Death and Regeneration in Walt Whitman's Poem, When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'd
Whitman in 1865 wrote an elegy for President Lincoln entitled "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." The "Lilacs" elegy is an outpouring of the deep sense of loss that Whitman felt after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The President's death was a great shock to the poet; it overwhelmed him in a very personal way. Whitman recognized Lincoln's excellence and importance.
When Whitman first heard of the assassination, it was the spring of the year and the lilacs were in bloom. The poem is heavily symbolic. In this first section, Whitman introduces two of the three central symbols used in development. The poet appears in company with the "Lilac blooming" and the "drooping star." The lilac represents love as well as resurrection and rebirth. The star symbolizes the slain Abraham Lincoln and comes to symbolize, also, the poet's heavy grief for him. The star, or Lincoln, once celestial and shining like a strong guide to those beneath it, has now "droop'd early." Lincoln i...
LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, is a certification program for green buildings with stringent requirements for building energy efficient and environmentally responsible structures. Some requirements of this program include specific building materials, smart grid capable, gray water reclamation systems, green space minimums, high levels of insulation and low thermal transfer glass (US Green Building Council). Green buildings are a must if we are to sustain our current level of growth. Despite the higher initial cost of these buildings, the long term energy savings make these buildings a smarter choice for
The way he writes the poem shows how he was in love with the president on how Lincoln conducted himself during the war. He refers to Lincoln as the captain of the ship which is the Union, throughout the poem he begins to call out to the Captain acting like the president was never shot. Through this all, it seems like Whitman could never bring himself to acknowledge the assassination of the late president. He also wrote it as a way to express the grief of losing the beloved commander and chief, and also explain to the American people how Booth killed the man who helped bring the Union together once again. However, he makes the metaphor in this poem explain why he would have wrote it, it shows that through an imaginary situation that things begin to seem alright in the world. Finally, Whitman deals with the pain through the metaphor to cover up the hurt America feels even if he despised the poem later on in
Walt Whitman is one of America’s most popular and most influential poets. The first edition of Whitman’s well-known Leaves of Grass first appeared in July of the poet’s thirty-sixth year. A subsequent edition of Leaves of Grass (of which there were many) incorporated a collection of Whitman’s poems that had been offered readers in 1865. The sequence added for the 1867 edition was Drum-Taps, which poetically recounts the author’s experiences of the American Civil War.
One example of symbolism is the water and canal itself. The water is a representation of freedom because it flows out of town going where it wants to. In the last two lines of the poem, the author says “ our eyes followed the water, white-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.” (Soto 1). When the poem mentions the water racing out of town that’s the narrator’s way of alluding to the water’s seeming independence from the town. Another symbol that represents freedom in the poem is the postcard of San Francisco. This is the most obvious, yet one of the most powerful symbols. The reason for this is because to the narrator San Francisco is where he belongs, it represents a lifelong goal for him, and is the epitome of pursuing life’s journey. San Francisco is known for having an artistic atmosphere and for being a place where one can be themselves, and it seems as though this is what draws the author to the city. As he states in the lines 13-14 “And to be with people who knew more than three chords on a guitar”( Soto 1), this tells the reader that he views San Francisco as a place where talented people flock to, and he wants to be apart of that. The last use of symbolism in the poem is the reference to the narrator’s hair. The lines 15-16 describe the hair as “ shoulder
There have been many documented cases of doctors being falsely accused from behaving inappropriately during intimate examinations. It could be argued that a chaperone should be recommended for physical examinations of all parts of the patient’s body. Doctors have extensively been advised to have a chaperone present during any physical intimate examinations to provide protection to the doctor against false allegations. But the frequency of chaperone utilization in health clinics has generally remained low in the United States. For years now there has been a heated debate whether or not chaperones should be present during intimate examinations and every time the argument is rekindled, it ends in a stalemate, and is a topic that tends to stay away from (1.2). However, chaperones should be present during an intimate examination to provide protection to health care professionals against false allegation.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). These two conditions have caused so much heartache and pain since the 1980s. One of the first signs of AIDS in America was in 1981, and was found in a homosexual man that was inflicted with Pneumocystis pneumonia, a fungal pneumonia. Upon inspection, the doctor observed that the man did not have any helper cells; cells that would help the ailed young man fight the infection. Following this several other young homosexual men were admitted to hospitals with the same problem. The following year hemophiliacs were observed to have been inflicted with the same problem and this disease was finally given a name, AIDS. The year 1983 brought about the identification of the virus, HIV. Even to this day many AIDS is still a problem that continues to affect many people.
...tation test where a person were to read the story without the knowledge that the real author is also the narrator and a character, it would probably be read as a detailed work of fiction. Because readers have the knowledge that Oliver Sacks is in fact a neurologist, it changes the meanings in the text. This is how the real author is distinct from the implied author; the implied author is what the reader can deduce from the material presented in the text, without any knowledge of the real author’s context. The knowledge that Oliver Sacks is in reality a neurologist also positions readers to accept the narrator’s version of events because they would be inclined to accept the privileged and authoritative narrative voice. The techniques of point of view, subjective narration and characterisation therefore position readers to accept the meanings presented in the text.
Even though AIDS is heavily researched, its origin still remains a partial mystery. It is know that HIV is a zoonosis, a human disease acquired from animals. The virus evolved from a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV): a type of slow virus found naturally in monkeys and apes which, while not harming the host, produces diseases in other primates (Caldwell 97).
In stanza six of the poem "Song of Myself", by Walt Whitman, he poses the question "What is the grass?" I believe that grass is a metaphor for the cycle of life. Throughout the poem Whitman points out images that grass could represent. All of these images stem from the life and death that we come to expect in our lifetime. During your life you will experience death, it at times surrounds you, but if you look past the grief and look to the beauty you will see that it is a cycle that keeps our world in balance. The images of flags, tears, children and older people that are torn from the ones they love, but only to soon return to other lost ones are all parts of Walt Whitman's poem.
The HIV virus is a complex mix of various epidemics within several countries and regions of the world. It is unquestionably the most crucial public-health crisis of our time. Research has extended our understanding of how the virus reproduces, controls, and hides in a contaminated person. Even though our perception of pathogenesis and transmission of the virus has become more refined and prevention options have lengthened, a cure or protective vaccine remains intangible. In 1981, The New York Times published a detailed article about an outbreak of an unusual form of cancer among gay men in New York and California. It was primarily referred to as the “gay cancer”, but medically known as Kaposi Sarcoma. Around the same time, emergency rooms in New York City began to receive a large number of apparently healthy young men who presented with fevers, flu like symptoms, and a pneumonia called Pneumocystis. About a year later, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) linked the illness to blood and gave it the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). In that first year over 1,600 cases were diagnosed with close to 700 deaths (3).
“Basic Facts about HIV/AIDS.” The Foundation for AIDS Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2012. .
HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999, researchers had discovered that HIV is derived from chimpanzees native to west equatorial Africa. This epidemic is spreading throughout countries and infecting 14 thousand victims every day. Learning about HIV includes knowing how to contract the virus, understanding most of the people it affects, how to prevent the spread of it, and knowing what treatments are available.
Buildings and the appliances alone account for 40 percent of America 's energy use and a third of our global warming emissions (NRDC). New buildings will need to meet new energy-efficiency standards that maximize energy savings and existing homes and commercial spaces can be improved to save energy through weatherizing and installing energy efficient heating, cooling and lighting systems. Ultimately, this will not only be energy efficient but also cost effective as well. In the bigger picture, retrofitting just 1 out of every 5 homes would avoid the need to build 13 mid-sized power plants every year. Retrofitting every house in the country would cut as much global warming pollution as taking a half a million cars off the road – and would save more oil and gas than we could extract from drilling in our coastal waters (NRDC). In the long run, creating more efficient communities through homes and buildings, we could cut back on the global warming issues we are dealing
As with everything in life, humans like to question the origin of something, and the origin of AIDS has its share of theories under its belt. One of the first theories is that of ‘God’s punishment’, a theory stating that God had created AIDS to kill off homosexuals. The reasoning behind this is that God doesn't like homosexuals, as is interpreted in the bible, and after decades of people going against his wishes, God created AIDS to try and get rid of all homosexuals. Another theory that goes off suspicion is that HIV was created in a laboratory on ‘accident’ when researchers were taking a similar virus, called SIV, from monkeys in hopes of making a vaccine for polio. Yet another theory is that the virus it’s self-got its start in Africa, due to poor sanit...
The Theme of Death in Poetry Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson are two Modern American Poets who consistently wrote about the theme of death. While there are some comparisons between the two poets, when it comes to death as a theme, their writing styles were quite different. Robert Frost’s poem, “Home Burial,” and Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” and “I died for Beauty,” are three poems concerning death. While the theme is constant there are differences as well as similarities between the poets and their poems. The obvious comparison between the three poems is the theme of death.