposed to
dreaming about and trying to live in the past. There is no direct evidence in
the poem that there is anything horrible about his life, other than the fact
that he wants to live in a different time. Robinson might be trying to show its
readers that sometimes it is better to accept what you have and continue to
live life based on what you have or are capable doing. There is nothing that
Miniver Cheevy can do to go back in the past, yet he continues to romanticize it.
Robinson presents us with a character who "wept
that he was ever born" because he wants to show the audience that not
everything is always going to be the way that you want it to, but it is better
to live with what you have and strive for things that are possible, rather than reaching
for something that cannot be obtained. Miniver Cheevy wishes that he was never
born, which shows that he is ungrateful, because he would
rather not have been born than to be born during the time that he was. He was “born too late,” and therefore believes
that he does not fit in as well as he would in another time.
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