W.H. Auden wrote the poem, “Funeral Blues”. Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was born in York, England, and later became and American citizen. Auden was the founder for a generation of English poets, such as C. Day Lewis, and Stephen Spender. Auden’s earlier works were composed of a Marxist outlook with a knowledge of Freudian Psychology. Later works consisted of professing Christianity, and what he considered “increasing conservatism”. In 1946 Auden emigrated and became an American citizen. While in America he composed many verse plays, travel memoirs, and Opera lyrics. His last years of life were spent traveling and collaborating works of influential criticism.
“Funeral Blues”
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Tie crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever good.
“Funeral Blues” is a Song poem, in which it has a certain rhythm, or beat,...
This blues poem discusses an incredibly sensitive topic: the death of Trethewey’s mother, who was murdered by her ex-husband when Trethewey was nineteen. Many of her poetry was inspired by the emotions following this event, and recounting memories made thereafter. “Graveyard Blues” details the funeral for Trethewey’s mother, a somber scene. The flowing words and repetition in the poem allow the reader to move quickly, the three-line stanzas grouping together moments. The poem begins with heavy lament, and the immediate movement of the dead away from the living, “Death stops the body’s work, the soul’s a journeyman [author emphasis]” (Tretheway 8, line 6). Like the epitaph from Wayfaring Stranger, Trethewey indicates that the dead depart the world of the living to some place mysterious, undefined. The living remain, and undertake a different journey, “The road going home was pocked with holes,/ That home-going road’s always full of holes” (Trethewey 8, line 10-11). Trethewey indicates that the mourning is incredibly difficult or “full of holes”, as she leaves the funeral and her mother to return home. ‘Home’ in this poem has become indicative of that which is not Trethewey’s mother, or that which is familiar and comfortable, in vast contrast to the definition of home implied in the
Reconstruction could be considered one of the largest projects ever undertaken. The mess that was the south, left in the ruins of a bloody war, called for drastic measures. The inquisition that begs to be asked is whether or not this venture was a success. Unfortunately the answer isn't as simple as "yes" or "no". Although many promises were broken, the much-debated goals of Reconstruction are still present in the minds of today's leaders as we continue to rebuild our country.
The United States, a nation that has undergone many hard changes, politically, economically, and socially. The success of this great nation has relied on different plans and objectives set out by the leaders that have gone before us. One plan that helped shape our nation was Reconstruction. Though many consider Reconstruction to be a failure, Reconstruction helped pass laws that recognized African Americans as equals, restored the Union, and provided educational opportunities for former slaves. These initiatives are what made Reconstruction a success.
...rld. Throughout the story, the wallpaper becomes an outlet for the narrator to exercise her literary imagination. She soon comes to find that the wallpaper holds a feminine figure, or so she thinks. By using her initial feeling of being watched, the narrator decodes the chaotic pattern and locates the figure of a woman. A woman struggling to break free from the bars in the pattern. As her insanity increases, the narrator completely relates with this woman. She then begins to believe that she, too, is trapped within the wallpaper. When she tears down the wallpaper, she believes that she has finally broken out of the wallpaper. The wallpaper that she believes John has imprisoned her. By tearing it down, the narrator asserts her own identity, which unfortunately by now is confused. As she crawls around the room, she is initiating the first stage of a feminist uprising.
John her insensitive husband and physician has prescribed a “rest cure” treatment for his wife. John rents a summer mansion so his wife can recuperate in solitude, doing nothing active and forbids her to write. The narrator feels that activity and exciting work would help her condition, so she secretly writes in her journal to relieve her mind. Unfortunately, she is confined to bed rest in a large sunlit former nursery, which has an immovable bed, bars over the windows, and walls decorated in hideous yellow torn wallpaper with an eerie chaotic pattern. Jennie, John’s sister is the housekeeper, but her most important job is to keep an eye on her sister-in-law making sure she follows John’s strict daily regimen of doing nothing. Several weeks later, the narrator’s condition worsens and she feels nervous, depressed, fatigued, and lacks energy to write in her secret journal. The narrator’s only stimulation is spending hours studying the perplexing pattern of the wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with the repulsive wallpaper, as the image of the figures creeping around behind the wallpaper becomes clearer each day. Late one night the moonlight reveals the figures of women trapped behind the bars. Each night the women in the wallpaper shake the bars and try to break through, but fail in their attempt. The
She secretly stays awake at night and goes to sleep during the day. Giving the image to John she is resting like he has ordered. This is also a great place of irony the author wrote. The more the narrator obsesses about the wallpaper, the deeper and deeper she falls into insanity. But her husband is happy she is getting plenty of rest during the day. He has no idea how insane his wife is becoming. The narrator has begun to see shadows of women in the pattern of the wallpaper. Women sneaking around trying to escape the wallpaper. The pattern resembles bars of a cage to the narrator. She begins to tear down the wallpaper. As she tears at the paper she see many heads. Heads of women being strangled as they try to escape the pattern. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of women trapped in domestic life, of family and tradition. In the end, the narrator reveals how much sacrifice women and herself have done breaking the chains man have placed on them. In her final speech to her husband, the readers get the sense of how much she has sacrificed. She says, "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" She is free! Free from the constraints of marriage, of society and her own
Caffeine, commonly found in coffee and many other beverages, and containing certain chemicals compounds leading to the constant necessity of fidgeting, jitters, sleepless hours, and health hazards as though being tormented by a hobgoblin with the irresistible sweet aroma and multiple flavors trapping you into a path, not being able to truly quit as desired or consequences attached, but is it the world’s most used legal drug addiction or something enjoyable, you decide? “The delicious chemical in caffeine is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine”(Linn). “Caffeine is made by pressuring cooking beans with CO2 to produce the drug in powder form”(Linn). “In caffeine the consumption breakdown in Coffee is 54%, Tea it’s 43%, Food and misc it’s 3% and used as a common mood-altering drug in the world, most popular way of ingesting is through coffee”(Linn). The issue with drinking coffee is due to the fact that caffeine can cause some troubling effects like insomnia activity in the brain that prevents sleep, constant need to urinate leading to dehydration due to the lack of fluids in the body, and diarrhea causing the food right out because it accelerates the digestion in the stomach. The consumption of too much caffeine can cause damage in human health also causing an overdose leading to death. The impact in society is through how much caffeine Americans consume daily, and the effects it causes in human health and sleep patterns. Throughout the years past caffeine consumption in America has increased jarasicaly, about 90% in some form daily. “On average Americans have been known to consume 280 mg of caffeine per day or 2-3 cups of coffee”(Linn). Strangely enough, caffeine is still contained and found in decaffei...
One thing that has been the same for many years. Has always been society 's intake of caffeine even in the early eighteen hundreds caffeine played its role (Gladwell 235). In the American Revolution mainly remember it with the “symbolic rejection” of the people pouring tea into Boston Harbor (233). Boston Harbor is one of the most known conflicts that caffeine has brought into this society. In the Twenty-First Century over ninety percent of Americans have a cup of coffee in the morning (Collingwood). In many studies, caffeine, when it is consumed in the afternoon, will stimulate the brain which will have side effects that are similar to insomnia (@healthline). When anyone doesn’t get the rest that they need, their brain will not react properly to any situations. Caffeine is what drives, crashes, and tear apart this society. Will caffeine run this world or will the world run without the harmful embrace of a
Throughout his villanelle, “Saturday at the Border,” Hayden Carruth continuously mentions the “death-knell” (Carruth 3) to reveal his aged narrator’s anticipation of his upcoming death. The poem written in conversation with Carruth’s villanelle, “Monday at the River,” assures the narrator that despite his age, he still possesses the expertise to write a well structured poem. Additionally, the poem offers Carruth’s narrator a different attitude with which to approach his writing, as well as his death, to alleviate his feelings of distress and encourage him to write with confidence.
Reunion, by John Cheever, is a story told through the eyes of a young boy, Charlie, who is recalling a meeting with his father who he hasn’t seen for more than three years. It is set in New York where Charlie’s father lives. He meets up with his father during a stop over between trains.
Through the careful use of diction presented through a first-person perspective, Kenyon is able to use The Blue Bowl as a medium for social commentary regarding what she sees as a primitive mourning process that does not help those who undertake it. Through a careful analysis of the poem, the reader is able to understand Kenyon’s critique of the mourning rituals that humans use to alleviate the grief caused by the death of a loved one and interpret the shortcomings that Kenyon finds. Kenyon’s use of perspective combined with specifically chosen diction enables her to present a social commentary regarding what she believes to be the inherent shortcomings in the emotional effects of the burial itself and the sense of closure it is supposed to bring yet fails to achieve during a typical period of mourning.
Coffee is the first thing that people associate with instant energy on a groggy morning. “In the U.S., coffee is king of beverages” (Reinke) Research has been done that has named coffee as an addiction to the people who consume large quantities of it. Coffee was named the top source of antioxidants. This is partly because of the amount consumed each day. Some of the antioxidants that coffee has are quinines and chlorogenic acid. It also contains trigonelline, an antibacterial compound. This is where coffee acquires its delicious aroma. Now let’s step back for a minute and just think about how much caffeine people consume. In an 8oz cup of coffee it has about 85 milligrams of caffeine. This is about double the amount that tea contains. Studies have shown that caffeine stimulates the brain and nervous system. This is where you get that energized feeling. After about the third cup, knees start to bounce, pens are clicking and people start running laps around the office. Caffeine can become addicting if you drink too much. Coffee can become that addictive habit people are unable to shake.
In both texts, a key concept is implemented: ‘Despair.’ Despair is presented in both poems through the oppression of the Jewish People; in both poems they manage to create a feeling of alienation in conjunction with isolation through manipulating their imagery and tone. ‘Refugee Blues’ is rooted in the 1930′s pre-second world war, when the Jewish communities were being punished for countless mistakes they had not even made. If we break down the title of both texts we can already begin to interpret the different tones, as well as emotions that will be in the pieces. ‘Refugee’ comes from the word refuge, which means safety, safety for the people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. It is almost ironic how Auden uses this as his title as the Jews were anything but ‘Safe.’ ‘Blues’ is a music genre; typically it offers a slow, calm rhythm yet creates an uplifting vibe. Developed by the African-American communities, originating in the 19th century, around the ‘Deep South’ of the United States. Furthermore, in ‘The Last Night’ is set in France during World War Two, when the Nazis occupied and controlled France. If we begin to break down ‘The Last Night,’ we can immediately pick up yet again that the poem is going to involve death, or the end of someone/something. If we look at the second line of the poem, ‘deportees might write a final message,’ the word ‘final’ already gives us a clue that this may be the deportees final chance to write a message before they die.
...ine contains a repeated phrase that develops the theme of the poem. The poems structure is relatable to music, The poem’s sense of musicality is also evident in its title. The ‘blues’ is a musical style that is today considered to be a sub-genre of jazz. Blues is generally calm, quiet and depressing, this can relate very well with the content of the poem. Blues originated from slavery. this is similar to the jewish people in concentration camps.
Auden, W.H. “Funeral Blues.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 1003.