Sickle in Sonnet 116

Sickle Question

typehand.gif (8738 bytes) The traditional "connotation" of the word sickle is listed with old Father Time, but the Cold War might leave modern readers with a more sinister implication because the sickle is part of the emblem for communism. What would such an interpretation of this line say? Is such a reading OK? Why or why not?

Re-open your word processor and type your ideas; compare yours to one answer at the bottom of this page.

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Can the image of the Communist sickle in the flag of the old U.S.S.R. with the hammer and the star illuminate the reading of a sonnet written centuries before the 1917 Russian Revolution and the 1865 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx? If a reader realizes that the sickle is in the flag because it's a harvesting tool, then yes the image of the USSR flag can help a little. If a reader recalls how quickly the Soviet Union "harvested" the nations of Eastern Europe after World War II and put them behind its "Iron Curtain," then yes the harvesting function can be seen as something threatening. But the metaphor in the poem says that the personified Time harvests "rosy lips and cheeks," that is, youth.


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