Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Cognitive Dissonance by V Greig

The Flower is full of symbolism, a metaphor for society’s rejection of the unattainable, unfamiliar, beyond everyday understanding - a form of cognitive dissonance. To begin, the golden hour indicates an age of enlightenment, when time aligns with new awareness. The poet, as homodiegetic narrator, proposes to create beauty in the form of a flower but people, as society, initially reject his work as weed, cursing him and his flower. When the flower grows tall, it wears a crown of light. The crown is a symbol of the highest social hierarchy, worn only by the most worthy and light indicative of an epiphany. By stealing the flower’s essence, its seed, the thieves are committing an act of plagiarism, initiating mass production by scattering seed. Afterward, people’s prejudice is transformed to cry splendid is the flower. Society held contradictory values of beauty to the poet, resolved when the unique became commonplace.

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