Edward Hopper's Nighthawks takes place in a lonely city that is lifeless between the streets, the diner, and the buildings that arise behind it. While the light within the diner aluminates through the windows and latches on to the dark gloomy streets, four people sit in inaudible silence as the chef cleans out a glass. A woman with a red dress that matches her flowing hair sits looking uninterested and exhausted while she examines her hand. Meanwhile, two men in black suits with stern postures beam over the red diner bar. The diner separates the four people from the loneliness of late night streets. Even though, the four people still feel the loneliness that creeps upon them from the shadows of the night. Each of them contemplate about their fears, problems, and life trials while sitting only a couple of feet away from one another. The darkness of the night correlates with the empty sensation of loneliness that these people encounter.
There are many signs of exact repetitions within this visual analysis. The buildings that are concealed behind the street and the diner contain a sequence of windows that could resemble apartments. In which they could reside above a neglected local business. In comparison to the diner with seats that duplicate in rows, it could be discovered that the diner is the center of
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The light beaming through the window represents that loneliness and despair can be consumed by positivity, if the right environment is in place. The warmth of the light inside of the diner can represent comfort to the people within it. It creates a separation from the cold darkness that lingers outside. The dimmed streets are a metaphor of the emptiness that each of the people portrayed in the image are
I think the main idea the narrators is trying to emphasize is the theme of opposition between the chaotic world and the human need for community with a series of opposing images, especially darkness and light. The narrator repeatedly associates light with the desire to clear or give form to the needs and passions, which arise out of inner darkness. He also opposes light as an idea of order to darkness in the world, the chaos that adults endure, but of which they normally cannot speak to children.
Winters, Kelly. "Critical Essay on Night." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works. Ed. David M. Galens, Jennifer Smith, and Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
I also think it is a great insight to why people in the town only know about fishing looking at the town through the picture one can see that the town's right of the see. The bar picture represents The Crow’s nest which is the crew’s home away from home, or a second home. This represents how a home is made not by a building but by when one is surrounded by those you trust your life with like the employes in the Crow’s
The first few lines describe how his cousin started out in the glow of the gas station where he was, and him driving off to an open area in a town with the stars above him. The light here represented safety. Colum has started off in a situation where he was very close to this light: where there was, most likely, a store and other people. After he is done at the gas station he then drives away. Heaney gives us the image of the lampposts passing by as he drove. This shows how the light was now outside of where he was but it was still with him. Finally he drives up to Netownhamilton, passing some forests on the way and place where the only light that he is exposed to is the stars that are shining down at him from the sky. This now represents how the imminent safety that he had at the public gas station was now gone and he was isolated, in these hills only lit by stars. The safety in the light is now, far way: leaving him exposed to anything "outside". The image of the first few lines is of Colum now isolated, surrounded...
On display at the Art Institute of Chicago, Nighthawks is an oil and canvas work that represents Edward Hopper at his most iconic and popular. Hopper more than often drew on his immediate surroundings for in...
The opening paragraph of the story contains a metaphorical passage: "I stared at it in the swinging light of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside"(349). This reference is significant because it is a contrast to the dismal society that the narrator and his brother Sonny live in. The darkness is the portrayal of the community of Harlem that is trapped, in their surroundings by physical, economic, and social barriers. The obvious nature of darkness has overcome the occupants of the Harlem community. The narrator, an algebra teacher, observes a depressing similarity between his students and his brother, Sonny. This is true because the narrator is fearful for his students falling into a life of crime and drugs, as did his brother. The narrator notes that the cruel realities of the streets have taken away the possible light from the lives of his brother and his students. The narrator makes an insightful connection between the darkness that Sonny faced and the darkness that the young boys are presently facing. This is illustrated in the following quote:
Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization. Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1 Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2 Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing. In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for. The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine. Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women. The room that Marian visits is dark,...
The first half of the poem creates a sense of place. The narrator invites us to go “through certain half-deserted streets” on an evening he has just compared to an unconscious patient (4). To think of an evening as a corpselike event is disturbing, but effective in that the daytime is the time of the living, and the night time is the time of the dead. He is anxious and apprehensive, and evokes a sense of debauchery and shadows. Lines 15-22 compare the night’s fog to the actions of a typical cat, making the reader sense the mystery of a dark, foggy night in a familiar, tangible way. One might suppose that “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” refers to a room in a brothel, where the seedy women for hire talk about elevated art between Johns (13). The narrator creates a tension in the image of dark deserted streets and shady activities in the dark.
His own loneliness, magnified so many million times, made the night air colder. He remembered to what excess, into what traps and nightmares, his loneliness had driven him; and he wondered where such a violent emptiness might drive an entire city. (60)
To begin with, the understanding of loneliness and desolation is identified through the use of the dark night in one of Frost’s most popular poems, “Acquainted With the Night.” Briefly, this poem revolves around a lonely speaker who is endlessly taking a walk beyond the city he or she lives in but is not able to locate anything or anyone that would comfort the speaker in his or her stage of depression. Loneliness and isolation are actually two of the crucial themes associated with this poem. The speaker is being “acquainted with the night,” because the night shares the same emotion that the speaker carries. They carry the same emotion because from personal references, the nighttime is often referred to as the time of reflection, sadness, loneliness, and indeed isolation. There is and evident choice of diction to depict isolation like, “the furthest city light,” (L3) as the speaker grows farther away from the city and loses light, which contributes more to the idea of the dark night. This also heightens the understanding of the speaker’s depression and isolation. “The s...
The first setting introduced in the story is a subway. The subway is where the narrator gets the news that Sonny has been arrested. The gloomy atmosphere of the subway adds to the narrator’s sense of dread. The third line of paragraph one reads, “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.” The theme of darkness is also mentioned and reoccurs throughout the text.
The artist used colors and light to draw one’s attention to the diner and the people in it and then to the only character not facing the viewer. This emphasis with the use of colors and light means “that our attention is drawn more to certain parts of a composition than to others” (Getlein 127); when the emphasis is on “a relatively small, clearly defined area” (Getlein 127) this is called a focal point. The focal point in this piece of art is not only the brightly lit diner sitting on the corner of an empty intersection, but also within the diner, where the eye is drawn to the individuals in the diner. In addition, the woman stands out in particular because of her red dress and the bright color of her
The repetition of the word "blind" introduces the theme of light and darkness. The streets of Dublin are described as "being blind"(2236) suggesting they do not lead anywhere. The houses are personified as being sombre and having "brown imperturbable faces"(2236), creating the shift from a literal setting to a state of mind. The streets remain silent until the boys are set free from school (2236), comparing the school to a prison: mundane and repetitive, and comparing their departure from school to a type of liberation for the children.... ...
It takes a while to process everything that is going on, but once you see the whole picture, the smaller details come out and are noticeable, even within the visually assaulting Square. The tall buildings are the first things you recognize; just the sheer size of them makes you feel like a tiny, unremarkable speck of dust. Each has its own character and was created with a unique design. A uniting factor of the buildings is the windows. The glass surface reflects the afternoon sun’s light, making a giant mirror from the buildings’ sides. The mirrors create an enormous hall of other building’s distorted reflections. Hanging from the buildings are advertisements for everything under the sun. Many billboards are for the different musicals that are going to be shown at Broadway soon; the classics, like West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, Annie, and Wicked, are always there. Others are announcing the release of a new HP laptop, or Samsung HDTV. Some unveil a high fashion store’s new fall line of sweaters and jeans. Of course, there is the obligatory Coke commercial, telling you to enjoy a refreshing bottle of ice cold Coke.
The coffee shop I decided to do my observation was the well known Starbucks just a couple blocks away. The reason I chose this coffee shop was because of it 's style inside, it attracted me. For example, one side of the wall has a glass top, and the lower part of the wall, made of wood and painted in a bright red color, which was one thing that attracted me and stood out. Outside of the shop people can actually see through the glass wall and get to see what’s happening inside of the coffeeshop. By the entrance you see these two red ceiling lamps which were shaped in a flower bud and these two tall green plants. Once you were in, on the right of the shop there was a counter with food and things to put in your drinks such as milk, sugar, chocolate, etc and the colors and how the food was displayed and served was appealing to my eyes. Behind that counter there was a long table with different electronic devices plugged into the wall. On the middle of the those there is a fridge just for ice and when I turned to the other side and I noticed a big menu on the wall. Further more into the shop, there was an area filled with tables, chairs, and sofas. The tables were in different shapes, one was round and the others rectangular, also there was four bamboo baskets and I looked around and noticed that the walls in that area were decorated with paintings.