Clouds Reflection

There were definitely a few aspects of this section that intrigued me.

First, when searching for a painting with clouds by Magritte, I found one with an outline of a bird in the sky filled with clouds above an ocean (pictured below). For me, this picture symbolized a lot of freedom and power. Birds, with the capability of flying, posses great power and freedom since they can travel through the sky with no restriction and they have access to endless paths of opportunity. In this sense, clouds also symbolize freedom because they populate a vast area of nothingness and can travel and move with great flexibility like birds do. I think comparing birds and clouds made for a great metaphor because they both symbolize freedom in the air.

Secondly, I thought it was very interesting why Romantic poets found clouds powerful. They symbolize/signal destruction and death. Through the examples provided, it became clear as to how such fluffy, light, mesmerizing objects can represent such negative things. The smoke clouds after 9/11, hurricane storm clouds, and mushroom clouds from nuclear explosions all represent death and destruction. The drastic differences clouds possess is cool. They can form beautiful objects such as a heart, and foreshadow and represent chaos (pictured below).

Third, I LOVED reading about the power clouds possess. For example, large rain clouds can hold 150,000 tons of water, enough to fill a pond 1 mile long, 300 ft wide, and 5 ft deep. Also, falling hail is sometimes large enough to kill antelope and it has reached the size of grapefruit. There isn’t much explaining to do, the evidence of clouds power is in the previous two sentences. Rain clouds don’t look like they can fill that much,  yet the fact is right there, and I have never seen hail the size of a grape, let alone a grapefruit (pictured below).