Peter+and+John

The ballad "Peter and John" stood out to me for a couple reasons.

First, it seems to have a lot of extraneous information in it, even though bro Tom said that ballads usually leave out the little details and just cut to the chase in regards to the plot. Elinor Wylie, for example, spends two stanzas explaining the physical characteristics of Peter and John. However, since she does spend time to tell us that Peter has red hair and gold eyes and that John has brown eyes and a frown on his face, this leads to me believe that these details are important. The only thing is that I have no idea about the symbolism of colors, so if anybody could help me out with that, that'd be great!

Another aspect of the poem that interested me was its content. Just like "The Cherry-Tree Carol," this ballad takes a well-known story, in this case the story of the Passion, and puts a different twist on it to keep it fresh and interesting. This is what I came up with: since John is the young and inexperienced apostle, he has the least profound dream. In his dream, he was the Christ who got put to death. Although John is freaking out about it, nobody else really should be shocked because Jesus told his disciples three times that he was going to die for them. On the other hand, Peter is higher up towards Jesus (I hate to put it like that, but Jesus told Peter, not John to build his church), so it should follow that he has the more insightful dream. He dreams about the more shocking aspect of the Passion: that one of the twelve would betray Jesus. And even though we don't find out until the last tine that Peter was Judas and not Jesus in the dream, Wylie gives us hints that he was indeed Judas: Judas hung himself "on an elder tree," and his reward for turning Jesus in was a bag of silver ("a silver penny sealed each of my eyes.") Any other interpretations on the poem?? 1201881398

Yea, I found this to be a worthwhile ballad as well. In fact, it was the one I performed with my group. We chose it for a couple reasons. For one, it fit to the music we wanted very well. Secondly, we found the emphasis on Peter and John to be a new angle on the Passion as you said. Most of the stanzas start out with Peter or John, and this is very strange for something that deals with the Passion, which is so focused on Jesus. We saw it as a chance to really see or at least dwell on the importance of the presence and support, or lack thereof, of Jesus' followers. Even though our performance probably didn't do it justice, I think our group really enjoyed working with this ballad. 1201933013

My point about details, LMa, was that the traditional ballads employ a great **economy** of detail. It's not so much that they "leave them out" but that whenever a detail is noted it is meant to serve a very specific poetic function ... maybe to telegraph (suggest, allude to, connote) a much wider range of information than could be directly stated within the ballad. 1201964976

This issue of detail interested me. I thought that whenever a detail was included in any great poet's work (and I am assuming this includes all poets in the green book), it was to serve a specific poetic function. Maybe this is not smart of me, because it could send me on a wild goose chase for meanings behind details. With the ballad is it just moreso because the specifications for what it must be to qualify as a ballad are not numerous? Why else would this be more true for the ballad than other poems?

As far as the details in Peter and John go, I noticed that the colors were red and gold, to attempt to answer Lynn's question. More specifically, red and gold were the colors of Peter's hair and eyes, respectively, and this would make him not look like someone of middle-eastern dissent, which Peter and John were (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what they were). I don't know where the salty cold is where he was bred, which I think would help with this analysis. Perhaps Wylie's point with the hair and eyes details is that even something as objective as history can be interpreted different ways, which is completely true. Something as simple as a detail puts an entirely different spin on something. Word choice is crucial as well: for example, why did Wylie say that Peter was "bred" in the cold, instead of Peter was born? Wylie is making him sound like an animal: he does deny Jesus, and with his (supposed) red hair and gold eyes, one would not mistake him for one of Jesus' kind. Jesus is divine, and Peter is but human. 1201988917

KLe, the discussion about details is interesting to me. I’m not sure why, but I don’t really notice details in poems as much. For me, details stand out a lot in novels. No matter what novel we read, I can’t help but notice repeated words or colors. I always try to figure out how the minor details are relating to the entire book. However, in short poems, I don’t really notice the minor things. I focus on figuring out what the poem is saying, along with the meaning behind it, but that’s all. Thinking about the red and gold, or the word “bred” never occurred to me. I think it is important to notice these things though, because poetry is so short, a lot of meaning is often hidden in the details. 1202020081

At first, this poem struck me because of its visual dimensions. It has 18 stanzas, and all the lines are short in length. After I read the poem, the context is what won me over. I liked the contrast between Peter and John. We know that the poem is about the 12 apostles, but these two men in particular. It focuses in some ways on Judas and his betrayal of Jesus as well. The last two stanzas are probably what impacted me the most. Peter dreamt that he was Judas, and that indeed was a nightmare. To truly understand the meaning of this ballad, I think it is necessary to know the story of the Passion of Christ. I admire Wylie for writing about these men. I would imagine that writing about faith can be difficult. Overall, I think the reason why I liked this poem was, because although it looks long at first, it actually had a nice flow, was not boring, kept a nice pace, and took a very serious topic and almost gave a light and interesting perspective. Is this how the apostles really felt about Judas? Were they glad that they weren’t the one who betrayed Judas and will forever be remembered this way? 1202261678