The imagery in this poem is relating to the human body, like broken ribs and punctured lungs; and the mechanics of familiar objects. Also the poet is trying to point out that war created an unhappy life.…
A short story and poem, no matter how structurally different, are two literary pieces where a rich story is embedded. Readers are drawn towards these scripts by means of rhythm (poem), characterization, or a fictional setting in their respective narratives. However, the mere script would not make it entertaining enough to hold the reader’s attention. It would depend on the imagination of the readers as they are reading the story as to what they take from it. Every reader has their own way of visualizing the descriptions and symbolism used by the author. It is through imagination that the readers are able to interpret what the author is trying to depict within the symbolism and other descriptive languages. The beauty of stories and poems is that they are generated and created through the readers own imagination which consequently allows each individual reader to build their own personal connection with the literary piece. The two literary pieces “The Road Not Taken” (poem) and the short story “A Worn Path” are different in terms of actual writing styles, however they both share the same theme which is every person’s journey is greatly governed by their decisions and no matter how many paths there may be, it is still the choices that the person makes that determine the ending of his or her journey. Each one conveys a theme of life journeys and the challenges and struggles that go along with those journeys. In “The Road Not Taken” it is the journey one must make while trying to choose the right path in life. One path seemingly offers a more familiar road and perhaps the easier of the two. The other path is clearly been less traveled upon, yet yearns to be. In “A Worn Path” the journey that one woman takes on in order to care for her sick grandchild is unfolded. It is…
Within the poem, the poet successfully illustrates the way that the sailors are being carried by the sea by using alliteration, shown by how the soldiers “wander in the waters far under,” (3) the ‘w” sound and assonance emphasizing the bodies being caressed and swaying without control in the ocean. It also portrays the dead soldiers to be…
Poetry Response 3 In “The Death of the ball Turret Gunner”, Randall Jarrell briefly describes a young man’s journey from the womb of his mother to the metaphorical womb of the ball turret that he dies in. The main message of the poems that war is a cold and horrible thing that makes waste of human life. The poem is written directly after World War two and illustrates its message through the use of an extended metaphor.…
Moreover, the utilisation of metaphors has enhanced the poet’s idea of endless parental love. For instance, the quote “… now you are suspended between earth and sky” (Stanza 1) declares the true love the persona has for his daughter. By…
The use of dramatic monologue allows Armitage to explore the thoughts and feelings of a victim of conflict. This extract comes from a much longer poem called ‘Out of the Blue’, commissioned by Channel 5 for the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the Twin Towers in 2001. The powerful TV images of the planes flying into the buildings, the subsequent fires and the collapse of the Towers captured the events, as they happened, for a stunned and horrified worldwide audience. Nearly 3000 people died in the attack, 67 of which were British. The title describes the perfectly blue skies of September 11th 2001, and the absolute suddenness and surprise of the attack. There is a sense that even in those skies, where nothing could be hidden, danger is lurking. In Stanza 1 there are direct quotes relating to the disaster. ‘You have picked me out’ this directly addresses the TV viewer / partner /reader, identifying the speaker in a specific context in relation to the video images, and establishing a particular relationship between speaker / victim and passive, powerless, horror-struck watcher. ‘a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning’. The use of ‘white’ is suggestive of innocence, peace or surrender. In Stanza 2 the speaker is introduced as very active(‘waving, waving’), but also with a sense of vulnerability (‘Small in the clouds’) and of his own plight and doom (‘a soul worth saving’) In Stanza 3 ‘So when will you come?’ This puts the reader put on the spot. ‘Do you think you are watching, watching / a man shaking crumbs / or pegging out washing?’ This invites us to consider our own response, to move beyond overwhelming and enthralling images and acknowledge the victims. In Stanza 4 ‘trying and trying’ the use of ‘and’ breaks pattern of poem and suggests determination. It considers the psychological impact of the situation, the burning building, on the…
Repetition is a dominant technique that is used in the first half of the poem to accentuate the ongoing nature of bringing the body’s home. The repeated use of the pronoun “they’re” implies an impersonal ceaseless connection between the bodies and their handlers. In addition, it indicates an anonymous mass, thus accentuating the sheer number of deceased bodies. Dawe uses the metaphor ‘chow mien’ to indicate the messy disarray in Vietnam, the fallen trees represent the noodles whereas, the deceased bodies symbolise the meat. The vicious characteristics of war can also be determined by the personified simile “whining like hounds”. This allows the reader to feel the reverberating, hostile sound that is comparable to a hound dog. The aftermath affect of war can be recognised through the metaphors, “the spider swings in his bitter geometry” and “telegrams tremble from a wintering tree”. This specifically emphasises the arbitrary pain that affects the people who receive the telegrams. By personifying the telegram and describing it as ‘trembling’, it allows the reader to interpret the significance of the news the deliverer is bearing. By contrasting telegrams to the number of falling leaves from a ‘wintering tree’, it indicates the colossal number of unfortunate…
The imagery of this poem surrounds a train and can represent the physical aspect towards the new world. It starts off straight away with the lines “It was sad to hear, the train’s whistle this morning” straight away using the feature of onomatopoeia, giving the train a more life-like attribute with the use of ‘whistle’ but also setting the tone of the poem towards a more negative tone using the word “sad”. The stanza continues to portray a sense of loss, sadness and hardship as they await the train with the line “All night it had rained” and has also used the lines “But we ate it all, the silence, the cold and the benevolence of empty streets” to symbolize the environment around them with the mood of the travelers, as the persona combines it with the oppressiveness of the migrants. All of this set the emotion of the poem and symbolizes all the experiences that the migrants go through. This helps portray how the train symbolized the next part of their journey and how at times how depressing their journey can be how the atmosphere around them is mostly gloomy and depressing.…
Poetry comes in many forms such as a sonnet, ode, dramatic monologue, etc. and each form and structure can change or enhance the meaning of the text. For example, through the construction of the free verse poem 'Digging ', written in 1966 in Ireland as the rural economy started to change, the reader is shown the conflicts that arise when the expectations of a father, who represents a generation of rural workers, clashes with the ambitions of an individual. In the poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth ', written post-WWI, we see the sonnet form used to convey and criticize the events seen during and after a war (particularly with the inadequacy of the responding religious ceremonies) and its repercussions on those affected by it. Both poems achieve a very different effect and convey a completely new message as a result of the way they have been constructed.…
The tone of “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976” is dark and painful. Mayes wants the readers to not only feel the way the speaker felt when entering the hospital, but also how the patients in the hospital suffered. He uses literary tropes to make reader’s emotions react to the tone of the poem. A metaphor is a literary trope often used in poetry to make a comparison between two objects to give the audience a deeper sense of what he is comparing; his metaphors compare non-related objects or feelings that have a similar quality. He uses two very different metaphors to describe the pain the patients are feeling. “Pain is a steady/fall from a high place, one with/no view, no vision outside/itself.”…
Whether we know it or not, we make use of metaphors and the many ways in which they help us make sense of the world. A metaphor is defined as a figure of speech that identifies an object or an idea that is similar to an unrelated thing. The use of metaphors and the language that it portrays helps to create new insight and evidence of the universe. Metaphors not only help classify the culture and diverseness of the natural world, and help interpret the scientific world, but help us set our outlooks on society; however, some may argue metaphors are an impractical use of our language that only complicate things that can instead be stated clearer.…
I would be a car; a Chevrolet to be more specific. Chevrolet is the most common car here in Ecuador, so at first I would be one of those cars.…
He uses similes to portray the negative affect war had on this soldier’s life and how his life was wasted “like bright oil down a gutter.” Horn also uses a clever play on words when he conveys how the soldier was a “puny chap” but through war “he’s broadened out.” The soldier broadened out not in terms of muscles or character but because he died in the field of combat and was laying there long enough for his body to swell. The theme which is prominent throughout the entire poem is that of death. The poet arouses different emotions in the reader which include anguish and…
A poem is a form of literature that has been around in the world for a long time. Poems can bring people together, provide a way to let people express themselves, as well as tell stories before written documentation was invented. To express themselves better the poet can use figurative language to improve how the poem effects the reader. By using figurative language, the poet can further extend his or her emotions and feelings to the reader. By extending the poet’s emotion, a poem can reach the heart of the reader and give him or her a closer tie to the subject matter that the poet is trying to discuss. A. E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” uses figurative language to further convey the poems theme of the death of an athlete who died…
A metaphor is where you show how two unrelated things are similar. For example by saying "Love is a roller-coaster.” A key aspect of a metaphor is use a specific transference of a word into another context. The human mind creates comparisons between different things. The best writers use metaphors. Like poetry, a metaphor will express a thousand different meanings all at once, allowing the writer to convey much more content than they could do otherwise. More than playing simple word games, the use of metaphors in your writing can elevate your stories to a place next to the greatest authors in the world.…