An analysis of the combination of the suffering of the creek and the seek of gold in Desoto's that never succeeded.
Explanation:
To understand this we need to understand that author and the background. First of all Joy Harjo was a Feminist, therefore it develops critics surrounding social gender roles in her works. In this poem and line, she develops an analysis of the ideal society has imposed to women and how it is impossible to find it because it was created in the imaginary, the suffering of women to fulfill that role, and the struggle society has as a cause of the creation of the ideal. Thus, it is a stylistic device to think about this phenomenon.
This short excerp from Joy Harjo´s poem " New Orleans", is a metaphor, which basically describes the futility of following impossible dreams or trying to achieve something that will never be yours or that simply,is out of your reach, no matter how stubborn you might be and no matter how much determination you have, you will never reach it, so dancing with a woman as gold as the river bottom also represnts the persistance of Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto who died trying to find and conquer a big empire as he had witnessed in Peru.
An oxymoron is when a statement includes contradictory terms in conjunction
horrible and beautiful are contradictory terms as they are seen as complete opposites (you would not use the word horrible to describe something beautiful as they mean completely diffferent things)
An internal conflict is conflicting emotions within an individual; it usually is seen in individuals as opposing demands and/or impulses of the heart and mind. We see here that Rainford is approached with an impulse to fight Zaroff however, he recalls some truths that Whitney had faced him with that opposed his impulse to battle Zaroff. Rainford is indefinitely facing a man vs self or you could say, internal conflict.
