The poem titled “It was a dream” written by poet Lucille Clifton contains a theme pertaining to the personified defeat of the speaker. “in which my greater self rose up before me accusing me of my life with her extra finger whirling in a gyre of rage at what my days had come to.” (Lines 1-6) What the speaker was intending for reader to infer was a sense a disapproval from a higher power. The speaker endured a situation that altered their perception of life, maybe they stopped singing out loud in fear of their own voice, or maybe they began to distance themselves from every positive thing that occurred in their lifetime for the sole reason that everything good comes to an end. The speaker is changing drastically, but the alterations didn’t
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
Early America was a very racist country and some argue that it still is today. Racism has been an ongoing conflict in this country but it has gotten better in the last fifty or so years. African Americans are often times the target of racism and have had to persevere through slavery, segregation, and discrimination. During this discrimination and segregation, many African Americans embraced their talents and began what is known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance started in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Many new artists, musicians, and writers emerged in this renaissance. Writers such as Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Colleen McElroy were especially important in this time. Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and
In the story titled The Awakening the author shows the clear idea that to be satisfied in life, one must express their true emotions. A great example is it of this is when Edna is by herself thinking about her life.” There were days when she was happy without knowing why. she was happy to be alive and breathing… There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why…
comparing the realm to a large loss in her life. Finally, the statement in the
She does not hint as to whose dream it is, or what the dream is. This being said the dream could be applied to just about anyone experiencing these same feelings. This is what is so magical about Parker’s poems; they are abundantly relatable. She tells the reader to let go once the dream has died, and in the fourth and fifth lines Parker writes, “Walk not in woe, But, for a little, let your step be slow.” (Poemhunter). In these lines she is telling the reader to not become saddened over the death of their dream, however they should not immediately dispose of that dream and move slowly when forgetting their former dream. She goes on to say in lines six-eight, “be not sweetly wise With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies. A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:”(Poemhunter). In these lines Parker warns the reader to not become too foolish with their hope, because their dream is still dead. If you were searching for help with this challenge in your life and read this poem, it may either help you move on or result in an ever more depressed state of mind. The way Parker writes her poetry is very personal which gives her writing style so much more emotion and
“All we ever see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” This was a quote by Edgar Allan Poe that was included in his poem A Dream Within A Dream. This quote basically means that life is nothing but a dream, a long one perhaps, but it is one that you only awaken from when you died, or about to die. I really like this poem because sometimes I often wonder, what if life was really just a dream, and death is when you awaken and cross into another world; one that is more perfect and jovial than the one that existed in “life.”? Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer in the Poe often wrote about death and fear, for these two things seem to be the main focus points of Poe literary works. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing are often serious, talking about dark things, and they usually seem to reflect his childhood,his love life, and his view of what life basically is.
Additionally in this stanza, the mood is the feeling of hope yet frustration at the same time. The hope of wanting to wake up to find this dream to be a reality, but the frustration about knowing that it couldn’t be possible. Subsequently, Poe uses repetition for the line “That holy dream-that holy dream,” to emphasize it. The rest of this stanza states, “While all the world were chiding,/ Hath cheered me as a lovely beam/ A lonely spirit guiding” (9-12). Indirectly, showing the importance of persons dream. “A dream” ironically the title of the poem itself, is suppose to mean that dreams free you from all your sufferings, and bring you to your “treasure.” Which is how the symbolism of a dream in The Alchemist is also represented. Finally the last stanza says, “What though that light, thro’ storm and night,/So trembled from afar/What could there be more purely bright/In Truth's day-star” (Poe 13-16) Stating, even through, harsh times, the hopes in their dream will keep them alive. Once again, relating to the Crystal Merchant, who even though let fear control his life; the dream still gave him hope to
A shift in the poem begins in the last stanza of the poem. It begins in line 43 and runs all the way until the end. The tone of the poem changes and instead of the ‘great’ or ‘black’ horse graciously running through the fields we hear before, we are introduced into the ‘dead’ horse, “hooves iron-shod hurling lightning” (45). It is telling us that the horse is obviously angered now. The stanza before it described the mexicanos that just lowered their heads and did nothing about it which possibly would have been the motive for the change in the poem. Since the horse represents Mexican culture, it shows how their culture has changed and developed into something completely different. After that moment, they were forever changed and obviously Gloria thought it was for the worst.
stanza to explain that a dream deferred can end with the entire population in a war.
In the end, the journey the speaker embarked on throughout the poem was one of learning, especially as the reader was taken through the evolution of the speakers thoughts, demonstrated by the tone, and experienced the images that were seen in the speaker’s nightmare of the personified fear. As the journey commenced, the reader learned how the speaker dealt with the terrors and fears that were accompanied by some experience in the speaker’s life, and optimistically the reader learned just how they themselves deal with the consequences and troubles that are a result of the various situations they face in their
“ I had to climb a mountain, there were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stand still because i had lost my breath ’’. This was a dream of a stutterer, taken from the book “the hero with a thousand faces ’’ by the one and only Joseph Campbell, and that describes the hero’s journey, which is basic pattern found in many narratives from around the world, and comes in stages, and the stage I am in is the sixth which is called “the road of trials” ; which is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that I must undergo and overcome to get overhead, and get a step closer to my boon. The quote shown before is the dream of someone that is surprisingly very similar to my life; for I have to face obstacles everyday in life to get through the day or just get closer to the end of it. I face obstacles everyday and I manage to pass a lot and theres always a point where it gets overwhelming where I just cannot continue and must stop to take my breath, heal, and recharge to try to go on with life and its obstacles that stop me from getting to my life’s boons, and get can paralyzed sometimes, but the feeling of passing each obstacle is always very rewarding to me, it makes me feel like I am getting somewhere in life, and that im not just stuck with time passing by, wasting it.
Tragedy is an ever present part of life, whether it be illness, inability, death or anything else, it takes its toll on everyone. A very common tragedy found in literature and daily life is the loss of dreams, in Langston Hughes’s poem “A Dream Deferred” Hughes poses the question of what truly happens to a deferred dream: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up… Or fester like a sore… Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over...Or does it explode?” The outcome of lost dreams differs for each individual and their attitude. This is seen throughout America and also in The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner and The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
...dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.”
...s also the way that the crow flew the black flag of himself. There is the idea that the voice given to the crow was because he was the only one that could amend the link between heaven and earth. The way that he flew the flag of himself also allows the thought that there is a connection between the conquering the world and what the crow really did. The crow was given the qualities of greed and deception that humans have and used it for his own personal gain. The crow continued to demonstrate how one situation in life can be seen in two different ways depending on the person. Hughes creates many views of victory and defeat in his poems weather it is the death of innocence or idea that you can either win or lose in life, it all depends on how you see it. He makes these suggestions with the use of animal imagery, anthropomorphism and dark and rigid word choice.