Have you ever fall in love with someone so much that you wanted to write him or her into your poetry? In the poem “A Lady”, Amy Lowell writes about her adoration to an old lady she loves by comparing and contrasting the lady with many things. Lowell describes the characteristics of the lady by using figurative languages such as similes, metaphors, hyperboles, and vivid imageries to express her admiration towards the lady. In the beginning of the poem, Lowell uses a simile to compare the beautiful old lady to an old opera tune: “You are beautiful and faded/ Like an old opera tune/ Played upon a harpsichord”(1-2). This tells that the lady is beautiful but faded because she’s old, just like an “old opera tune” played upon a “harpsichord”. A harpsichord …show more content…
Line 7 acknowledges that the time of the lady, or the “fallen roses” are burning slowly claiming that the lady is aging. And “outlived minutes” means something that lived long enough. The speaker claims that the lady’s eyes, or soul is full of experience and stories by stating that the lady is outlived. Another metaphor would be “Your half tones delight me, /And I grow mad with gazing/ At your blent colors” (11-13). Halftone usually means the colors in between which are comfortable to look at, just like the lady. Lowell then uses a hyperbole in line 12, mentioning that she grew mad and crazy just by a gaze at the lady. The word “gazing” in this line is also an imagery, it gives the readers a picture of the poet gazing upon the lady. Once again, the speaker tell us that the lady’s personality is not only black or white but she’s a mix of them by saying “blent colors”. By looking at these lines, readers can tell that the lady is beautiful and mysterious because she’s neither black nor white, but she’s a blend of the colors. The last metaphor would be: “My vigor is a new-minted penny/ Which I cast at your feet.” (14-15). “The new-minted penny” means a fresh new coin that just came out of the bank. Amy Lowell is trying to tell that her strength, her desire, her passion are new and fresh just like the new penny, and she wanted to be just like the lady that she’s describing. Finally, the last lines say: “Gather it up from the dust/ That its sparkle may amuse you.”(16-17). In these lines, the poet is offering herself as a sparkle within the dust, a sparkle that might amuse the lady, because Lowell is certainly amused by the
The title of the short story, “Four Directions” is symbolic for Waverly’s inner misconceptions. As she goes about her life, she is pulled in different ways by her past and her present. She is torn between her Chinese heritage and her American life. She never thought that instead of being pulled in four directions, she could take all of her differences and combine them. In the end she realizes this with the help of her mother. “The three of us, leaving our differences behind...moving West to reach East” (184), thought Waverly. Her whole life she misconceived her mother’s intentions. Lindo never wanted Waverly to solely focus on her Chinese heritage, but rather combine it with her new American ways. The idea of being pulled in four
Tatiana de Rosnay used different literary tools to assist her writing in order to deepen the story, including figurative language, dramatic irony, and foreshadowing. The use of figurative language helps to clarify a description in order to place an image in the mind of the reader. Similes are the main type of figurative language used throughout Sarah’s Key, allowing the reader to see what is happening. Many images conjured up make comparisons as a child would make them, as much of the story concerns the innocence of a child, such as “[t]he oversized radiators were black with dirt, as scaly as a reptile” (Rosnay 10) and “[t]he bathtub has claws” (Rosnay 11). Other descriptions compare Sarah, and Zoe, to a puppy, a symbol of innocence, as children are known to be
Ken Kesey incorporates figurative language into his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, to illustrate the struggle to overcome the comfort of inaction, that ultimately results in the great benefit of standing up for one’s self. When McMurphy decides to stand up to Nurse Ratched, there is “no fog” (130). Kesey’s metaphor of the fog represents the haze of inaction that hovers over the patients of the ward. With the oppressive Nurse Ratched in charge, the patients are not able to stand up for themselves and are forced to be “sly” to avoid her vicious punishments (166). When the patients avoid confrontation with the Nurse, they are guaranteed safety by hiding in the fog, complaisant with their standing. The fog obscures the patient’s view of the ward and the farther they slip into it, the farther away they drift from reality.
Displaying one's emotions in public is often not planned nor wanted especially when it comes to crying due to humiliation and shame. In the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, literary terms such as simile, diction, and repetition are utilized in characterizing emotional “eleven” year old Rachel. The figurative language used, support the images that were intended for the reader to perceive. Diction and repetition help guide the audience with a certain point of view towards the characters. Not only does Cisneros exploit these literary terms to explain and characterize Rachel's feelings but to exhibit how one may not always have the courage, personal strength, or maturity to handle certain situations.
In both poems, certain details of the characters’ lives give the reader an impression that the women live pleasant, well-to-do lives, while others give an idea that the women are suffering; this contrast helps to depict the confusion and inner struggles the women are facing. Although they live lives of riches and glamour, they long for something that surpasses the material aspects of life, allowing them to experience freedom from their many social confinements as women. Lowell writes many details in "Patterns" that lead the reader to believe the woman described is upper class:
The poem “The Old Maid”, by Sara Teasdale, takes place on a sidewalk on Broadway. The speaker in the poem is a woman walking with who you can infer to be her fiancée and she is describing a brief encounter she had with another woman in the car driving by her. The speaker describes the woman as “The woman I might grow to be,” She then notices how her hair color “…was as mine” and how “Her eyes were strangely like my eyes”. However, despite all these similarities the woman’s hair compared to the speaker’s was “…dull and drew no light”. Her eyes also did not shine like the speaker’s. The speaker assumed that the reason for the woman’s frail appearance was because she had never had the opportunity to know what it was like to be in love. In the last stanza, the speaker no longer looks upon the old maid but to her lover and knows that even though they may look similar she will never be like her.
*Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and fellows of Harvard College.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by O’Connor Figurative language is used often by the characters, especially the grandmother who manipulates, which in return, leads to the families murder. In the short story the author gives small details of almost every character. When the author describes the mother’s face, she uses a simile writing, whose face is broad and innocent as a cabbage(pg 296). On the family drive, the author uses imagery to describes the beauty of the families surrounding using words like brilliant red and green lace-work that makes the drive seem relaxing.The author’s use of informal diction helps dictate the calmness of the events. I believe these calming words are the way the author is portraying the calm before the storm. What
In “Queens, 1963”, the speaker narrates to her audience her observations that she has collected from living in her neighborhood located in Queens, New York in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The narrator is a thirteen-year-old female immigrant who moved from the Dominican Republic to America with her family. As she reflects on her past year of living in America, she reveals a superb understanding of the reasons why the people in her neighborhood act the way they do towards other neighbors. In “Queens, 1963” by Julia Alvarez, the poet utilizes diction, figurative language, and irony to effectively display to the readers that segregation is a strong part of the American melting pot.
In spite of the fact that she composes the verse, clearly, the lyric is a great deal more convoluted than it at first appears. It offers many intriguing bits of knowledge into the part of the female artist, her brain science, and the verifiable setting of the work. Bradstreet composed the lyric in measured rhyming. The lyric communicates Bradstreet 's emotions about her brother by marriage distribution of some of her sonnets in 1650, which she didn 't know about until the volume was discharged. Utilizing the allegory of parenthood, she depicts the book as her youngster. Like a defensive mother, she noticed that the volume was "sick formed" and grabbed far from her before it was prepared for freedom. The "companions" who took it were "less astute than genuine," implying that while their activities were imprudent, these individuals absolutely did not have malignant goals. Since the work has been distributed without giving the artist time to redress any blunders, it is out on the planet while it is back in her grasp. At initially, she depicts the recently bound volume as "maddening in my sight," not able to overlook the blemishes she wished she had the chance to address. She wishes she could show her work in its best form yet that is presently inconceivable - she portrays washing its face yet at the same time observing soil and stamps. Be that as it may, the artist can 't resist the
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
Lowell was an Imagist poet, and by doing so, she has created a scene with as few words as possible. However, she was able to breathe life into each line by making sure emphasis and connotation fell upon the right words. Through this, she made the theme very clear; that she would be lost without love. Ada Dwyer Russell, the suspected subject of Lowell's desire, was the same reader left at the curb. However, with such vivid imagery, she could be replaced with anyone who reads the poem.
Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest American poets of the nineteenth century used many different themes, styles, and techniques that make her poetry so widely popular. The enigma that is Emily Dickinson continues to befuddle experts and leaves readers with a sense of deep, intimate connection through poetry. Even though she was a recluse, Emily Dickinson’s poems present universal themes that can communicate with the reader of the poems.
In T.S Eliot's poem, Portrait of a Lady, he gives a glimpse into the upper class of post war society- something rather dispirited and forlorn. It is filled with people from the higher social standings and they are as soulless and empty as the lady in the poem. The upper class was also represented by the main character himself, who is truly unable to connect as a whole to his surroundings. He initially describes the world in the poem as dark, covered in smoke and haze – the scene that is in and of itself a mere half life, the individuality of the characters already swallowed by the abyss of ritual that has devoid of meaning. The truly shocking part that links this poem to the author’s previous poems is the underlying brokenness and the soullessness that the characters seem to inhabit. The main character of t...
The often-used first line makes the reader more familiar with poem. The speaker's love is expressed through two similes; his love is compared to “a red, red rose” and “the melody” (1, 3). The speaker echoes his sentiments by reinforcing two above similes with the phrases “That’s newly” and “That’s sweetly” (2, 4). Obviously, the color "red" is a symbol of passionate love and used in the form of alliteration such “a red, red rose” it shows how strong is the speaker’s feeling (1). Its appeal over time and comparison with the loved woman gives the reader the possibility to discover the speaker’s pleasant ways on art...