What happens in the story? Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit is a short story written in 1955.
What happens in the story? Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit is a short story written in 1955. It was published in the collection Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and other prose writings (1978). If you have not yet read the story, then do so before you read this summary! In a very simple way the title is well chosen - for the first part of the story is about Superman and the second about the snowsuit. But this also shows that the story begins with pleasant fantasy and ends in unpleasant reality. And there is no Superman to rescue the narrator - only Uncle Frank to help her accept what has happened. The story tells how the narrator (whose name never appears) plays games in which she makes up adventures for Superman. Later she is invited to the birthday party of a wealthy spoilt child, Paula Brown. Paula is proud of her birthday present, a blue snowsuit from Sweden. Some time later, Paula is playing tag in the snow when another child pushes her and she falls into an oil slick, which ruins her snowsuit. Paula blames the narrator and the other children also join in the accusation. Although her Uncle Frank believes her, the narrator has no happy ending to her story - everyone is convinced that she is to blame for the damage to the snowsuit. The themes of this story This is a story in which ideas are very important - perhaps more than the characters. Scapegoats
How do Hughes and Hardy both use memory in their poems?
How do Hughes and Hardy both use memory in their poems? Ted Hughes and Thomas Hardy were both poets who lived and wrote in the 20th century. Their work has been highly praised throughout the world. This essay is about the two different poets and how their lives affected them and their work. During the essay, I will refer to different types of memory. The poet's' memory, which is the poets' own memory of an occasion or a particular thing. The readers' memory, which is the knowledge a reader might have, so the poet is reaching out to the reader, making them see what they are talking about. The other is folk memory, also known as myths. This is using myths to accentuate a point, such as Grimm fairytales. Also, the person that the poet is directing his poem to, he may use their memory as well. These are the poems I will write about; "Fullbright Scholars" by Ted Hughes "St. Botolph's" by Hughes "Drawing" by Hughes "Epiphany" by Hughes "Dreamers" by Hughes "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath "The Going" by Thomas Hardy "The Voice" by Hardy "At Castle Boterel" by Hardy "Fullbright Scholars" This poem was based on the summer of 1955. The "Fullbright Scholars" were American students who had won scholarships to come to England and study at various universities. Sylvia Plath was among them. Ted Hughes remembers walking down a road and noticing a picture of the Fullbright Scholars.
The three poems I have chosen to compare are 'A Parental Ode To My Son Aged Three years and Five Months', 'Catrin' and 'For Heidi With Blue Hair'.
'That Old Rope' The three poems I have chosen to compare are 'A Parental Ode To My Son Aged Three years and Five Months', 'Catrin' and 'For Heidi With Blue Hair'. 'A Parental Ode...' is a poem, which has been written about a son through his father's eyes. It is a poem emphasizing the beauty and virtues of his son, talking as if he is a creature of fantasy; though in reality the father's son is a mischievous child, getting into trouble, which is distracting the father from writing his poem. 'Catrin' is written in the same format as 'A Parental Ode...' but in this poem it is the mother viewing her child (which in this case is Catrin). This poem is a lot more serious and down to earth. It talks about their relationship and how they have grown together whereas 'A Parental Ode...' is about the troubles that the father's child gets up to and is more bubbly and amusing. 'For Heidi With Blue Hair' shares some characteristics as 'Catrin' in the sense that it is the same poem. This poem is written about a girl who has dyed her hair blue, basically as it says in the title. It tries to be amusing by using irony so it does have some similarity to 'A Parental Ode...' in a humorous sense but 'A Parental Ode's...' humour is more direct. 'A Parental Ode...' is a poem by a father idolizing his son. It is written in 'real-time' - that the father is describing his son as he is writing the
A Trapped Life: The Autobiographical Elements of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
A Trapped Life: The Autobiographical Elements of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar by Kristel Trolenberg Ms. O'Toole - A Block American Literature Trolenberg 1 People go through a vast range of events as they travel through life and face various obstacles. These obstacles differ from person to person and can sometimes seem impossible to surmount. Society is one of the prevailing sources of these obstacles and it occasionally can put overwhelming pressures on a person's soul and can be detrimental to the body leading to suicidal deaths. Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar describes the effect of these pressures on the body and soul. As Stevenson states: "...its [The Bell Jar's] theme is her own traumatic breakdown and suicide attempt at 21." Plath's life was filled with many societal pressures that led her to depression. However, "Self-consciousness and anxiety about status and money during adolescence contributed to the profound insecurity Plath concealed all her life beneath a façade of brassy energy and brilliant achievement" (Stevenson). Ronald DeFeo believes her depth into human emotions and her innovative style attracts readers and that "we also read them [Plath's work] because we wish to share the poet's grief" (DeFeo 624). Many artists pull from their own life experiences to create their works, and many people believe that you can not write about life unless you
Discuss the presentation of death within Plath's poetry, commenting upon how your view compares with other critical viewpoints that you have read.
Discuss the presentation of death within Plath's poetry, commenting upon how your view compares with other critical viewpoints that you have read. Death is a major theme in the poetry of Sylvia Plath because of her experiences of it in life. Her father died when she was young and she had a miscarriage in between the births of her two children. She was a manic-depressive for most of her life and attempted suicide twice before she succeeded in 1963. Sylvia Plath posthumously became famous when her poetry collection Ariel was published in 1965. Her poetry has always been controversial and her poems with the theme of death are no exception. In my essay I will talk about the different presentations of death within Plath's poetry, commenting on her use of language, technique, structure and style to enforce her points. I will compare my viewpoint to those of Janice Markey, written in 1993, and David Holbrook, written in 1976. I have chosen these two critics because of the difference in gender and in the date the critique was written. Perhaps because of this, the two views expressed starkly contrast one another. Death is presented throughout Plath's poetry in one of three ways. Firstly, it is presented negatively representing sterility; secondly it is shown positively because it is creative and leads to rebirth. Finally, death is portrayed positively because it offers an escape
'Disaster in the Alps'- To compare the way three news publications, The Times, The Mirror and Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine, reported the same incident.
Assignment Title: 'Disaster in the Alps'- To compare the way three news publications, The Times, The Mirror and Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine, reported the same incident. In my essay, I shall compare the way in which three news publications, The Mirror, an example of the popular press, The Times, an example of the quality press and Newsweek, an American publication reported the same incident. Using these three reports, I shall compare the variations and similarities in the amount of factual information given, the interviews used, the language employed and finally, the layout and presentation of the various articles. On the 3rd of February 1998, a U.S. military jet sliced the wire of a cable car in the Italian ski resort in the Dolomites in Cavalese. This resulted in the untimely death of 20 tourists and, as suggested by Newsweek, led to increasing doubt over America's reputation and conduct, as well as queries over the regulations of low flying. The primary differences are that the two British publications, The Mirror and The Times, contained articles that were published one day after the disaster, on the 4th February 1998, whereas in Newsweek, the article was published 13 days, almost two weeks later. This was because the purpose of the article in Newsweek differed to that of The Mirror and The Times. The Times and The Mirror contrast in style and this is
How is Sylvia Plath's life reflected in the poems
How is Sylvia Plath's life reflected in the poems "Daddy", "Morning Song", and "Lady Lazarus"? Sylvia Plath has had an "exciting" life, if I can use this word. Her father died from an undiagnosed diabetes when she was eight. At the same time, a short couplet that she wrote was published in the Boston Sunday Herald. Later, she won scholarships to study in Smith, Harvard, and finally Cambridge. There, Plath married Ted Hughes, who was a good poet, too. What amazes me in her life is that she had attempted suicide three times, once every ten years. In 1963, she succeeded in killing herself as she gassed herself to death. In an outsider point of view I always wonder how a woman with so much going for her would want to end her life: though her husband's infidelity, she was nevertheless successful--her poems appeared in various prestigious newspapers and magazines, and she was even invited to teach English in Smith College. Plath's death has been subject to unending analysis and interpretation, framed by the kind of inquiry that usually guides classroom literary discussions. What was Plath's intention? What did her suicide mean? What did it reveal about her family, her society, her time, her sex, herself? Two years after her death, "Ariel" was published. This small book includes Plath's poems written not long ago before her death. She wrote about the crucial issues of her life, but
Compare the ways in which Plath uses imagery and description in Mirror and Blackberrying, and Heaney in Churning Day and Blackberry-Picking
Compare the ways in which Plath uses imagery and description in Mirror and Blackberrying, and Heaney in Churning Day and Blackberry-Picking. Some of the most distinguished poetry to come out of this century has come from the works of Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath. In this essay I shall compare these two poets by studying two poems written by each of them and analysing the different ways upon which they use imagery. The two poems by Plath I shall study are Mirror and Blackberrying and the two by Heaney are entitled Blackberry-Picking and Churning Day. All four of these poems contain strong and powerful uses of imagery by both poets and this is why they have been chosen for this essay. Mirror is a very riddled poem full of double meanings in the imagery description. She begins by introducing the mirror, but not as an object but a being with its own feelings and mind. "I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions." She then goes on to emphasise this image in line three when she mixes the pronouns, now talking about the mirror as the objective "Just as it is unmisted by love or dislike." but then in the next line returning to the first person perspective. This muddling of the pronouns injects the concept that she is the mirror or at least she says, "it is part of my heart". . The third line also introduces the first double meaning to the poem, for where a mirror can be
A response to 'Daddy' and 'Digging'.
A response to 'Daddy' and 'Digging' by Michael Peel Many of us are inexplicably linked to our own fathers: emotionally tied in strange ways. 'Daddy' and 'Digging' account for the relationships between father and daughter, and father and son, but do so with impulsive desire, and longing understanding for something that may never be understood. A mysterious love attracts both Plath and Heaney to their own fathers, something that they both understand very well, in part, but which also mystifies them. For Plath, this manifests into an almost deranged, turbulent deluge of confused emotions that contradict her more open feelings of hate of her father. Heaney's contemplative mood reaches out to delve into a previously clouded attraction to the cold, physical robustness of his father that he feels he lacks with his well-to-do world of pen and paper. There is a marvellously rich sense of admiration for 'real work' in the field by hard-working men prepared to get their hands dirty and sweat in the sun. There is almost shame, in Heaney's poem for his own 'trade', as he remembers looking down upon his father from a high window, in a quite beautiful moment. There are obvious parallels. Both poems dig at certain preoccupations. Plath attempts to deal with newly surfacing emotions that oscillate between love and hate in the form of the scattered images of memory and fantasy. She
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.
"I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles, threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three ... nineteen poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth."(Plath 123) This quote sums up the entire novel, The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Esther, the main character, is afraid of the future and what independence might bring. She is a girl of nineteen just starting out in the world. Esther encounters trouble with herself because she has no idea where she wants to go or who she wants to be. During her short stay in New York, her boss asks her what she wants to be. Esther, once confident, replies now that she is unknowing. The major conflict through out the entire novel is Esther trying to find herself. This theme is not fictional however; the author's inspiration for this story was her own life. During her six-year marriage to the English poet Ted Hughes, she was forced to move to England and leave the familiarity of America. This caused Sylvia to "plunge into a horrific psychic abyss" (www.allsands.com). Much like Esther, Sylvia was a Fullbright scholar at the college of Cambridge. Sylvia met her husband there and shortly after they moved to London. During the period of time where she met her husband and her death, Sylvia struggled with the same issues the main