Lola Ridge was a poet and champion of the working class. Born by Rose Emily and Joseph Henry on December 12, 1873, in Dublin, Ireland. When Lola was twenty-one she married Peter Webster. Peter was a gold mine manager. Lola's marriage failed so she moved to Sydney, New South Wales. She enrolled in Trinity College and studied painting and writing. Around this time, she also started writing short stories and poems. She moved to New York and wrote her first long poem The Ghetto. She got major recognition and got published in The New Republic. .
This poem gave Ridge many opportunities she had never ben exposed to before. She became involved with several magazines and was given the position of editor in Broom magazine from 1922-1923. Lola Ridge published a total of 61 poems. One of her least famous poems was The Insane. No one really knew what drove Lola to write such a dark poem, because she was never placed in an asylum. In addition, she was never labeled as a mentally ill person either. Lola Ridge's poem The Insane has three major elements; setting, imagery, and tone. These three aspects make the poem work efficiently. In addition setting, tone, and imagery provide the support you need to fully understand the poem.
Setting takes a major role in The Insane poem as well as the other points. This setting brings meaning to the poem. In other words, the setting is where the poem takes place. With out a setting a reader would not fully understand the tone nor theme the poem is partaking. In addition, readers would not be able to bring an actual imagine to their heads; making it harder for them to understand the reading. The poem The Insane takes place in the dark and horrifying walls of a creepy asylum. Asylums are hospitals where people with extreme mental illnesses are placed. Once someone is taken in to an asylum there is no going back from there. Although, an asylum is nothing more then a jail for the insane, it brings more of a spine-chilling vibe to the poem.
