Three Varieties of Bathtubs :: Jeffrey Harrison Literature Essays

Three Varieties of Bathtubs Past, present and future atomic number 18 the simplest ways in which humans perceive time. We spy the past through our memories and our recall of events that already have happened. When looking into the future, we can only look at where we are now in order to stroke what our fate might be in the future. Or else we only have our dreams and goals that we look forward to one- day accomplishing. When viewing the present, however, everything or so us is not an thinking or memory in our head, but a reality that we use our senses to see, tone, touch, smell or hear. We are using our bodys functions to live and take in what is around us at the moment. When living in the present (as one would say to someone who is constantly aware of the moment and what is around them), there is less expectation to miss whats in front of us rather than always looking behind or too far ahead. Jeffrey Harrison, in his poem Bathtubs, Three Varieties, seems to feel the same way a bout living in the here and the now. The three varieties of bathtubs Harrison writes about were separated into three stanzas according to their design and their purpose now, in the present. In the first stanza of the poem Harrison describes an old- fashioned bathtub, one that was raised off the floor by porcelain animal paws that extended off for each one corner. The particular bathtubs that he was describing were no longer serving their intended purpose, but rather were outside in a yard like an old car that was once ones hotrod, now fighting metal. These bathtubs, retired from their original purpose, now just sat through the seasons and let outside forces such as the weather and changes in other living things like the walnut tree tree carry on without regard to their presence. In the description of these bathtubs, Harrison shows something that although is still here, is part of the past and really does not have a life of its have got anymore except just lying underneath the w alnut tree. This is very much like a person whose thoughts are caught up in the past, because they, too, are still trying to live something that is over and then lose purpose in the present. Harrison also relates these bathtubs twice to sheep, which are commonly viewed as animals that follow each other, never really having a choice or idea of their own.