An Analysis of Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens is a poem about a woman eating a late breakfast and thinking about the purpose of religion. Stevens wants readers to ask the questions the woman is asking and explore their feelings about Christianity. He also wants to raise awareness of nature. The first stanza poses the first tentative questions before launching into a lively debate in later stanzas. Stevens uses stanza I to set the scene for the rest of the poem. The first five lines describe that the main character, known simply as "She", skipped church, "to dispel the sacred silence of ancient sacrifices", and had a late breakfast described as "Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, / And the green liberty of a cockatoo” (lines 2-6) The sixth line announces the subject and mood of the poem “She dreams a little, and she feels the darkness / L. 'encroachment of this old catastrophe' (lines 6-7) She begins to think about the purpose and meaning of the Christian religion. In lines nine to eleven, Stevens shows how the oranges and the cockatoo's wings remind her of a 'procession. of the dead". In the rest of the stanza, she drifts towards a more serious examination of religion by referring to "the blood and the grave", the crucifixion (line 15). questions Christian tradition In stanza II, she questions the purpose of going to church and offering her earnings: “Why should she give her bounty to the dead” (line 16). Steven offers several unanswered questions in this stanza: why give money to the deceased; Why does God only visit in dreams? and can nothing on earth be comparable to heaven? In this stanza, S...... middle of paper ...... the three lines are very symbolic of what is to come for all things: In the evening, occasional flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations while they flow. darkness, on outstretched wings. Darkness in the context of this poem is death. Stevens begins the poem with a woman skipping church and turns it into a discussion about the plausibility of an afterlife, religion, and the existence of souls. Stevens believes that we should view nature and our earthly existence as a spiritual basis for measuring our lives. He also says we should spend less time worrying about heaven, the afterlife, and following organized religion. Above all, he suggests that we should try to find heaven or beauty on earth. Works Cited: Stevens, Wallace. “Sunday morning.” The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Editor: Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1995.