An Analysis Of Metaphors In Lisel Mueller's 'Hope'

Life can really suck sometimes. It can give us the illusion that everything is going to go smoothly as planned, but then it surprises us with tragedy or rough, unexpected circumstances. It is during these times that we just don’t know what to do and feel hopeless. But hope is always there. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes it seems impossible to find, but there is always hope for any situation or circumstance. Hope is alive and can be found in more places than one might expect. In Lisel Mueller’s poem, “Hope”, Mueller uses metaphors to describe hope and show that it can be found in many places. Let’s start with the first stanza. In the first 3 lines of the poem, Mueller describes how hope can sometime “hide” from us. She says that it “(…) hovers in dark corners until the lights are turned on,” showing that hope can seem nowhere to be found sometimes (lines 1-2). Then she says that hope “(…) shakes sleep from its eyes”(3). The message that she’s implying here is that hope is restless and is always working. Mueller’s use of the word “hovers” indicates that hope can be discrete and isn’t always obvious. The next 4 lines are pretty interesting. Mueller begins to describe hope using nature. She says that hope can be found “(…) in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages,” which is pretty interesting because some people might view dandelions as weeds, but other find hope in them (5-6). Next she makes a similar comparison in saying that hope “(…) sticks to the wings of