In the final paragraph in Ann Dowsett Johnston’s Postcards from Paradise, Ann Dowsett Johnston talks about and closes off her tirade about her life in Paradise, her life at the cottage. Just like in the introduction paragraph, Ann Dowsett Johnston uses allusions to how the past was more carefree without needing to worry about so many trivial things.
This creates a nostalgic and warm mood. As she reminisces about the vivid imagery surrounding surrounding her during her childhood, the mood greatly develops. It is extremely visible when the author says “learning how to stalk wild raspberries before breakfast, and how to find fungus in the forest”. The current connotations about foraging seem to always include a rustic and natural feeling, and
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To further bring home the point on the past, there are three uses of the word “before” in such a short excerpt. In the essay, the author also talks about “parsing the night sky” and “worshipping the harvest moon”, which both lead towards the idea of nature, which has a positive connotation that is associated with the rustic past. These repeated references to the past and connotations with nature intends to give the reader a warm, nostalgic ending to the essay.In order to facilitate the delivery of mood, the author needs to speak with the right choice of tone. In this case, Ms. Johnston has a calm delivery of the message, as shown when she remember how she was “lying under a canopy of stars and parsing the night sky”. This diction choice stimulates the reader’s senses as the reader thinks about the calm soundless nights outside gazing towards the sky. Ms. Johnston further employs more literary devices by touching on alliteration when she describes the actions to, “find a fungus in the forest”. The use of the letter “f” gives the phrase a soft, flowing feel that shows the calmness that she was exerting whilst she was writing. With the developments in mood & tone came the development of the central theme of
Imagery uses five senses such as visual, sound, olfactory, taste and tactile to create a sense of picture in the readers’ mind. In this poem, the speaker uses visual imagination when he wrote, “I took my time in old darkness,” making the reader visualize the past memory of the speaker in “old darkness.” The speaker tries to show the time period he chose to write the poem. The speaker is trying to illustrate one of the imagery tools, which can be used to write a poem and tries to suggest one time period which can be used to write a poem. Imagery becomes important for the reader to imagine the same picture the speaker is trying to convey. Imagery should be speculated too when writing a poem to express the big
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
Day's curious nature made her want to see first-hand the conditions of life for those who were poor. She adventured through the poor district and looked into the houses and looked into the people, both containing very depressing things inside them. Day did this a lot, and as she did it she would imagine the characters in The Jungle, and imagined their existence in this very alive and very real neighborhood. It would become her childhood that she wou...
In the passage from the novel LUCY, author Jamaica Kincaid dramatizes the forces of self and environment, through her character whose identity is challenged with a move. The new home provided all she needed, but it was all so many changes, she “didn’t want to take in anything else” (15-16). Her old “familiar and predictable past”(40) stayed behind her, and she now had to find who she was in her new life. Kincaid uses detail, metaphor, and tone in the passage to show her character’s internal struggle.
“We didn’t know we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” This quote by an unknown author gives us a unique vision of memories; it shows that memories are powerful. The most powerful can be made without recognition. The most powerful are made with excitement. Annie Dillard clearly portrays this idea in “The Chase,” a chapter in her autobiography. She tells the story of her rebellious childhood and one of the most heart-pumping events of her life - a redheaded man giving her a chase. With this, she demonstrates the need for excitement, fearlessness, and recklessness in one’s childhood. In order to convey this idea, Dillard not only employs fierce and vivid description, but she impassionedly transitions from spine-chilling tone to thrilling.
The time period this work takes place in is a very gloomy and frightening time. He wakes up in a dark place by himself and in fear, which makes things worse. A common theme we can relate this dark place to is when we fall off of the path of God. Since God represents all things good, the dark is the exact opposite. Since everything is not so clear in the wood he his describing, the path back to God is even more difficult to attain.
Returning to Etonville, Janie recounts the story to an old friend. She arrives at her final stage of awakening. She understood that she had fulfilled her dreams, lived them, and still keeps them in her heart. Tea Cake’s memories would stay alive in her heart, as long as she was alive to remember. “He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace” (Hurston, 193). Janie discovers herself through attaining her dream of love, also uncovering a joy that she can carry the rest of her life. She finally found peace in knowing who she was, and being strong enough to fight for her individuality. Over the course of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie unearths what love truly means to her, and how far she is willing to go to obtain it.
To demonstrate the physical supremacy of nature over man, Malouf discusses nature’s reclamation of the land prior to battle; ‘the blasted trees had renewed themselves with summer growth’. TALK ABOUT IMAGERY AND READER. Jim’s death is yet another example of the unbroken cycle of life, as Malouf transitions his character from reality to the afterlife without any pause or clear ending. This once again emphasised the idea that even when a life stops, the process of life continues and stays in motion. Even Malouf’s description of Jim’s bandage that could ‘stretch halfway around the world, to the coast, to home’ was symbolic of his mind and spirit metaphorically returning home after death; returning to what he came from. This process is both comforting and daunting for the reader, as they are reassured that their own lives will return to eternity after death, however they are also reminded of the insignificance their role has in comparison to the grand purpose of the
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
The story opens by embracing the reader with a relaxed setting, giving the anticipation for an optimistic story. “…with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (p.445).”
Robert Frost is considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Frost’s work has been regarded by many as unique. Frost’s poems mainly take place in nature, and it is through nature that he uses sense appealing-vocabulary to immerse the reader into the poem. In the poem, “Hardwood Groves”, Frost uses a Hardwood Tree that is losing its leaves as a symbol of life’s vicissitudes. “Frost recognizes that before things in life are raised up, they must fall down” (Bloom 22).
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
When driving home her cow in the dark Sylvia’s “feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not” (Jewett 682). Sylvia is familiar with the woodlands to such an extent that she forms a strong physical connection to the natural world because even her “feet were familiar with the path.” She also refers to her cow as a “valued companion” and considers the cow’s pranks as an “intelligent attempt to play hide and seek” to which she responds to “with a good deal of zest” (Jewett 682). Sylvia escapes urban society because she was “afraid of folks,” and now relies on her “valued companion” to fulfill her need for friends and playmates. In doing so, the cow becomes the sole being she interacts with and consists of the totality of her amusement, which in turn prompts a close emotional attachment and relationship. Prior to coming to the farm, she had lived “in a crowded manufacturing town” but now feels “as if she had never been alive before.” Sylvia is content in her isolation from humanity at the farm where she only lives with her grandmother, and finally feels “alive” in a setting where she is alienated from other people and surrounded by nature and animals. She in turn seems content and welcomes her close relationship to the natural world around her and willingly gives up human interactions to achieve this. After trailing through the woods late into the night she feels “as if she were a part of the gray shadows and the moving leaves.” Sylvia comes to the realization that she becomes “a part of” and finds a sense of belonging in the natural world, which shows her close emotional
Her knowledge of rural life is shown, by describing details of animals such as, “eel-thin belly”, “life as loose as frogs”, “slag heaps stand like sentries shot dead”, and “I'm going home with the light hand on the reins”. Next in her poem, “How It is”, she puts on a blue jacket that belonged to her recently deceased friend, whom played a major role in her life. By putting on the jacket, she tries to relive the past by, “.unwind(ing) it, paste it together in a different collage.”. In this poem, Maxine Kumin, uses plants to describe her feelings, as in “scatter like milkweed” and “pods of the soul”. These similes show what she sees and feels. “The Longing to be Saved”, is a dream, where her barn catches fire.
In the poem “After Apple-Picking”, Robert Frost has cleverly disguised many symbols and allusions to enhance the meaning of the poem. One must understand the parallel to understand the central theme of the poem. The apple mentioned in the poem could be connected to the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. It essentially is the beginning of everything earthly and heavenly, therefore repelling death. To understand the complete meaning of Frost’s poem one needs to be aware that for something to be dead, it must have once had life. Life and death are common themes in poetry, but this poem focuses on what is in between, life’s missed experiences and the regret that the speaker is left with.