Pity the Beautiful Characters

Pity the Beautiful Character List

The angel statue (from "The Angel with the Broken Wing")

The titular angel from this poem has a sad story. Being created for a church, by a man only he remembers, he lost his wing in a raid during the revolution. While he is just a statue, his form of an angel gives him some powerful meaning. He has been placed in a museum, praised for the perfection of his art. But what he really wants is to return to the heavens to help God understand the world, tell him of "the howling of the damned". It is open to interpretation if he wants to condemn people even more or asks for God's help.

The couple (from "The Apple Orchard")

The narrator and his friend walk into an orchard. While the narrator has never been there or smelt the heavy smell of spring blossoms, the other one leads on. They wander beneath this symbol of spring, which makes the narrator muse on their passion for each other. While they never touched in a romantic way, the narrator feels that this makes their passion for each other so much sweeter. However, in the end they have to admit that love that is not acted upon will be lost in the long run, no matter how sweet the passion is in between.

Narrator (from "Pity the beautiful")

They are an omniscient narrator who are not personally connected to the content of the poem. They warn the audience that beauty and fame will fade over time. Therefore, anyone beautiful, anyone relying on their outer looks should be pitied. The final stanza reminds the audience that even gods and the eternal stars fade away into nothingness and deserve their pity.

The Lover (from "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet")

While this poem only really contains two characters, the narrating voice belongs to the lover, who is also a poet and a lunatic. The narrator pleads with his lover that their passion is the only thing that keeps the world afloat. Using metaphors like the writing of one's story or the creation of mankind by God, they argue that the moon would darken if passion would cease. Here the double meaning of lunatic becomes important, as the narrator calls themselves and their lover lunatics, i.e. crazy people but also helpers of the moon (luna=moon).

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