The endless loop of life, an old Chinese concept: order in chaos, chaos in order. The craziness of a circus balanced by the carefully choreographed acts never going wrong, never clashing and running into another. John Leroy Maxwell conveys the theme of a careful balance between the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of life with the metaphor of life being a circus. The circus being a perfectly choreographed performance that amidst the chaos fits perfectly together while one mistake may tilt everything over the edge.
Life is crazy and fragile at the same time. You can’t estimate what will happen next and you can’t change what will happen easily. For example, the author said that life is like a tight rope. You must be careful or you can ruin the whole thing, or even lose your life. The author wants to tell us that life is unexpected so you should be really careful. By giving people the common analogy of a tightrope, readers can get the idea of what the author is communicating. The author also uses tight rope walkers as a symbol for us all being on the fence balancing between good and evil. The balance talked about is put as “juggling your thoughts, trying hard to maintain a rhythmic toss up of priorities”. This is how Maxwell used the analogy of a tightrope to explain the spiritual aspects of the theme.
The circus also talks about that challenge to keep the scales balanced with Maxwell using the line “Trying to keep a balance between what is good and what is evil” and later providing emphasis at the very end of the poem through the lines “Spinning and winning every challenge/you face, in the Circus of life”. The author does this to explain and communicate the delicate part of his theme about how careful the balance is but how every challenge trying to tip the scales can be overcome.
Through his continuous usage of metaphors all intertwined and related to varying acts in a circus, Maxwell communicates his theme of how careful the balance between different aspects of really is. By using a lighthearted center for fun, John Leroy Maxwell put a deeper message into his literary works in a context relevant to average people.
Maxwell, John Leroy. “The Circus.” PoemHunter.com, 26 Aug. 2010, www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-circus-10/.