The poem “The Summer I Was Sixteen” by Geraldine Connolly is written in past tense and is trying to create a memory. The words he uses paints a detailed picture of what it was like during the summer that we all were 16. Adults who read this may find that they experience happy memories while they ponder on their past. The poet is attempting to show his readers the beauty of being 16. How simple it was, and the fact that we had no responsibility to weigh down our summer. In this passage he is expressing the different kind of experiences he has had over the summer and I too have had unique events happen. One year I took a trip to Florida with my mother and brother, we met new people, where we encountered further affairs. My family and I met this gentlemen that got us into a water park for free and this relates to this text when he says, “ The turquoise pool rose to meet us…”.(Connolly 1). At the water park the water was surrounding us, as if it was a greeting my mother, brother, and I. The sun stares down at all of us while we run around having the time of our lives. In this written work he writes, “...then loosened thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine across sunburned shoulders…”.(Connolly 4). While being at this water park sunburns were a given. The sun shined down, piercing …show more content…
(Connolly 3). I remembered when my friends would come over and go swimming in my pool, that we would barbeque and eat loads of snacks. My step dad would cook hamburgers and hotdogs while we swam. When the food was ready we would all jump out of the pool and gobble down our food. We all had the mindset, that the myth that says you have to wait 30 minutes before entering the pool didn’t matter, because we challenged each other on who could get to the pool first. Summer foods is a huge part of celebrating the summer time with all your family and
The title of this piece, “Remembered Morning,” establishes what the speaker describes in the stanzas that follow as memory; this fact implies many themes that accompany works concerning the past: nostalgia, regret, and romanticism, for instance. The title, therefore, provides a lens through which to view the speaker’s observations.
In the beginning we find the family and its surrogate son, Homer, enjoying the fruits of the summer. Homer wakes to find Mrs. Thyme sitting alone, “looking out across the flat blue stillness of the lake”(48). This gives us a sense of the calm, eternal feeling the lake presents and of Mrs. Thyme’s appreciation of it. Later, Fred and Homer wildly drive the motor boat around the lake, exerting their boyish enthusiasm. The lake is unaffected by the raucous fun and Homer is pleased to return to shore and his thoughts of Sandra. Our protagonist observes the object of his affection, as she interacts with the lake, lazily resting in the sun. The lake provides the constant, that which has always been and will always be. As in summers past, the preacher gives his annual sermon about the end of summer and a prayer that they shall all meet again. Afterward, Homer and Fred take a final turn around the lake only to see a girl who reminds Homer of Sandra. “And there was something in the way that she raised her arm which, when added to the distant impression of her fullness, beauty, youth, filled him with longing as their boat moved inexorably past…and she disappeared behind a crop of trees.
In the essay “Once More to the Lake,” E.B. White, uses diction and syntax to reveal the main character’s attitude towards the lake in Maine. He has an uncertain attitude towards the lake throughout the essay because he is unsure of who he is between him and his son. On the ride there White, pondering, remembering old memories, keeps wondering if the lake is going to be the same warm place as it was when he was a kid. The lake is not just an ordinary lake to White, it’s a holy spot, a spot where he grew up every summer. “I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot-the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and the paths behind the camps” (29). White’s diction and syntax
A character’s attempt to recapture the past is important in many poems and stories. " Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove, succeeds at recapturing the poet's past. The poem's speaker is a the author and the addresse is the audience. The subject of the poem is one of remembrance. The tone is childlike, innocent and sadness and the theme is reminiscent. We discover the poet is describing a particular memory that shows reverence and longing for her grandfather, who is dead at the time she writes the poem. Dove recaptures memories as a child on a particular day and her interaction with her brother and grandparents especially her grandfather with great detail. The author recaptures the memory in the poem by looking at an old photo and describing, the things that were taking time at the place of the picture not exactly what is pticutred..
“All summer in a day” by Ray Bradbury, is a story about jealousy, this is shown through this quote: “When people hate on you, it's because you’ve got something they want.” All Summer in a day is set sometime in the future, maybe soon or maybe far, and the earth is overpopulated. Margot was sent from Earth to Venus at the age of four. Margot remembers the sun, and for that she is constantly bullied and harassed, since the other school children don’t remember the sun like she does, because they were just two years old. “All Summer in a Day” has some very good themes, like jealousy, regret, and bullying. Jealousy can cause people to do things to the victim who has, or is something the bully desires. William was jealous of Margot for seeing the sun, so he locks her in a closet where she will miss out on one of the most
Poems are often designed to express deep feelings and thoughts about a particular theme. In Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz, and Ruth Whitman’s poem, Listening to grownups quarreling, the theme of childhood is conveyed through their details, although we can neither see a face nor hear a voice. These poems are very much alike in their ideas of how their memories pertain to the attitudes of their childhood; however, the wording and tones of the two poems are distinct in how they present their memories. The two poems can be compared and contrasted through the author’s use of tone, imagery, and recollection of events; which illustrate each author’s memories of childhood.
In typical poetic construct, “Danny Boy” remains, at its core, a narrative poem whose main function is to “express interest we as human beings have in other human beings…by telling or attending to these stories”32. Weatherly uses this basic form throughout his four stanzas by expertly placing markers of time like the lines “The summer’s gone, and all of the flowers are dying” and then “But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,/Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,” in order to portray to the reader the feeling of watching the seasons change as time mercilessly marches on. Narrative form, however, is not merely about telling a story. It also is used so that “the reader will have a certain feeling toward it and will grasp a certain interpretation”33. Once again, Weatherly has expertly used descriptive words and phrases in order to convey the feeling of yearning throughout his lyrics. The repetition in the fourth phrase of the first stanza where “It’s you” is repeated34 is an example of the feeling Weatherly created. By repeated that Danny is the one who is forced to leave, Weatherly places more emphasis on his leaving instead of the potential for Danny to come back home, just as one would place more emphasis on the leaving of a loved one before they were going to leave or within the first few days or weeks of that person’s leaving.
As one gets older, memories that were once remembered in vivid detail are often forgotten, leaving behind only sadness, and the fragments of memories. The poem “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins demonstrates just that. “Once More to the Lake”, an essay by E.B. White discusses the idea of forgetting, as well. Both pieces contain a common theme of the sadness of forgetting once cherished memories.Therefore, both pieces use diction and syntax to show the sadness of forgetting old memories.
Sharon Olds’s poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” is an emotional piece that takes the reader back to the early days as the speaker’s existence was first thought about. The speaker is a female who describes the scene when her parents first met; she does this to show her wrestling thoughts as she wishes she could prevent this first encounter. She speaks about this topic because of the horrendous future of regret and sorrow that her family would experience, and also to contemplate her own existence if her parents had never met in May of 1937. Olds uses forms of contrasting figurative language, an ironic plot, and a regretful tone to convey the conflict between the speaker and her parents while she fully comes to understanding of past actions, and how these serve as a way for her to release her feelings on the emotional subject.
The story of Summer, by David Updike, is set during that idyllic time in life when responsibility is the last word on anyone's mind. And yet, as with all human affairs, responsibility is an ever-present and ever-necessary aspect to life. What happens when the protagonist, Homer, loses his awareness of a certain personal responsibility to maintain self-control? Homer's actions increasingly make him act foolishly, internally and externally. Also, how does Homer return to a sense of sanity and responsibility? To a degree, I would say that he does.
Popular contemporary author, George R.R. Martin, once said: “Summer will end soon, and my childhood as well.” The six poems discussed explore the different aspects of childhood, and portray childhood as a brief but magical ‘summer’-time, especially Piano and Hide and Seek, which emphasize this by alluding to the constrictions of adulthood and the warmth of juvenescence. While Gareth Owen’s Salford Road avoids any portrayals of adulthood, it might map the progression of childhood to adulthood like Vernon Scannell’s Hide and Seek, and thus accentuate the carefree lives that children lead. Meanwhile, Half Past Two by UA Fanthorpe and Houses by Robert Hull focus instead on the freedom and creativity childhood brings, and therefore presents the theme of childhood in a more playful light reminiscent of Martin’s summer. Finally, Soap Suds by Louis Macniece brings the briefness of childhood into focus, much like summer in the span of a year.
For breakfast, oatmeal porridge, banana, 2 half boiled eggs and milk. For lunch, carbohydrates, veggies and protein, whereas for dinner, the swimmer is opened to anything. On top of this a post swim snack of chocolate milk and fruit, a mid morning snack of fruit salad and yoghurt, and a second post swim snack of chocolate milk and a sandwich.
The smell of the restaurants faded and the new, refreshing aroma of the sea salt in the air took over. The sun’s warmth on my skin and the constant breeze was a familiar feeling that I loved every single time we came to the beach. I remember the first time we came to the beach. I was only nine years old. The white sand amazed me because it looked like a wavy blanket of snow, but was misleading because it was scorching hot. The water shone green like an emerald, it was content. By this I mean that the waves were weak enough to stand through as they rushed over me. There was no sense of fear of being drug out to sea like a shipwrecked sailor. Knowing all this now I knew exactly how to approach the beach. Wear my sandals as long as I could and lay spread out my towel without hesitation. Then I’d jump in the water to coat myself in a moist protective layer before returning to my now slightly less hot towel. In the water it was a completely different world. While trying to avoid the occasional passing jellyfish, it was an experience of
Salty tears of frustration streamed down my checks into the steaming mineral water that surrounded me. No one noticed; no one cared. I was just another stranger in the crowd drifting along in Glenwood Pool. There was only one difference; I was alone. Everyone else in the pool seemed to have someone, and everywhere I looked couples were kissing! If someone had been surveying the whole thing they would have found happiness in every corner ... then they would have seen me; sulking in my corner of the pool with fat, old, wrinkly, bald men swimming past me repeatedly.
The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism.... ... middle of paper ... ...