In the poem “Interruption,” by Al Purdy, the narrator describes the interaction he has with nature living in a newly built house in the woods. The beginning tone is tranquil but suggests there is something unsettling behind the silence. This effect was achieved with alliteration and imagery Within the first few lines squirrels run over the roof whispering, the narrator holds a stare down with a chipmunk, the wild birds colour the sky and a lamenting old creature cries out. The tone then shifts, revealing it was not the nature that was unsettling but the humans. Mice walk through the house through the night across empty floors and are startled by the narrator’s presence. Dead and fearing animals around the house are interrupted by the house’s
Carcasses attract scavengers. The Guilty Party by O. Henry showcases the untimely death of a girl of twelve, Liz. Above Chrystie Street on the east side, a strange bird stalks the children of the playground. Although people say it’s a stork, locals call it a vulture. In this case, Liz is the carcass that the vulture sets its eyes on.
In the poem “Crossing the Swamp” Mary Oliver uses descriptive language and metaphors to show the relationship between the speaker and the swamp. She also uses enjambment to improve sentence fluency and make the poem flow better than it would have otherwise. Oliver also uses first-person point of view to provide a different perspective on how she sees the swamp as well as to show how she feels. This allows the reader to put themselves in the speaker’s place and feel, see, and think what the speaker does. All of this combined makes the swamp feel eerie or like a place of potential and perhaps even rebirth.
Wisdom: Is it worth the consequences that might come with it? In the eye-opening short story, “Flowers For Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon is a mentally challenged man who is given the choice of a surgery which will assist him in becoming exceptionally smart. He takes the offer because the chance to gain knowledge is all he has ever wanted. Adam and Eve are people living in literal paradise. Although they have all of the resources needed to live a life that is free of misfortune, they eat the fruit of a tree, knowing it will open their eyes beyond their current conscious state.
Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. Poe uses this literary device to describe the in bird in line 71 he says, “What grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore.” It gives the line a rhythm and tone that is easily understood and read. This use of alliteration tell the reader how dark, and evil the narrator felt around this bird. In line three he uses alliteration again by saying, “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping...” Gives a flow to the line that is not
In the stanzas of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, the speaker very honestly observes the scenes from outside her apartment. From her point of view, she sees a both a bird and a dog in the process of sleeping. The speaker views these animals as having simple lives unbothered by endless questions or worries. Instead, the two live peaceful, uninterrupted existences, rising every morning knowing that “everything is answered” (ln. 22). However, the speaker lives in contrast to this statement instead anxiously awaiting the next day where uncertainty is a likely possibility. Unlike the dog and the bird, the speaker cannot sit passively by as the world continues in its cycle and she carries a variety of emotions, such as a sense of shame. It is evident here that the speaker has gone through or is currently undergoing some sort of struggle. When she states that “Yesterday brought to today so lightly!” she does so in longing for the world to recognize her for her issues by viewing the earth’s graces as so light of actions, and in doing so, she fails to recognize that she can no longer comprehend the beauty of nature that it offers her. In viewing the light hitting the trees as “gray light streaking each bare branch” (ln. 11), she only sees the monotony of the morning and condescends it to merely “another tree” (ln. 13.) To her, the morning is something
Closely related in Julio Cortazar’s short story, “House Taken Over,” a brother and sister are pushed out of their house by an unknown entity. As the brother and sister keep worrying the sister expresses, “In that case, she said, picking up her needles again, “We’ll have to live on this side” (Cortazar 40). As we read “House Taken Over,” we see that there is an unstated entity in their house. The brother and sister see that their house is being overtaken , and they remain calm at the beginning of the story.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
In both of the poems, "Introduction to Poetry" and "Trouble with Poetry", Collins makes an interesting form of observation of the world he lives in while possibly explaining his daily life or experiences.
Usually, their home is silent, but when one day the narrator suddenly hears something inside another part of the house, the siblings escape to a smaller section, locked behind a solid oak door. In the intervening days, they become frightened and solemn; on the one hand noting that there is less housecleaning, but regretting that the interlopers have prevented them from retrieving many of their personal belongings. All the while, they can occasionally hear noises from the other
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” utilizes pathos to instill emotion in people and advocate for civil disobedience. The letter also contains alliteration, which adds eloquence to an already logical claim. Pathos is shown in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on page 8, where it reads, “We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal”...” Anyone reading King’s letter would know he is referring to the Holocaust here, and what it consisted of. They would also associate it with tragic and negative feelings. By comparing the Holocaust to the struggle for civil rights, King directs those sympathetic connotations to his cause. Alliteration too can be found on page 8, in the line, “I submit that an individual
The author of the story “Strays”, Mark Richard, starts off with the main characters, the two brothers, lying in their beds listening to the sound of stray dogs beneath the floorboards, scratching their flee infested backs, and licking the water leaking from the pipes. The mother of the children runs off into the cornfields while the father chases after her. The father’s brother, Uncle Trash, comes to babysit the boys and ends up scamming the boys out of everything they own. The parents still haven not returned, and when Uncle Trash returns after a night of heavy drinking the boys notice he was beaten up and his truck is gone. Later in the story while the adults are out of the house, the two brothers caught one of the stray dogs and sprayed
According to Sigmund Freud, “the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (825). In Robert Hayden’s poem The Diver, the uncanny sneaks upon the reader as the speaker is descending further into the depths of the sea, and the unconscious. The use of Freud 's uncanny evokes fear and uncertainty in the reader as they delve deeper into the unconscious. Hayden uses alliteration to play with repression and turns familiar scenes into the unfamiliar to emphasize swimming in and out of the conscious and unconscious mind.
Edgar Allen Poe’s alliteration and repetition of words support the poem’s flow and musicality. Poe begins with the alliteration of the m sound in “merriment” and “melody” (3). The soft m sound, also known as a liquid consonant, helps to keep a quick and continuous pace for the poem. Similarly, the alliteration of the s sounds in sledges, silver, stars, and seem, emphasize the calming sounds of the bells (1-2, 6-7). The s sound helps express the soothing and comforting effects of the bells, essentially contributing to the merry tone of the poem. Furthermore, the alliteration of t...
I went out in my garden to pick some fresh fruit when I heard two squeaky voices. I immediately recognized two those voices, it belonged to those two animals that Gwendolyn and Augustus called children. I really did despise them. They would always try to eat my home, and never had any manners. I continued to watch them, - not in a pedophilic way. Gwendolyn and Augustus weren’t with t...
"Stopping by Woods" The visible sign of the poet's preoccupation is the recurrent image of dark woods and trees. The world of the woods, a world offering perfect quiet and solitude, exists side by side with the realization that there is also another world, a world of people and social obligations. Both worlds have claims on the poet. He stops by woods on this "darkest evening of the year" to watch them "fill up with snow," and lingers so long that his "little horse" shakes his harness bells "to ask if there is some mistake." The poet is put in mind of the "promises" he has to keep, of the miles he still must travel. We are not told, however, that the call of social responsibility proves stronger than the attraction of the woods, which are "lovely" as well as "dark and deep"; the poet and his horse have not moved on at the poem's end. The dichotomy of the poet's obligations both to the woods and to a world of "promises"--the latter filtering like a barely heard echo through the almost hypnotic state induced by the woods and falling snow-is what gives this poem its singular interest.... The artfulness of "Stopping by Woods" consists in the way the two worlds are established and balanced. The poet is aware that the woods by which he is stopping belong to someone in the village; they are owned by the world of men. But at the same time they are his, the poet's woods, too, by virtue of what they mean to him in terms of emotion and private signification.