Riffatere’s Semiotic on Simon Armitage’s Out of the Blue (2014) Poem

Abstract

This research aims to find out the explicit meaning of the poem Out of The Blue, which is analyzed using Riffaterre's Semiotic theory. According to Riffaterre, the meaning of poetry is divided into four stages. First, indirectness of expression in the form of changing meaning in the form of metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, deviation of meaning in the form of ambiguity, contradiction and nonsense, to the creation of meaning in the form of rhyme, symmetry and homology. Second, heuristic reading to find linguistic meaning. Hermeneutic reading to clarify the meaning of poetry. Then find matrices, models and variants to find keywords contained in the poetry. Finally, a hypnogram to find out the background to the creation of the poem Out of The Blue The results of this research show that the poem Out of The Blue describes the suffering of New Yorkers in the form of a struggle to survive when terrorists attack, which is implied through certain verses. The terrorist attacks in America caused great traumatic feelings, including the loss of loved ones, deep sadness, depression, hopelessness, and even material and immaterial losses.

Keywords

• semiotics
• riffatere
• hypogram
• indirect expression