Sep 21, 2025
(OWA: Personal First)
[Welcome to the OWA club]
Warmth Save the World, or Make the World Dead?
——Delving Back into“The Tip of an Arrow”
It is really a nice day while I am writing my thoughts down at home during a lovely Saturday afternoon. Honestly, I pretty love poems and songs that contains many deeper meanings for readers to experience and interpret it in their own way; I have also wrote some poems within last few years(though many of them are Chinese-based)but I think I’ve got some nice inspiration to this. Before writing there’s also a fact which is pretty funny, that is the song “The Tip of an Arrow” is so niche that there is no any comments in a popular music software, Netease Music, In China. [Hahaha! 沙发] I had never seen this situation before cause there is nearly no song have no comments——even the most rare ones have one or two. So, you get it right? Let’s start our thoughts. [I love this honest, personal introduction!]
Let’s start it with the must-have questions. I would like to choose question 11, which is “Why does Isagog need to ‘Wipe the tears from [Temperance]’s cheek” in Line 66? Personally, there are two reasons to explain that. Firstly, Temperance and Isagog made many efforts to shoot the “monster”, for instance, they “crafting our sheaves by hand”(Line 20) and even rub each smooth upon that flap of thresher-sharkskin, (Line 10) and make them fast with sinew wrought (Line 15)to craft the arrow, but while they are facing the “monster” straightly, in that urgent moment, Isagog said “no” (Line 63)and didn’t shoot the “monster” in the end(Line 64), [Great point, yes! And great supporting evidence too.] maybe she is afraid or this is because of some other reasons, but Temperance will be really disappointed and shed tears cause their efforts pay nothing. So Isagog need to reassure him and try to get his pardon. [Right, that makes a lot of sense – good analysis!] On another scale, Isagog used another way to prove herself, She did not use violent means to fight the monsters, “Your arrow falls limp in the snow.” (Line 64); and instead of it, she tries to touch others with warm means. “You wipe the tears from my cheek.”(Line 66) As the quote she warms and moved Temperance. [Okay, that makes sense.] I think this action contains an author's call for us to oppose violence and speak to the world with warmth, just like not use force power, just use warmth of language like this, and combining the war on nowadays, we can really sense the the preciousness of this attitude. [Ugggh, this sentence (“I think this action…”), nooo! Authors of fiction do not call us to do anything. Authors of certain kinds of nonfiction do that. But remember my distinction: authors of fiction tell stories that make us reinterpret the world. Their aim is not to call us to do anything; their aim is to tell a story. If the story makes us (the readers) think about certain aspects of life, good! But that “thinking” process is a collaboration between the author, the text, and us ourselves.]
Since I has write til here, let’s trans to question 10 smoothly cause it’s related to the question and answer before. Why does Isagog whisper “no” in Line 63? Let’s induct the thinking via a further plot—— “The monster retreats.(Line 65) After I read to here, an idea came into my mind——does Isagog want to have peace instead of conflicts, and the monster wants it too? [Yeah!! Interesting point!] If the monster doesn’t like the girl’s flinch, it has full rights to attack the girl instead of retreating. [Yes, exactly.] So I am wondering that both the girl and the monster is a peace-lover, they want to deal everything with peace instead of fight, which I mentioned on the last paragraph. This seems pretty making senses and shows the calling of the author. [There is an implication in the story that this Hare may have come down from the mountains on a raid and killed some living creatures, such as one of Isagog and Temperance’s horses – “the void left by a horse / The bones of our innocent dead will fashion arrowheads.” I think that’s one explanation about why the two main characters ride so far away to hunt down the Hare. However, they’ve never actually seen the Hare before, they’ve only heard stories about it (“the fabled Three-Faced Hare”). So it’s also reasonable to think that some other, unidentified creature had killed their beloved horse, but that the Hare got blamed, because stories about this scary, mutated monster have been circling among the humans in the area… Anyway! Lots of possibilities!] But on the other hand, there are some different explanations. I’ve also thought that the “monster” is controlling Isagog and made her didn’t attach it cause “Your arrow falls limp in the snow”(Line 64), and aiming to abolish the notion of Temperance, it make Isagog to appease him ,as “You wipe the tears from my cheek”(Line 66), so that Temperance won’t want to attack it again. This indicates that the monster has possessing capabilities far beyond what we can imagine. Of course, it’s a horrible speculation because if it’s exist in “the world in the future”, humans would really extinct soon because of this horrible “creature”, isn’t it? [Interesting! – I’m not sure there’s much evidence for this view, though – if Isagog herself didn’t say the word “no” before misfiring the arrow, I might take this idea of possession-by-the-Hare more seriously. It’s not impossible, but I think the evidence is scant.]
Finally, let’s discuss about question 7, which is my lucky number——why does isagog and temperance go looking for the three-faced hare? Well, there is also a few possibilities. One of them is the setting of the music is happening in a game. As we all know, Temperance and Isagog lives “in the old Roman villa”(Line 4), and it makes sense when it happens in a game instead of the world in the future, like the player in the reality had a feeling for ancient things, so he generated a old villa in the world, because of this, the three-faced hare is more likely to be a boss in the game, and fight with it would be a trail in the game. [Right! Great explanation.] The next possibility is that the three-faced hare is a symbol of real wisdom, and their looking action is as likely to be a knowledge-finding process. As Temperance said in the poem “real knowledge must be earned.” (Line 35) The word earned can be refer to the plot that they make efforts to make weapons so hard and step so far to look for the Hare. [Good point and good evidence!] “T_he only facts of any worth are not so easily dispersed_”(Line 32-33) is also proving this. [In literary analysis, we don’t use the word “prove/proving”, because if you “prove” an interpretation, it means that all the other possible interpretations are trash. So instead, we usually use the word “support/supporting.”] To my mind, “real knowledge” in the poem is not what they can easily get through a blink of the eye: “on the quivering cave wall of their eyeball”(Line 30). So in a word, I think the author is praising those "true knowledge" gained through hard work, this makes some senses, right? [It does, it does!]
***
Finally, here comes the end of this OWA Work. I’m trying to let all my writing works become a kind of art, like special tones or feelings, etc.(I have started it since Junior High!), and just feel free to feel it. [Good! This OWA definitely does have its own special tone.]
If you love Richard Dawson, come to see Radical Face’s artwork! I think you will like it. He has musics and stories both. [Oooh, interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.]
许恩澄
Aoody Concorde
Sep 6th, 2025
At home
[I love that you even mention the setting!! Cool!]
P.S.
Yay! Tomorrow is my sister’s birthday, another birthday cake is waiting for me [Haha! Hope it was a fun party =) ]
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Terrific OWA! Your tone is honest, thoughtful, and inviting; your ideas are insightful; and you’re great at both supporting your thoughts with evidence and traveling out in the direction of less persuasive, but still very interesting interpretations and possibilities. +1 for your S1 Daily Activity score!