A Comparison of Sonnet 116 and Mother in a refugee camp.

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The poems Sonnet 116 and Mother in a refugee camp are acknowledgements of love in which the poets portray different forms of love Shakespeare explores Eros where as Achebe explores Philia these poems show how variable love can be.

Philia is a Greek form of love that relates to familial love which in my opinion can be appropriately linked to the poem written by Achebe as well as this the poem could also be related to agape love when the poet compares this mothers love to that of Jesus and Mary ‘No Madonna and Child could touch / Her tenderness for a son’ this states that none of the depicted versions of Mary’s tenderness towards a dying Jesus could compare to this one mother.

Sonnet 116 puts across Eros, romantic love, considering that Shakespeare is defining this kind of love he does this by first saying what it is not and then explaining how it is not logical or sensible and those who definitions of love follow those guidelines condemn themselves to loveless lives.

In my opinion what tie these poems together are not just the theme of love but also how unconditional they both put across and how the poets don't let circumstances be a barrier for love in Shakespeare's case there are many but the overlap is in death and how timeliness love should be. These representations of love show the reader that there should be no reason why love should be hindered by anything.

The poems also have very different and separate points as ever, Shakespeare makes use of numerous literary devices to emphasise and bring to life his message. The first of these is alliteration which is immediately clear in the first line itself: the repetition of the letter “m” and “t” in “me not to the marriage of true minds” gives the line an internal rhy...

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...son to let hardships taint emotions.

These are the points in which they differ, both speaking about the bonds that are between two people and how these bonds should be endless but written in ways that when read separately feel incredibly different where one paints a picture of death and decay the other creates one of how love is supposed to grow in life but not end in death. I feel the poets although showing different images of love put across the same definition of phenomenon that is seen in all stages of love and that those who give up because they feel hope is love did not love in the first place.

Although contrasting images the poems have many similarities in the way love is viewed and I believe that although opposite images the positivity can be seen although we see both Shakespeare and Achebe try and put their points across through rose tinted glasses.

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