“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Summary

“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Themes

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  Conformity, Dullness, and Imagination

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock”

• Lines 1-2

  The houses are haunted
  By white night-gowns.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 3-6

  None are green,
  Or purple with green rings,
  Or green with yellow rings,
  Or yellow with blue rings.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 7-9

  None of them are strange,
  With socks of lace
  And beaded ceintures.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 10-11

  People are not going
  To dream of baboons and periwinkles.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 12-13

  Only, here and there, an old sailor,
  Drunk and asleep in his boots,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 14-15

  Catches tigers
  In red weather.

  

  

  

  

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“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Symbols

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  White Nightgowns

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“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Anadiplosis

  

  

  

  

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“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Disillusionment
• Rings
• Ceintures
• Periwinkles
• Catches
• Red Weather

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Speaker

“Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock”

More “Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock."

  • Stevens's Life and Work — A short biography of Wallace Stevens.

  • What is Modernism? — A brief explanation of Modernist poetry.

  • Harmonium — An electronic edition of Stevens's 1923 book Harmonium, in which "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" was published.

  • Wallace Stevens as an American Poet — A lecture on Stevens by prominent poetry critic Helen Vendler.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Wallace Stevens

  • Anecdote of the Jar

  • Sunday Morning

  • The Emperor of Ice-Cream

  • The Idea of Order at Key West

  • The Snow Man

  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird