We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts – not to hurt others. -George Eliot I enjoy the fact that this quote begins with “we mortals.” It immediately reminds everyone that nothing lasts forever, and life is temporary. I’m not exactly sure why Eliot wanted to do this. One reason may have been to remind people that things aren’t as bad as they seem. The word “devour” is quite interesting and well used here. I immediately associate this word with eating, but a frantic kind of eating. When I imagine someone devouring …show more content…
Since the humans are “devouring” the disappointments, it’s almost as if they’re doing it on purpose and eagerly. If they did not want to be disappointed, Eliot could have said something like “swallow” or “choke down.” These would imply that it was painful to have so many disappointments in a day. The use of the word devour makes me think about people who set themselves up for disappointment, and then complain about it afterwards. I’m really not quite sure why Eliot uses the word “devour,” but it makes me think more about the quote than I would if it just said “eat.” Next, “keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips,” is a very well put together line. Everyone can imagine this immediately; someone just about to cry, looking a little scared and sick. It’s easy to imagine, and quite sad as well. The end of the quote, discussing pride, is a little confusing to me. But I do understand the general idea and I appreciate the concept. “Urge” is another word I like, because urging doesn’t always guarantee a result. Someone can urge you to go to a party, but that …show more content…
Even from the very first line, “silky slits for eye,” the language used is extremely interesting. This line implies that the cat is glaring; this could cause fear in some people, showing that cats are dangerous. “Fangs of power” is a line that can be seen as either quite silly, like a little kitten nibbling on a toy, or as terrifying, like an adult cat sinking its teeth into someone’s flesh. It all depends on how you view cats. “And I submit. We all submit” is also a funny line to me, because cat owners always make jokes that their cat actually owns them. Cats see themselves as superior, and since we humans can’t actually talk to the cats and tell them they’re wrong, we just have to quietly submit. “Unfettered by rules of mere mortals” shows things from a cat’s point of view – the humans are less powerful, and they try to put all these dumb rules in place. “The cat sits in: defiance” gives a very clear, vivid image to enjoy. The cat sits in the middle of the table, with its head held high. It’ll probably make eye contact with you while it pushes something off, too. Although this angers many people, it also gives cats a personality that makes people love them. The lines leading up to “you are worthy of love” are also nice. They all create imagines of cats that people are used to seeing, yet the poem makes everything seem so beautiful. It almost makes it seem like everything is in slow motion, and the cat slowly places the
Pride frequently has terrible results. For example, as a result of Brothers pride, he left Doodle in the storm. Brother did this because he is angry that Doodle failed, and that his dream of having an “ordinary brother” is over. Doodle realizes that he failed his brother, and feels useless. In addition, after being left in the downpour, Doodle dies. At the point when Brother discovers Doodle dead, he thinks it’s his fault that Doodle dies because he pushed him too hard. After this happens, their family feels like they should’ve been more protective and love Doodle more. In conclusion, while pride can have devastating effects, it can also result in fulfillment.
Pride is a very relevant issue in almost everyone's lives. Only when a person is forced to face his pride can he begin to overcome it. Through the similar themes of her short stories, Flannery O'Connor attempts to make her characters realize their pride and overcome it.
Many people take much pride in numerous things some being: their job, family, political views, even as much as in their favorite sport. People make mistakes big and small, but it is how one deals with the situation and the mistake, that shows the morality in a person, and shows who he or she may be. “The only crime is pride,” Sophocles, is still held to be true; for instance, pride itself can cloud a persons’ mind and caused him or her to commit the crimes he or she did. Pride is thought to be a good thing but in many cases it is proven otherwise. Even though there is some truth in “the only crime is pride” the crimes/mistakes caused by pride are not forgivable, and “yielding” does not help at all; pride is not just to prove oneself right, but also not to look “weak” in the eyes of others.
T.S. Eliot had very philosophical and religious meanings behind this poem, and that helped me relate personally very well with this work of his. He used allusions to other poems, letting me make connections with works I have read before. He also used inclusive language and had the same opinion as me portrayed in this work. Based on these, T.S. Eliot has convinced me of his messages in this poem, as well as made this by far my favorite of his.
These memories become his "key" to awken the rest of us who are still pretending. The reader is left with two choices at the end of the poem. S/he can either forget about the poem, and go back to living in a waste land, or s/he can stop repressing pain and feeling and leave the waste land. Eliot ends the poem with a man (maybe himself?) sitting on a shore, "[f]ishing, with the arid plain behind me" and asking, "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" (425-36) The man here, by facing his pain, has left the waste land, and is able to move ahead.
When one thinks of pride, one would rarely think of a modest person who devotes much of their time to volunteering and philanthropy. Typically, one would think of an arrogant politician or movie star, someone so self-absorbed that they almost entirely ignore the needs of those around them. However, even the humblest acts of virtue can arise from pride as well. Time and time again we hear the story of Icarus, the boy who became entranced with his own pride and flew too close to the sun. However, there is another story of pride we hear less often, the person who takes pride in their own humility. Rather than take pride in typical things such as wealth, prestige, or even appearance, these people take pride in their modesty and virtue. In this
Even though pride can be a good thing at times, it is hurtful, it is an emotion that can make or break someone.
T.S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'; he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's Inferno, an allusion to Dante's character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on the knowledge of his conversation. In his work, Eliot uses this quotation to foreshadow the idea that his character, Prufrock, is also trapped in a world he can not escape, the world where his own thoughts and feelings incapacitate and isolate him.
When something shaming happens, and we keep it locked up, it festers and grows. It consumes us” (40). Brown believes that we should share our experiences with others, but not just anyone she believes that we should share with someone that we trust and that will not judge us because of what we did. She also considers that not everyone we communicate with is worthy of sharing our shame stories with. Shame is a part of all of our lives we have shame within us it helps us stay humble because it reminds us that we are human and make
Analysis of the Role First Person Narration Plays in Edgar Allen Poe's Poem The Black Cat
Alfred Prufrock, ample details about the settings are described to reflect the speaker’s emotions. For instance, the first stanza paints the scene that an innocent and unconfident middle age man hesitates to propose to a woman. For one thing, the speaker of the poem is afraid that time will go wasted. On the other side, he feels powerless to the reality. Apparently, Eliot directly tells the reader the internal conflict of the speaker of the poem, who is greedy of love but fears for the responsibility that comes with it. What this setting in the poem reflects is the emptiness and weakness of folks in modern
The image of the cat clawing at the reeds stands out the most. A person reading this poem can envision the cat clawing the reeds and screaming as the young boys hold it under the water bringing the cat closer and closer to death with each passing moment. The purpose that the young girl tries to explain is that she understands the way young boys are and that they do not love anything.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.
The benign confidence that I possess today is an outcome of my pride. I have always had a substantial amount of insecurity, for my fears have consistently haunted me: fear of embarrassment, fear of not being as good as everyone else… Because of my feelings of inferiority and lack of self-esteem, I never thought I could accomplish something of great significance. That prevented me from doing many things in the past, but one day after seeing a movie in which a boy who had all the odds to ...
When I left my room, my mother knew that I had gone through a rough time, and I did not want to talk to her about it. Even though there was only a month left in my school year, I promised myself that I would be completely truthful to my friends, my family, my heritage, and myself. I expected all my friends to leave me, but I was fully prepared for this. However, none of this ever happened. My friends didn’t leave me, I wasn’t alone at the lunch table, I wasn’t even seem differently by those around me. I had failed my family by doing this, and I wished I had stopped acting like someone I wasn’t sooner. This is one of the only mistakes I have made which I consider a failure because it had taken me close to a year to fix, and this is why I consider it my most successful failure.