Fatherhood. We start out by Thomass Do not go gentle into that good night, moving to Plaths Daddy, and eventually arriving to Roethkes My papas waltz.
Fatherhood in the eyes of Thomas, Plath, and Roethke A father is the most effective person on one’s psychological condition. Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, and Theodore Roethke tell their own stories about their own “dads”. We start out by Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”, moving to Plath’s “Daddy”, and eventually arriving to Roethke’s “My papa’s waltz”. This piece of writing will focus on the theme of Fatherhood with which the three poets have dealt with in their dramatic monologues. “Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night” is what Dylan names his poem. Thomas- in a firm voice tone- demands people not to surrender themselves to death easily. Well, first of all he commands old men not to die peacefully or just slip away easily from this life. He rather asks them to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” He then starts categorizing me into 4 types: Wise men, Good men, Wild men, and “his dad”! Hence, the poem addresses many types of men; however, he thinks of his father not as the grave, wild, or good, but that he is a category by himself. The fact that he is not concerned whether his father curses him or blesses him before his death or not shows that he is not necessarily concerned with what his father wants to say, but that he wants him to “rage against the dying of the light”. So, the father-son relationship that
Analysis of 'The Windhover' poem by Gerard Hopkins
Please write a 1,500 word essay commenting closely on one of the following two texts. Your Answer should pay detailed attention to the text’s form, content and style. Text 1a: The Windhover "The Windhover" by Gerard Hopkins stands as one of his most influential poems to date. Though Hopkins wrote the poem around the year 1877, it was published in 1918 after his death. Before analysing this poem, it is important to understand the social and cultural backdrop of the time in which it was written, and in particular the poet's reasons for writing it. Hopkins himself stated that the poem “was not based on real incident,” yet it seems apparent that his “Roman Catholic identity in the Anglican culture that he chose to reject” undeniably had a detrimental impact to him, both as an individual, and a writer of the Victorian era. So much so, that family and friends disregarded him while even “university posts and positions in the clergy were closed to him.” As a celibate priest torn between the incompatibility between his literary and religious duties, it is no surprise as to why religion resonates so heavily in Hopkins' poem. It is evident from works of the epoch by poets such as Rossetti and Aguilar that Victorian society was clerical. The critic Bristow J. (2000)[1] holds that indeed there was an "intrinsic connection between poetic and religious concerns," and this
Funeral Rites and Punishment are just two examples out of a great group of Heaneys poems which represent the link between past events and customs, and present ideology. Heaneys main device in creating these two poems is his use of langua
What happens in the past stays in the past? Yes, the events that have occurred in the passed have ended in the past but certainly have a strong influence on the present and the future. The link between past and the present is indestructible as one influences the other. This connection is established in many of Heaney's poems. He ,as an Irish poet, has lived through Ireland's better and worse days; he lived in the peaceful past and has experienced the sombre present. Heaney's life experience allows him to write poetry which portrays the idea of the close connection between the past and present. "Funeral Rites" and "Punishment" are just two examples out of a great group of Heaney's poems which represent the link between past events and customs, and present ideology. Heaney's main device in creating these two poems is his use of language and his diction, simile and personification are also some of the conventions present in the poems which help in portraying the meaning. "Funeral Rites" informs the reader about funeral ceremonies, hence the name Funeral Rites, which represent a process which leads to acceptance of an individual's death. But funeral procession has a further symbolic role in the poem as it also conveys a process of coming to understanding of the present situation in Ireland and the way to overcome the violence and find the path to acceptance and forgiveness. The
The Waste Land opens with a reference to Chaucers Canterbury Tales. In this case, though, April is not the happy month of pilgrimages and storytelling. It is instead the time when the land should be regenerating after a long winter.
The Waste Land opens with a reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In this case, though, April is not the happy month of pilgrimages and storytelling. It is instead the time when the land should be regenerating after a long winter. Regeneration, though, is painful, for it brings back reminders of a more fertile and happier past. In the modern world, winter, the time of forgetfulness and numbness, is indeed preferable. Marie's childhood recollections are also painful: the simple world of cousins, sledding, and coffee in the park has been replaced by a complex set of emotional and political consequences resulting from the war. The topic of memory, particularly when it involves remembering the dead, is of critical importance in The Waste Land. Memory creates a confrontation of the past with the present, a juxtaposition that points out just how badly things have decayed. Marie reads for most of the night: ostracized by politics, she is unable to do much else. To read is also to remember a better past, which could produce a coherent literary culture. The second episode contains a troubled religious proposition. The speaker describes a true wasteland of "stony rubbish"; in it, he says, man can recognize only "[a] heap of broken images." Yet the scene seems to offer salvation: shade and a vision of something new and different. The vision consists only of nothingness-a handful of
The Influence of Nature and Roethkes Father on His Poetry
Dietrich Christina Dietrich Dr. Joanne Gabel Composition and Literature 131 April 13 2011 Essay B The Influence of Nature and Roethke’s Father on His Poetry Theodore Roethke was born among the glorious valleys and streams of Saginaw, Michigan. His parents and his uncle were the owners of a 25 acre greenhouse which is where Roethke spent much of his childhood. These beautiful greenhouses, filled with lively colorful plants are where Roethke and his father spent their bonding time together. At the young age of fifteen, Roethke lost his uncle due to suicide and his father died from cancer only one year after. Feeling abandoned by his father’s death and being completely surrounded by nature as a child would later prove to be the stepping stone and creative vision in which his prize winning poems would be created from. Growing up in Saginaw valley, Roethke referred to the area as a “very fertile flat country that lies at the northern edge of what is now the central industrial area of the United States” (Pagina). As he explored the riverbanks that surrounded his home, he collected ancient arrowheads left behind by Native Americans, all the while dreaming of the stories that each piece held. He also roamed the game sanctuary that the family maintained. Allan Seager mentions in his book that Roethke once stated, "I had several worlds to live in, which I felt were
Tulips (Sylvia Plath)
"Tulips" Electroshock treatment, recovery from a suicide attempt and miscarriage are only a few of the times Sylvia Plath was hospitalized. Plath's doctors diagnosed her with a combination of severe depression, acute insomnia and bipolar disorder (Griffin). The time she spent in the hospital and her mental illness are reflected in her poetry. The poem "Tulips" portrays the psychological impacts the narrator experiences after either a surgical procedure or a sickness. Against the patient's will, family, love, and human empathy cause her to return from a complete loss of self and resignation from the living world. Plath uses personification and vivid imagery to describe the patient's detachment from her identity, her loss of desire to live and psychological instability. In the first five stanzas of the poem the patient is slipping away, giving up her identity and spiraling closer to death. She is lying in a hospital, evident from the mentions of the nurses, the anesthetist and the surgeons. She no longer wants to live, for her the narcotic, near-death state she is in is peaceful, pure and an escape: "how free it is, you have no idea how free-". She compares her head to an eye that will not shut. This "eye" has to "take everything in"; which is metaphorical for the overwhelming effect life has on the patient. She pronounces, "I am sick of baggage", revealing she no longer
A Review of In Memory of W. B. Yeats
A Review of "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" is an elegiac poem. Traditionally, elegiac poems deal with the memory of the death and his after-life. However, W.H. Auden adds another dimension to it. In addition to lauding the poetic after-life of Yeats', he placed his poem in the present. At the time when Auden wrote "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", an impending catastrophe, World War II was waiting Europe. The sense of oppression is present throughout the poem. Each of the three parts of the poem represents a specific stage of the poet's life. The first part illustrates Yeats' death; the second part gives an overview of Yeats' early life and the third part speaks highly of Yeats and discusses the inspiration Auden drew from him. The first part consists of five stanzas. Though the form is not consistent, the content embraces emotions tightly: the first stanza is on the death and coldness, the second on the contrast between life and death, the third on the Yeats' sufferings before death, and fourth on the physical death and spiritual immortality, and the fifth on the Auden's concern about the times. The first stanza impresses readers with "death" and "cold". In the first line, "disappeared" is an euphemism for "died" and at the same time forms alliteration with "dead", "deserted", "disfigured", "dying", "day", "death", "dark" and "day", all of which give
How does Plath convey her alienation and increasing paranoia in the bee poems, focusing on "The Arrival of the Bee Box"?
How does Plath convey her alienation and increasing paranoia in the bee poems, focusing on "The Arrival of the Bee Box"? "The Arrival of the Bee Box", "Stings" and "The Bee Meeting" all convey Plath's increasing paranoia, and alienation through the use of literature terms, structure of the poem and tone of the poem. The time in which she wrote these poems her and her husband Ted Hughes had recently separated leaving her and her two children, in Devon surrounded by the countryside, isolated form family, and friends. The "Bee Box" personifies Plath's afflictions of women, with her voice being fundamentally feministic. Plath herself has suffered as a mother and as a wife that has been confined to the house being her "box" of alienation. Plath however is conscious of her imprisonment and expresses her optimism that this is only a "temporary" phase that will pass she will wins her emancipation from not only her stereotypical role as a wife and mother given to her by Ted Hughes, but society as a whole. This feminist voice is continued in "Stings", as Plath's embodies a "bee" and conveys that although she may have been a drudge before, she will not be one any more. She refuses to submit to the hard working drudge of a society, and believes she is more than that, perhaps even a "queen" as she is independent and resentful towards her adulterous husband Ted Hughes, as he is "the
How is context shown in T.S. Eliot's Preludes
How is context displayed in the T.S. Eliot's Preludes? Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Modernist literary figure, part of a cultural movement which involved innovation and experimentation with art and literature as a reaction against industrialisation, war and the formality and optimism of the Victorian period. Eliot's Preludes was written in England early in his poetic career - sometime around 1911. It encompasses many of the techniques and styles of modernist poetry by concerning the degradation of society, spirit (religion) and quality of life due to the thirst for status and urban expansion caused by the industrial revolution. Eliot's Preludes conveys the mundane and repetitive nature of our lives in the modern, urban world. It uses a variety of poetic techniques including imagery, sound patterning, form of the poem and the use of personae, to render these themes. The poem itself consists of four descriptions of urban life at different times of the day. Within this day the monotony and futility of human existence is highlighted. The first prelude describes the evening - 'evening settles down.' The Prelude depicts a rainy, windswept evening that seems to have that dreary feel of the day's end, especially with the imagery of strewn newspapers as leftover, unwanted rubbish. The monotonous rain beating down works together with the rhymes 'passageways - days', 'wraps - scraps'
Louis MacNeice's Meeting Point
Section A: Practical Criticism No reference to secondary criticism is required; this exercise is designed to test your close reading skills. Pay careful attention to the language of the following POEM and comment, as appropriate, on such technical features as form, syntax, rhythm, tone diction, imagery, voice, point of view and rhyme. How are these features implicated in interpretation? Louis MacNeice's Meeting Point is a lyric poem consisting of eight stanzas, with five lines in each. Its appearance on the page is structured and regular, however, counteracting the poem's idea of time being 'away and somewhere else.' Each stanza's first and last line are the same, almost reaffirming that individual stanza's idea, each one containing a refrain, carrying it's own little segment of the lover's journey. For example, in the first stanza the line 'Time was away and somewhere else', is this stanza's mantra and it is explored through the numbers in the stanza. 'Two glasses and two chairs' and 'two people with one pulse'. These lines convey the idea that for this couple, there is no numbers, time is not present. This idea is explored again in the last stanza, almost bringing the poem full circle if you like, time is an irrelevance when they have each other. The title of the poem 'Meeting Point' offers the reader the idea of a secret rendezvous or solicitous affair. On the