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Stanza 11 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 300-309

  • The speaker's life changes after his brother dies – the jailers start being nicer.
  • He's not sure why they get more sympathetic, since they're so used to seeing miserable people in the dungeons.
  • They let him stay loose in the dungeon, and leave his broken chain hanging on his pillar.
  • He's free to walk around as he chooses, and he paces all over.

Lines 310-317

  • He walks around and around the seven pillars in the cell, only avoiding stepping on the graves of his two brothers.
  • Whenever he accidentally comes anywhere near to stepping on one of their graves, he starts hyperventilating, and feels like his heart will break.