Poetry as social comment – The Lie
Who amongst us have not ever heard of corruption and had disregarded it? Today, we revolve around decisions made by authoritative members in our society. In particular members of the government, misusing their power for their own selfish desires such as wealth, luxuries or even to obtain more power! This is why we often see social comments that seek to point out a faulty government or even to express feelings of oppression. Sir Walter Raleigh’s poem The Lie has a much broader target in mind: Humanity as a whole. Good Morning ladies and gentlemen today at the SLQ, my name is Shannon Yu, and today I will be taking you through an analysis of the social commentary in one of Walter Raleigh’s most famous works – The Lie. The main message that was extracted from the poem would be Raleigh’s inclination for society to not trust the status quo but to challenge an unjust way of thinking.
Hopefully in the following 7 minutes, we will cover the topics of: Who Raleigh is, the setting he grew up in, his writing style and how all this affects him writing this infamous poem. Under his main message are the three main concepts that are listed above on the PowerPoint.
Firstly, I would address the history of Walter. In the midst of the Renaissance and Elizabethan periods, Walter was born into a privileged, protestant English family, and grew to be an influential political figure and one of the silver poets renowned today. The silver poets were a group of writers who resisted the influence of classical references and decorative poetic devices. Many of his writings are short lyrics that were actually inspired by actual events.
Now that we know a bit about Raleigh’s life, I would like to elaborate on the context of the period of that time.
The Renaissance was an era of poetry that brought many artistic attitudes, human development and education to the world of today. This era intersects over two significant influences of the time including: The Elizabethan and the Classicism era. As the name depicts, this was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I where discoveries of scientific and geographical knowledge flourished. Due to the importance of class structure; what is taught by the higher order must be accepted as the truth.
Generally, poets at the time used many aesthetic devices, gentle sarcasm and satire to convey messages, however Raleigh rejected the common writing style of the time. Leaning towards the characteristics of the Middle Ages, he focuses more on stressed syllables rather than vowel length; mainly using the language of the common people, much like the acronyms we use today. However, Raleigh kept the sarcastic and challenging tone that confronts and encourages the readers to not trust the status quo and instead challenge an unjust way of thinking.
Now that we have covered the most of the context behind this poem lets jump straight into it.
Firstly, Walter points out the problem he discovered in society: People being motivated purely by self-interest. It is obvious that the theme of The Lie is ‘contempt with the world’. He explicitly throws out his point through the poem’s imperative tone for people to stand up and tell various people and organizations of their wrongdoings. Walter is contempt with the world’s cynicism, believing that everyone is only motivated for their own self-interest, in which he points out and tries to correct. In order to persuade society to not trust the status quo, he points out many problems that were apparent in the authority of the time and imperatively tells humanity to challenge their unjust ways by ‘giving the lie’. Now what does this actually mean? To give the lie was a commonly used phrase that meant to prove something to be false. The mood of the poem is imperative, which means Raleigh is giving instructions to the reader. These instructions are telling the reader to fix some kind of problem, and by telling you to fix a problem, Raleigh implicitly suggests that there is a problem. He wouldn’t need to ‘give the lie’ to men of high condition if those men weren’t only motivated by ambition. This self-interested motivation is also reflected in the events of Raleigh’s life, especially in regards to the people of higher social standing he knew. For example, since England was frequently attacking Spain at the time, Raleigh was put in charge of several expeditions into Spanish territory, with the primary goal being the acquisition of wealth. Most if not all of which would have gone to the king at the time and his close political circle. With this being said, it was obvious to Raleigh that the king was just motivated by his own self interests.
Second of all, I will now explain how Raleigh actually understood the risks and the fear of the common people and why he still proudly announces to not fear the backlash from the hegemony. In stanza’s 2-5, ‘to tell the lie’ was directed towards people of high standing. As stated before, because the imperative motion of this poem is directed towards humanity as a whole, Raleigh considers the people who would accuse the higher order to be in the majority. As such, there will always be an authority that is higher than you. This can be seen in stanza 1 and 13. Stanza 1 line 3 could be alluded as to not be afraid of going up against the higher orders that are considered to be ‘good’ and ‘righteous’. In order to emphasize the vividness of his message, he used personification to achieve this purpose. This was achieved in stanza 2 line 2 through the deliberate devices of simile and personification. They were chosen to emphasize how society had accepted the twisted face of the court’s authority. Whilst it maintains a good face, Raleigh faces the reality of the ‘rotting’ side that is corrupt. He implies that the oxymoronic image of the church is hypocritical through their ideals on what good acts are and how a moral man should act however the committee itself does not comply. Since Raleigh was imprisoned several times by both Queen Elizabeth and King James, he understood what the backlash of powerful groups and people could be like, yet once again reinstated for the people to ‘give the lie’.
As we can see here, whilst Walter understood the worries of the common man, he continues to support his message through the subtle referencing of human moralism. To not do what you morally should in expectation for some kind of return, but for the obligation to point out hypocrisies in others standards and commands. He uses juxtaposition of positive and negative effects next to each other, which helps to highlight the social comment that the reality of society is different to the idealistic image of our standards. Because the Renaissance saw a lot of conflict between religious groups and their ideals, hypocrisy ran rampant and so it would have been easy to see a similar juxtaposition between what people said should be done and what they actually did. It was estimated that this poem was written during Walter’s time in prison and was soon to be executed due to his participation in ‘The Main Plot’ to remove King James I from the throne. This alludes to line 5 of stanza 1 where it is assumed that he knew of his own death and began the poem by instructing the people to not live for their own self-interest but to live morally and expose those who do. The hidden message that can be taken is that your self-interest wouldn’t matter when you die. However, in stanza 13 lines 3-4, he acknowledges that no one will appreciate you for exposing their lies, and may even physically harm you. Contrasting this threat, line 6 continues to explains that even though they can hurt your body, they cannot hurt your soul. Being a Protestant in a time when the Catholic Church was still very dominant, Raleigh would have felt a conviction to expose hypocrisy in the church, and to encourage others to do so. This sums up to one main point that reflects his viewpoints as a protestant – that one should do the right thing even if there is no earthly reward. This could be alluded to the verse in the bible which states “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
Raleigh’s message of “give the lie” is now obvious that a clear use of repetition was used. His repetition of this phrase served two purposes: to solidify it in the readers’ memory and to highlight the importance of acting out this instruction. The fact that he used a common phrase also lends a certain level of irony to the message of the poem – a common phrase used to instruct people to do something that everyone should be doing, but nobody is. Now let me ask you a question; Should we be thinking about our own hypocrisies and the community’s corruption? Or should we just live our lives as nonchalantly as children do- accepting whatever decisions are forced upon us? The rest is now up to you. Have a great day .