“Dreams are touchstones of our character.” Henry David Thoreau said this quote and I think it related to this poem in many ways. In Robert Herrick’s The Vine, dream symbols, the id, and Eros are employed to prove that the speaker of the poem is having a rape fantasy. There are many examples in poem that lead to this conclusion. The speaker is dreaming that his genitalia is being turned into a vine that is covering and enslaving the woman in his dreams. He wakes up with his genitalia no longer in its “immature state” and realizes his fantasy. Dream symbols are shown a lot throughout the poem. The vine is his genitalia, “I dreamed this mortal part of mine was metamorphosed to a vine.” He dreams that his genitalia has turned into this growing vine that “enthralls” or enslaves Lucia. It…show more content… Lucia is the female in the poems name, Lucia means light. Plants cannot live without light, Lucia to him, is essential to the life of his “vine”. The speaker is very obviously having a sex dream and this dream is a fantasy in which he acts out his inner most desire. However, not only is this a sex fantasy, but a rape fantasy.
Presumably the speaker of this poem is Robert Herrick himself. He uses word such as, “me” and “I”, indicating that he is the one experiencing the action in the poem. Robert Herrick’s Id has taken over his dreams and his subconscious, in his subconscious mind he is experiencing rape fantasy. “The Id is dedicated solely to the gratification of prohibited desire of all kinds-desire for power, for sex, for amusement, for food-without an eye to consequences” (Tyson). His Id is yearning for not only sex but power. Taking power over “Lucia” and committing a sexual act. His Id is seen working on overdrive in this poem, this is most seen in the