In Osip Mandelstam’s poem numbered “300”, and in Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem “you loved me” both speakers are struggling with a loss of love. For Tsvetaeva’s speaker, the loss stems directly from a love built in a relationship and partner and the sudden feeling of betrayal and loss. For Mandelstam’s speaker however, the loss of love is in that of his friends and family, and not in that of an intimate relationship. They have betrayed his trust, and left him in a life of solitude and loneliness. Both speakers are encountering a powerful loss of something they care about and in their poems they are showing their resiliency and rebuttal towards that loss. This rebuttal comes from a place of isolation and understanding. It is only through recognition…
Briar rose by Jane Yolen explores three distinct narrative voices to allow the reader to explore the events of the holocaust from three different perspectives. Hence, The composer of the novel Briar Rose uses distinctive qualities illustrate the message that through telling stories, and listening to stories, the individual come to a better understanding of themselves, of others and the world.…
At the end of chapter one, The Prison Door, there is a passage which describes a single rose bush next to the prison door. Although the author did give many interpretations of the rosebush’s meaning, there was no definite one. I decided to explore different interpretations.…
Rose’s Story is a book about the struggles one woman faced through most of her adult life, all while trying to remember her past and also while trying to raise a family of her own. The main character of the story, Rose herself, goes through the “system” so many times having to deal with one medical professional after another, social worker after social worker, case manager after case manager. The story however, starts off with Rose painting what her childhood was like: parents putting her into the system, extended stay at Chatwood (a mental hospital for children to be specific) and what life was like for her overall growing up as a kid.…
The last paragraph at the same time also represents the prose as a whole: the life lesson, exploration, and emotion of love. The readers learn that one cannot trust anyone and can only trust oneself, as supported by the sentence “we are utterly open with no one”. Furthermore, the listing of “not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend” emphasizes that not even the closest person can be trusted, and that one can only trust one’s heart. Another life lesson is shown in “when young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always”, meaning that when ones are all young, ones always believe in true love and the live-happily-ever-after stereotype, but in the end ones come to a realization that hearts can easily break in reality, and that true love may just be a fantasy. House metaphor is also presented by the “brick up” in the “you can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant”, and illustrating that even the strongest hearts can break, which is further justified by the run-on sentence using the repeated “and”s. The author then visualized some examples of emotion of love in the end to stimulate, engage, and communicate with the readers that the heart, a well-accepted common metaphor for emotion, reminds the readers of its…
Yolen enlightens and inspires responders through the use of structure, language and other techniques. The novel Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a heart wrenching story of sleeping beauty intertwined with the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust. The structure of the novel is altered in a way to interweave three stories including Gemma's Briar Rose fairy tale, Becca's quest and Josef's story. The use of language techniques explores the idea of the characters as it gives an understanding of their circumstances and the situations they experience. Some of the techniques Yolen uses to enlighten responders is the use of other techniques such as allegory and symbolism which acts as a metaphor in which one story represents another.…
In My Pretty Rose Tree different manifestations of love are shown as individual plants are personified. The repetition of ‘flower’ instead of the word ‘rose’ in the first stanza acts as a symbol to represent love and experiences and because of the use of a general term instead of the specific rose it can be perceived as the flower depicting love that’s being given to another woman. The speaker is presented with a flower ‘as may never bore’ yet returns it in loyalty, to the rose tree, then looks to ‘tend to her by day and by night’ nevertheless the rose ‘turn[s] away with jealousy’ portraying love with the imagery of experience as the expectations of light romance come forth. For his affection he is returned with ‘thorns’ suggesting the speaker may be willing to pay the price for a continued relationship as the thorns represent the protection he may hold over her from other lovers and therefore he is ‘delighted’ and reckons them as a symbol of love. In addition to this the speaker may find he is compelled to be in delight with the rose despite its thorns, as he has rejected the flower and the pain of the thorns may be infinitely preferable to his fear of the unknown, just as Adam and Eve with the fruit of knowledge, the flower takes the place of the fruit which offers experience yet comes with tempting propositions.…
At some point or another, we all lose our innocence. In the story “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, there is an excellent example of this. In the last line of this story, Alice walker states “and the summer was over.” This quote means that the little girl in the story has lost her innocence, or “the summer.”…
This poem reveal the sentiment of the narrator and embodies a reflective moment in her life, where sadness does not consume her heart over the death of her family, however, a patient waiting for the day she will be ready to understand the family…
The narrator provides that Miss Emily is crazy in an obscure way. First the smell in which we can see in page 284, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" Second, when she wanted arsenic in page 286, "I want arsenic." Thirdly, how she never leaves her house in page 288. Lastly, she is crazy because when the townspeople went inside Miss Emily's house they found Homer lying in a bed decaying and found out that Miss Emily was sleeping next it in page 289, "Then we noticed that in the second pillow… leaning forward, that faint… long strand of iron-gray hair." We can infer that the narrators are just telling the story out of their observation from a first person plural point of view. The narrator is however very…
The poem is set in Sydney on busy day that has been disturbed by the weeping of a single man. Repetition is used to enhance the fact that, “No one can stop him,”, as the Narrator describes. It becomes apparent that the reason his crying is not stopped is simply because of the way he cries, not with shame or pity, but with a mature dignity that stops any one from stopping him. The next few stanzas of the poem describe the awe, and even reverence that the observers feel towards this man’s weeping. The narrator describes how the crowd feels, “their minds/longing for tears as children for a rainbow,” describing how their fears of expressing emotion are now realized. This poem provides the insight into emotional expression by describing the feelings that the people feel when they are struck with realization of the loss of emotion in modern…
The poem goes from a dark tone to a light tone. The poet evokes a sad, melancholy mood in the early stanzas of the poem ‘Clouds spout upon her’ ‘Had shivered with pain’ and in the late stanzas of the poem the poet evokes a somewhat prosperous mood ‘Love beyond measure – With a child’s pleasure – All her life’s round.” There is a gentleness tone to the poet’s reflections upon his thoughts of his wife in the poem. The poem has a bittersweet feel to it.…
In the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner establishes depth in characters and scenes by using long, descriptive lists. Faulkner also uses point of view to express his feelings of sympathy for Miss Emily. Faulkner juxtaposes past events with present ones, jumping from one time period to another, to tie the scenes together.…
A Boy's Struggle into Manhood For some people, the idea, or even the chance to be isolated is praised. The feeling of being alone, away from everything else in this world. However, others dread the notion. There is no better place that parallels with isolation more then the Canadian North. This isolation is felt even stronger by a "willowy fifteen-year old" boy who begins his transition into manhood alone. Isolated both physically and emotionally from everything. In the short story, "The Glass Roses" the author, Alden Nowlan provides a setting filled with imagery of a cold, Canadian North winter.…
Dorothy’s depictions of nature as an attachment to her environment serve not only to aid William in his poetry, but also help in giving Dorothy a voice to express emotion toward William. “Dorothy's journal, critics have noted, presents a ‘seeing eye’--not a ‘subjective I’… instead her emotions are reflected in the details of nature as she catalogues her surroundings”. (Angelino) Examples of this are found when William leaves for Yorkshire and the landscape surrounding Grasmere becomes “dull and melancholy” (DW, 392) or when she is…