Download Wikipedia (Be very careful! – this is basically paraphrased from www

Wikipedia (Be very careful! – this is basically paraphrased from
www.greekmythology.com):
Clotho (/ˈkloʊθoʊ/; Greek: Κλωθώ) is the youngest of the Three Fates
or Moirai – including her sisters Lachesis and Atropos, in ancient Greek
mythology. Her Roman equivalent is Nona. Clotho was responsible for
spinning the thread of human life. She also made major decisions, such
as when a person was born, thus in effect controlling people's lives.
This power enabled her not only to choose who was born, but also to
decide when gods or mortals were to be saved or put to death. For
example, when Pelops was killed and boiled by his father, it was Clotho
who brought him back to life.
As one of the three fates her contribution to mythology was immense. Clotho, along with her
sisters and Hermes, was given credit for creating the alphabet for their people. Even though Clotho
and her sisters were real goddesses, their representation of fate is more focused upon in Greek
mythology. Thread represented human life and her decisions represented the fate of all men in
society.
From www.pantheon.org:
Clotho, a goddess from Greek mythology, is the youngest of the three Fates, but one of the oldest
goddesses in Greek mythology. She is a daughter of Zeus and Themis. Each fate has a certain job,
whether it be measuring thread, spinning it on a spindle, or cutting the thread at the right length.
Clotho is the spinner, and she spins the thread of human life with her distaff. The length of the
string will determine how long a certain person's life will be. She is also known to be the daughter
of Night, to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny. No one knows for sure how
much power Clotho and her sisters have, however; they often disobey the ruler, Zeus, and other
gods. For some reason, the gods seem to obey them, whether because the fates do possess
greater power, or as some sources suggest, their existence is part of the order of the Universe,
and this the gods cannot disturb.
A random blogger (not necessarily an authority – at all – just one perspective):
Elizabeth Bishop's "House Guest" is a brilliant poem summarizing how exhausting life can be if
we allow others to predict our fate. In the fifth line of the eighth stanza, the speaker is finally
allowed the opportunity to have some sort of understanding of why the seamstress/house guest is
so depressed. The speaker states "Then one day she confides/that she wanted to be a nun/and her
family opposed her." Relationships are very important in this poem. Why did the seamstress/house
guest's family oppose her decision to become a nun? How old is this house guest? How old is the
speaker? How did the seamstress arrive as a house guest of the speaker and his/her family? If I had
to guess, I would speculate that the speaker is speaking from remembrance, and that the house
guest's despair was such a huge part of her personality, that it taught the speaker a life lesson.
Anyhow, age is of small relevance when dealing with missed, life opportunities at the fault of
someone else. In the last stanza, the speaker asks "Can it be that we nourish/one of the Fates in our
bosoms?" This is a very important question for all readers, because it asks us to analyze our own
situations and make sure we aren't being held back because we are allowing what others have
predicted in our fate to stop us from living happy and meaningful lives.
In reference to the form and style of the poem, Bishop does a great job of being descriptive in
setting up the scene for her readers. Punctuation is precise in this poem as well. One of the most
outstanding things Bishop does in this poem is tie in Classical Mythology. In the last stanza the
speaker has a revelation: "Clotho, sewing our lives/with a bony little foot/on a borrowed sewing
machine/and our fates will be like her/and our hems crooked forever?" This last stanza dealing
with Clotho, or the fate who spins the thread of life, is the big what if. What if we are all like the
seamstress in some way? If so, she is a perfect example of why we shouldn't allow ourselves to be
that way.
Another random blogger, aka, why you shouldn’t Google poems for analysis:
Whenever it is that you have house guests at your home during the summer, have you ever had
that one guest who is very odd and mean? Who could careless about what is going on around
them and decides to be a loner? Well this poem by Elizabeth Bishop reminded me of the very
guest who could show up at your house and have a legitimate reason to be a total jerk. I believe
that this collections of poems compared to Geography III is more about the lives of relatives of
the soldiers that are back at home. They tells the feelings of the family members waiting patiently
while Geography III seems to tell more of the life of the people in the war and the things they find
and discover in the foreign lands they travel to.
The seamstress in the poem seems depressed, missing out on life and like something is really
bothering her inside. I believe that she must have a loved one over seas and is thinking that the
worst can happen. I think that she is hopeless and has regrets for that person. She could have
done so much more with her life than wait around. “One day she confides that she wanted to be
a nun and her family opposed her”. Perhaps, it is not too late for her to follow her ‘dream’ of
delivering such service with her Fate. She should not have “hems crooked forever”.