Formal-Operational Stage

The Literature about the Titanic

The Titanic sunk April 14, 1912 after crashing into an iceberg. More than 1,500 lives were lost. The sinking of the Titanic made a great impact in history. It was thought to be the fastest ship and to be unsinkable. Although the sinking of the Titanic was so long ago, lots of literature has been written about the ship. Three pieces of literature are a poem by David R. Slavitt entitled "Titanic", a folk song published by Carl Sandburg in a book named The America Songbag entitled "De Titanic" and an essay on the James Cameron film, Titanic by Katha Pollitt entitled "Women and Children First." The literature written at the time of the sinking is different in content from that written much later.

To begin, the poem "Titanic" by David R. Slavitt has five stanzas. The first one starts off with the sentence "Who does not love the Titanic?". Which of course gives us the appression that the "Titanic" was a well known and loved ship. "If they sold passage tomorrow for that same crossing, who would not buy?" This statement is very true, who wouldn't want to be aboard the fastest, biggest and unsinkable ship. The answer is: everybody. "To go down....We all go down, mostly alone." "....with crowds of people, friends, servants, well fed, with music,....Ah!" Also, anyone would know these lines represent the strike of tragedy. This is when everything went happened and unfortunately lives were taken. "And the world, shocked mourns...." With loved ones gone, the world is in a state of shock and wonders what is the cause of the sinking. And the end "We all go: only a few, first class. The meaning of this sentence is that people died but only a few were first class because they were the majority put on the life boats.

Next, the folk song published by Carl Sandburg "De Titanic" is a song whose content is very different from a song that you maybe use to hearing or singing. However, what made this different was how it was pronounced. An example of this would be "De