Preview

Victim Of Love In Anne Carson's 'On Walking Backwards'

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1636 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Victim Of Love In Anne Carson's 'On Walking Backwards'
Aiwen Zhang
Professor Griffin
Fall 2013
September 27, 2013
Unit 1 Assignment Final Draft Victim of Love The writer of Short Talks (1992), Anne Carson, is a Canadian poet, an essayist and a literary critic. She is erudite and innovative, having various fields of knowledge and writing with facetious languages and meaningful thought. Anne Carson would like to leave open mind for her readers as she said: ”I don’t know that we really think any thoughts. That’s where the mind moves, that’s what’s new.”(264) Readers are given complete freedom to understand what they read and move the minds to different directions. The piece “On Walking Backwards” of the short talks catches my
…show more content…
This disagreement could be raised because there is a big question: although Carson uses the discouraging word “victim”, how Carson really defines the name- “victim of love” she gives. If we try digging the further sentiment covered by her language, we can found she sort of agrees with the choice that people choose to love and sacrifice for their love in obscurity because she says: ”the dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us”. Walking backward represents no improvement even going to worse situation. However, in her voice, she insists that they just do walk behind us, which can be seen as one kind of guard. Someone is willing to die for our love and just walk behind us to guard us. Carson admires these people’s braveness and great contributions. From history to nowadays society, from drama to novel, there are plenty of famous and moved example of dying for love. For example, Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy is written by William Shakespeare. It talks about two young people love each other deeply but they cannot be lovers and live together because of their feuding families. Ultimately, for the pain they suffer from not allowed to love each other, they choose to die. Romeo drinks the poison because he believes Juliet has been dead. Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger after she finds Romeo dead. Up to now, it is still one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays although the society background and people’s attitude have changed a lot. Love is a forever topic. People praise Romeo and Juliet’s royalty and steadfastness for love although this is a tragedy and actually their death is unnecessary and evitable. From the reflection of this kind of love story, most people still accept the idea that it’s reasonable for people to die for love and become

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    English Essay

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The audience gains a greater understanding and appreciation of the consequences and societal issues presented through the author’s texts of changing perspectives. This greater understanding is represented by a wide range of language techniques showing the quality of a change of perspective in life. In the short story ‘Forgotten Jelly’ by Megan Jacobson, it demonstrates how an individual understands the consequences and issues while time progresses, which in turn leads to a change of perspective. Likewise, in the poem ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost, we observe how, as the characters develop, they understand and gradually learn more about the perspective of others and eventually leading to a change of their previous views.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We all have read a book at some point in our lifetime. Some books we loved and even reread many times, and others - well let’s just say did not even finish. Have you ever wonder why it is that a certain book caught your attention? Are you curious why you enjoyed the book so much? Have you ever thought why the author the wrote the book or why the book was organized and developed the way it was? In the book, Wild, the author Cheryl Strayed made very interesting rhetorical appeals that both hurt and benefit her effectiveness to relate with the reader. The author very carefully and cautiously chose what and where certain parts go or even what word is the best. Authors use rhetorical choices to effectively connect with their intended audience. In this essay, I will demonstrate Strayed’s intended audience, situation, claim, purpose, and her the rhetorical appeals she made in order to demonstrate what encourage her reader to finish this book in one sitting or throw this book away.…

    • 2110 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    It was evident that Anne Frank was a young girl who was in hiding due to war and hoping to make it out.…

    • 83 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Coll 148 Outline

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. Kelly has been apart of the New York…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the tragedy play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Two young lovers lose their lives. Without a doubt Romeo’s friend, Friar Lawrence is partly responsible for this sad outcome, as is the character Nurse. However, it is ultimately Romeo and Juliet themselves who take their own lives and therefore they must be held much more responsible than any other character.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is without doubt one of the most well-known love story. Throughout the five acts of the play, one tragedy follows another, with the famous suicide of Romeo and Juliet as a tragic conclusion. Throughout the play, it may seem that Romeo caused these events to unfold, however it is unjust to say that he bears all responsibility for the tragedy. The decisions, actions and circumstances that other characters made and faced have also contributed to the tragic outcome. Nevertheless, it is also in the hands of fate that destined the immature deaths of Romeo and Juliet…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tragedy is common in the play Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare. The lore of the story is that two lovers named Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are madly falling in love with each other, and will do anything for that love to last forever. So they ask the father from a local church named Friar Lawrence to help advise them on what they should do next. All was going well until the Friar mess up, causing Romeo to commit suicide and Juliet to committed hara kiri. One of Shakespeare’s major motifs in the play is that someone who is being loyal at its extreme can really harm and bring tragedy to the person. By suggesting that Friar Lawrence is responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths as well as characterizing the Friar as both a…

    • 921 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “A Backwards Journey,” written by acclaimed Canadian poet P. K. Page, is a seemingly simple poem, which holds a profound meaning. The emphasis put on the Dutch Cleanser by examining every tiny detail, represents how observing something closely can cause one to get lost in their own thoughts. This technique of an image containing a smaller image infinitely is known as mise en abyme.…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ann Carson

    • 1334 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Who is Ann Carson? Why do I have to read this anyway? I really didn’t see the point in it. For one thing, the writer lost me after the introduction. I was then asked to find the meaning in what Ann Carson was trying to say, to me. It was very hard reading Short Talks. Confusion twists and turns. It was like going through the “fun house at a carnival.” Just imagine. Before you go any further there’s a “big turning barrel” (her introduction) that already had me “slipping and sliding” and falling. I eventually crawled out of it. Then I climbed up the “rickety stairs made out of chains” (the next Short Talk). There 's the big goofy mirror” that’s all distorted and everything. Reading Short Talks again and again and again, seemed like an exercise in futility. Or, was it… really? One thing was certain. I seriously had a headache from the first readings.…

    • 1334 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Love can be painful and end in death but their will always be someone guilty such as Romeo, Juliet, and Nurse in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Romeo is at fault for not thinking of his consequences, Juliet is at fault for being reckless and Nurse is at fault for not being…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout life there will be many instances where a persons perspective is forced to change, whether it be brought about by maturity of time, the people we meet or the experiences in our life- good or bad. This is evident in Hannah Roberts’ story ‘Sky High’ which explores the transition from the innocence and imagination of childhood to an adult with less freedom and more responsibility and Eleanor Farjeon’s poem ‘It was long ago’, which captures an incident that occurred when the protagonist was around three years old. Roberts employs a range of language devices including 1st person narrative, colloquial language, metaphors, similes, hyperbole, low modality language and accumulation of imagery to illuminate this concept while Farjeon relies on the forms of poetry such as enjambment, onomatopoeia and the structure of the rhythm scheme to elucidate her protagonist’s change in perspective.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Love In Romeo And Juliet

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “Love is a disease.” This line is well known but takes a different perspective in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. These two teenagers take their lives because they rather be dead than live another day without one another. This creates a bond to the fact that illnesses start to cause people to lose hope in finding a solution and everything starts to become unpredictable. Through personification, weaknesses, and perseverance, this play takes a deep turn and mysteriously relates to diseases in a creative and unique…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    • 1465 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Anne recant memories as a developing writer and does so with humor discussing the lessons she learned and the processes with which she learned these lessons. She uses her humor to show that all writers write shitty first drafts. She writes very informally, as though she…

    • 1465 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    They do not heed any advice given by others; they ignore the warning against the threats and vulnerabilities of passion (Cole 12). Juliet choses death over a life without Romeo. Her lover makes the decision to not take charge of his own destiny. Their impetuous decisions result in the grim and final consequence of…

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women in Atienct Greek litetrue are describe in "Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire" by Anne Carson, as being wet, polluted, leaky and cold. This is used to describe the fact that many Greek writers such as Aristotle and Hesiod believed women to be more irrational than man, and unbounded to anything as men are, meaning women were more prone to sexual desires, jealousy, and emotions. Carson ties interesting points of his argument to certain Greeks myths, and the cultural norms these myths creates. The first being the myth of Pandora, the first women created by the gods for revenge, being the down fall of man. He ties this back to the use of the word polluted, pollution or other variations of the word used when describing women. Polluted is used to describe a women’s touch upon man will pollute him.The other was the myth of Zeus putting a veil on chaos…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays