help with engl (2) due in 4 days

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Stephanie Huff

Professor MacDonald

English 202, Section 1

22 October 2010

Metaphor and Society in Shelley’s “Sonnet”

In his sonnet “Lift not the painted veil which those who live,”

Percy Bysshe Shelley introduces us to a bleak world that exists

behind veils and shadows. We see that although fear and hope

both exist, truth is dishearteningly absent. This absence of truth is

exactly what Shelley chooses to address as he uses metaphors of

grim distortion and radiant incandescence to expose the

counterfeit nature of our world.

The speaker of Shelley’s poem presents bold assertions about

the nature of our society. In the opening lines of the poem, he warns

the reader, “Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life”

(lines 1–2). Here, the “painted veil” serves as a grim metaphor for life.

More specifically, the speaker equates the veil with what people like

to call life. In this sense, the speaker asserts that what we believe to be

pure reality is actually nothing more than a covering that masks what

really lies beneath. Truth is covered by a veil of falsehood and is made

opaque with the paint of people’s lies.

This painted veil does not completely obstruct our view but

rather distorts what we can see. All that can be viewed through it

are “unreal shapes” (2) that metaphorically represent the people

that make up this counterfeit society. These shapes are not to be

taken for truth. They are unreal, twisted, deformed figures of

humanity, people full of falsities and misrepresentations.

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Most people, however, do not realize that the shapes and

images seen through the veil are distorted because all they know

of life is the veil—this life we see as reality only “mimic[s] all we

would believe” (3), using “colours idly spread” (4) to create pictures

that bear little resemblance to that which they claim to portray. All

pure truths are covered up and painted over until they are mere

mockeries. The lies that cloak the truth are not even carefully

constructed but are created idly, with little attention to detail. The

paint is not applied carefully, but merely spread across the top.

This idea of spreading brings to mind images of paint slopped on

so heavily that the truth beneath becomes nearly impossible to

find. Even the metaphor of color suggests only superficial beauty—

“idly spread” (4)—rather than any sort of pure beauty that could

penetrate the surface of appearances.

What really lies behind this facade are fear and hope, both of

which “weave / Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear”

(5–6). These two realities are never truly seen or experienced,

though. They exist only as shadows. Just as shadows appear only at

certain times of day, cast only sham images of what they reflect,

and are paid little attention, so too do these emotions of hope and

fear appear only as brief, ignored imitations of themselves when

they enter the artificiality of this chasmlike world. Peering into a

chasm, one cannot hope to make out what lies at the bottom. At

best one could perhaps make out shadows and even that cannot

be done with any certainty as to true appearance. The world is so

large, so caught up in itself and its counterfeit ways, that it can no

longer see even the simple truths of hope and fear. Individuals and

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civilizations have become sightless, dreary, and as enormously

empty as a chasm.

This chasm does not include all people, however, as we are

introduced to one individual, in line 7, who is trying to bring to light

whatever truth may yet remain. This one person, who defies the

rest of the world, is portrayed with metaphors of light, clearly

standing out among the dark representations of the rest of

mankind. He is first presented to us as possessing a “lost heart” (8)

and seeking things to love. It is important that the first metaphor

applied to him be a heart because this is the organ with which we

associate love, passion, and purity. We associate it with brightness

of the soul, making it the most radiant spot of the body. He is then

described as a “splendour among shadows” (12), his purity and

truth brilliantly shining through the darkness of the majority’s

falsehood. Finally, he is equated with “a bright blot / Upon this

gloomy scene” (12–13), his own bright blaze of authenticity burning

in stark contrast to the murky phoniness of the rest of the world.

These metaphors of light are few, however, in comparison to

those of grim distortion. So, too, are this one individual’s radiance

and zeal too little to alter the warped darkness they temporarily

pierce. This one person, though bright, is not bright enough to light

up the rest of civilization and create real change. The light simply

confirms the dark falsity that comprises the rest of the world.

Shelley gives us one flame of hope, only to reveal to us what little

chance it has under the suffocating veil. Both the metaphors of

grim distortion and those of radiant incandescence work together

in this poem to highlight the world’s counterfeit nature.

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Works Cited

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Sonnet: Lift not the painted veil which those

who live.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing, 2nd ed., edited by

Richard Bullock, W. W. Norton, 2009, pp. 206–207.

“Metaphor and the Counterfeit Nature of Our Society.” Reprinted by permission of the author.