Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad II

seeing 2. 

Edward Hirsch (interesting coincidence with the artist Edward Hopper, speaking of their initials) focuses on the next:

- strange, gawky house

- the breath of the house

- someone started at the house

- the house being ashamed of itself

- fantastic mansard rooftop

- pseudo-Gothic porch

- its shoulders and large, awkward hands

- what house did to the people who once lived in it etc. etc. 

So to say he is showing the house in the most disgusting manner it could be shown. The author exaggerates with each and every element of it and the elements that the house is surrounded by. At the end from being focused on the house, featured as a single human being, in my opinion, the author shifts our attention to the whole nation, to the whole world. 

Hirsch uses personification giving the house the human abilities of having expressions, hands, someone being stared at, and someone doing harm to others.

The author create the mood of the poem by making particular word choices. Like strange, gawky, desperately empty, utterly vacant, utterly naked... - all of them create the pessimistic mood of the poem, utterly pessimistic. In my opinion these word choices help us better understand the mood of the poem, the focus and purpose of the author. 

I believe the poem exaggerates and help us more in detail to understand the whole idea of the painting, even though it might be going too much above the top. But like an artist, so does the author put a personal touch into it and find personal connections within it.