My Knight in Shining Armor
They see you swing your sword with lethal force
And trample your foes under your proud warhorse,
And think you violent, savage, and uncouth,
Albeit brave, clever, cunning, and bold.
Only I see your bright, warm heart of gold
And know you fight for love, justice, and truth.
They see only those you've sent to the grave,
And not the girl you are fighting to save.
"Thank you, Meg, that was very nice," said Mrs. Murphy to her English class. "What did the rest of you think? Duncan?"
Putting his hand down, Duncan Kane began "I thought the effort at iambic pentameter felt forced, especially since the meter actually wobbles between iambic and trochaic at various points. It just seems artificial. Also the rhyme scheme is AABCCBDD. You think it's going to be AA again at the end, so that it's symmetrical, but then the whole thing gets thrown off—"
"I disagree completely."
"Veronica Mars," interrupted Mrs. Murphy, "we raise our hands and wait to be recognized."
"Sorry," replied Veronica insincerely, raising her hand.
"Go ahead."
"I think the fact that the meter switches between iambic, trochaic, and dactylic makes it seem if anything more natural; that's just how language flows. More importantly, I think the asymmetry of the rhyme scheme is very effective: the whole point of the poem is that the speaker sees a different side of the knight than everyone else does, so the fact that the two sides are not a perfect reflection of each other works really well."
"You're begging the question," shot back Duncan, without a reprimand from the teacher on his failure to raise his hand. "You're just accepting at face value the speaker's assessment of the knight's character as valid, when it's already established that no one else sees the knight that way."
"That's—"
"Since," interjected the teacher, "Mr. Kane and Miss Mars have been so good as to provide us such an elegant segue from the poem's form to its content, why don't we open the floor up to a critique of said content, perhaps from someone who hasn't spoken yet. Miss Pomroy?"
"Well, I think that whenever you're with a guy who's totally toxic, you always tell your friends 'but he has this whole other side that you don't see,' but really they see him much better than you. So it's like Duncan said, maybe everyone else sees the knight more clearly, and the speaker doesn't, because she's in love with him."
"Who says the speaker's in love with him?"
"Miss Mars, must I remind you again about raising your hand?" asked Mrs. Murphy.
"And anyway, this is obviously a love poem."
"Is it, Duncan? What is a love poem? Would anyone care to define what a love poem is? Dick Casablancas?"
"A love poem," answered Dick in a deliberately stentorian tone, "is any poem whose intent is to induce its subject to sleep with its author." Most of the class giggled at this; Meg blushed.
"Thank you, Mr. Casablancas, for that pithy if wholly inappropriate response. Does this poem qualify as a love poem then? Cole?"
"Well yeah, I mean, I don't know if the girl wants to sleep with the knight, but she clearly likes him, I mean, like-likes him." The tittering was not quite as great as that in response to Dick's statement, so Mrs. Murphy decided to ignore it this time.
"What are you talking about? We don't even know that the speaker and the girl are the same person."
"Despite the shoulder injury that prevents her from raising her hand, Miss Mars makes a telling point. Do we know anything about the relationship between the speaker and the girl? Ah, I see your shoulder has recovered. Go ahead, Veronica."
"There's no reason to think the speaker is the girl. And if we don't read it that way, then it's clear that speaker admires the knight for fighting for this person, but doesn't love, or 'like-like,' the knight."
"That's beside the point," answered Duncan. "This is clearly a love poem. First of all, the title is an obvious allusion to the entire tradition of Medieval courtly love poetry, as is the fact that the poem is structured as a sonnet."
"That's argument from etymology." At this point Mrs. Murphy gave up on trying to prevent Veronica from speaking out of turn. "Just because it adopts the form of a love poem doesn't mean it is one. After all, Medieval courtly love poetry evolved out of religious devotional poetry, so by your 'reasoning,' this is a hymn, not a sonnet."
"The speaker clearly says the knight is fighting for, and I quote, 'love.'" Duncan was raising his voice at this point.
"And justice and truth. And who says it's romantic love? And even if it is, presumably it's for the girl, who is not necessarily the speaker."
"Well," said Mrs. Murphy, "I'm glad we had such a spirited discussion on this poem. Of course, one of the nice things about the section on student compositions is that we actually can inquire into the original intent of the author. Well, Miss Manning? Does the speaker love the knight?"
Meg smiled sheepishly at Veronica. "That was how I originally meant it. But the speaker isn't the girl, so Veronica was definitely right about that."
"Well, we're just about out of time. Tomorrow we can expect poems from both John and Stephanie. Also, do not forget that your essays comparing Tennyson's 'Ulysses' to Kipling's 'White Man's Burden' are due Friday." At which point the bell rang.
As the students filed out of class, Veronica overheard Meg telling Duncan, "You know, you didn't have to attack my work that ferociously. Once you did, everyone else started piling on."
"Well," said Duncan with barely disguised bitterness, "at least you had your knight in shining armor to defend you."