I would like someone to clarify this sentence for me. "It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other than a cry of negation, carrying within itself the seeds of its own destruction." I would like to have the simplified explanation?
1 Answer
See below:
Explanation:
Ooph - there is a lot here...
Ok - first and foremost - this is a context-driven passage. What comes before this passage is going to be important. However, with that said, we can parse out some meaning here.
It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other than a cry of negation, carrying within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Quite poetic, eh? Is this from one of the Bronte sisters, perhaps?
Anyway - we're talking about an it. We have something identified prior to this passage - probably an act? maybe something spoken? But first and foremost we have an it. For ease of identification, let's just say right now it's an action.
What kind of action? One that is being done from a very sad, despairing, and perhaps even fatalistic frame of mind (anguish). As an example, let's say you have a big test coming up and you need to do well... but try as you might with night after night of studying, you simply can't get the ideas to stick. What might you do? Keep trying? Perhaps. Give up? Also an idea. We're looking for an action born of anguish - one possibility would be to burn the notes and books being studied - do you see how this is an action tied to anguish - you are despairing of ever learning the stuff and you want to make some sort of action that expresses that?
And so the books and notes have been burned - we can absolutely say that it's a cry of negation (as in, "I don't want the test to exist! I want it to go away! I will destroy all evidence of there being a test!").
And now to the last bit - this action of burning the notes and books carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction - or perhaps another way to say it, using our example, is "the burning of the books and notes is the start (the seeds) of things happening that will get negate the burning of the books in the first place".
So what might happen if we burn our notes and books so as to get rid of a thought about a big test? Our teacher and parents would be upset. Our act of anguish will soon be characterized into something else - perhaps vandalism? Willfulness? Needless to say, our act of anguish will cause things to happen that will, in essence, bury our act of anguish into something else. The act, therefore, carries the seeds of its own destruction.
