Essay Questions

Who is the person going downhill represented as being a woman?

The first stanza presents two people, a woman and another person whose gender in unrevealed. The first character is characterized by her long locks and thus the reader can assume that the person in question is a woman. As will be later revealed, the woman goes downhill, or rather to hell and she takes other people with her. The author of the poem wrote it during a time when women were not perceived in a good light. More than often, especially when they did not comply to what was told to them by the men in their lives or when they would dare to do something considered unacceptable from a social point of view, they were portrayed as negative characters, even witches who had the purpose of fooling men and making sure they do not reach heaven. Thus, the person going downhill is represented as being a woman because of the way women were portrayed during that era.

What does the woman want to suggest by claiming that the message sent is undeciphered ?

By claiming that the message is undeciphered , the woman wants to make the other person ignore the sign he should turn back when there is still time. The meteor on the sky is presented as being some kind of message the other person was supposed to notice but, pressured by the woman, the person focuses on other things on the path. By claiming that the message is hard to understand, the woman also wants to make the other person not want to make sacrifices to live a holy life and rather just live a sinful and easy life.

Why could the person no longer return uphill? Does this suggest that a person could never give up their ways and return to God?

The person going downhill finds that there is no way of turning back in the last stanza. By then, the person already passed different elements symbolizing death and suggesting that the person is question was already dead and thus no longer able to change his or her ways. But this does not mean that the person did not had a chance to return to the uphill path in the past. In the third stanza for example, the person sees a meteorite on the sky, a sign from God containing a message. While it is not mentioned what the message was, one could theorize that the message was one of warning. By ignoring the message and by continuing going downhill, the person sealed his or her fate by refusing to listen and repent.