In my visual representation of Glen Harwood’s piece, “The Glass Jar”, I have highlighted the many themes represented in the poem. The themes I focused on the most are the contrast of good and evil and night and day, I also expressed the young boy’s transition from innocence to maturity, and the religious value that is subtly displayed within the “The Glass Jar”.
The recurrence of the glass jar itself could be perceived to represent the young boy’s faith in the sun and how he uses it to guide him. In the poem the glass jar broke “Then hope fell headlong from its eagle height.” I interpreted this to resemble the way his innocence was shattered. The boy realised that even when he had a jar of light the bad dreams could not be stopped. Once again
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Originally in catholic churches monsters and gargoyles were used to scare off evil. Harwood uses the phrase “exorcize monsters”, by doing so she displays an extensive knowledge and belief in a catholic background. Harwood presents religion through good. She does through her descriptive language techniques such as “bless”, “holy” and “resurrected”. Although these are subtle insights, these are both considered religious phrases. A religious context is visible in many aspects of the poem not just through her phrases of good and evil. For example, the obvious theme of dark and light symbolizes the good and evil in a young boy’s life. Additionally, the glass jar itself is what helps guide him away from evil and negative thoughts. This is most evident when the boy clings to the jar as what some may call a “safety net”. “He woke, recalled his jar of light” exhibits his absolute need for the jar and the way he relies on it. The only explanation for why he recalls it after a restless night of bad dreams is because it guides him to positive …show more content…
Throughout the whole entire poem emotive language is used to assist us in giving us a glimpse into the transition. In the poem Harwood states “and to worse dreams he went.” This is just one of many ways imagery and emotive language is used when describing the unsettling dreams. By discussing the harsh outlook we can see that the boy is clearly not as naive as he once was. He now recognises that his pure views at the beginning of the poem, “hoping to keep”, are not completely accurate. Due to his new outlook the boy is experiencing pain because he is seeing things he was not introduced to previously. The pain the child is experiencing is highlighted through powerful, emotive language like “pincer”, “claw” and “trident”. These words followed by one another create a harsh but necessary awakening to the feelings the boy is enduring at the
The book I read was The Island by Gary Paulsen. It is about a 15 year
At the beginning of the poem, the audience is able to witness an event of a young boy asking his father for story. While the father was deemed a “sad” man, it is later shown that his sadness can be contributed to his fear of his son leaving him. The structure then correlated to the point of going into the future. The future was able to depict what would happen to the loving duo. The father's dreams would become a reality and the son's love and admiration would cease to exist as he is seen screaming at his father. Wanting nothing to do with him. The young, pure child can be seen trying to back lash at his father for acting like a “god” that he can “never disappoint.” The point of this structure was not really a means of clarification from the beginning point of view, but more as an intro to the end. The real relationship can be seen in line 20, where it is mentioned that the relationship between the father and son is “an emotional rather than logical equation.” The love between this father and son, and all its complexity has no real solution. But rather a means of love; the feelings a parent has for wanting to protect their child and the child itself wanting to be set free from their parents grasp. The structure alone is quite complex. Seeing the present time frame of the father and son
In this novel Roxanne is a famous soprano opera singer from Chicago. Bel Canto, one of the main characters that I chose to study was Roxane Coss. Roxanne is a famous soprano opera singer from Chicago.
“Maybe it was / because the only time / I hit a baseball / it smashed the neon cross / on the church across / the street” (1-6). The readers are clearly presented with a scene of a boy playing baseball and accidentally breaking a church cross. The boy then explores and toys with the possible divine consequences for accidentally breaking a cross with a baseball. “Maybe it was the demon-stoked / rotisseries of purgatory / where we would roast / hundreds of years / for the smallest of sins” (11-15). Here the poet effectively uses imagery to show the reader how a child’s imagination may perceive hell. This may also show the impressionability of the Church on a freethinking child and how the combination can be profound on a young boy with internal conflicts. This can also apply to children’s fantasies and their carefree attitudes which allows them to blend what mindsets they were forced into with that of their
When the poem is read aloud, the explicit rhyme and rhythm of the lines becomes extremely obvious. In fact, the bouncy rhythm is so uplifting, it occasionally makes the audiences feel like it is too predictable and straight-forward. An example would be “bright with chrysolite”, the word “chrysolite” feels like it is forcefully implemented for the sake of the rhyme. This is somewhat similar to a children’s tale. Most children’s tale as we know it, conveys messages straightforwardly and are easily understood by children, it also has an amiable tone and a merry mood that engages the children 's attention. Similarly, the rhyme and rhythm of this poem is very obvious and explicit, creating a delightful, casual mood that appeals to a young audience. Even though the legend dealt with deep insights about parenting that are intricate and puzzling, the father delivered it in such a gratifying, simple manner that made even the most dark and dreadful matters: like the description of precarious beasts and vicious monsters to sound like a blissful adventure of friendly animals. The sole purpose of this contradiction between the tone and message is to make this seemingly strong and serious topic more tolerable and captivating to the son of the father. Unsensible, impulsive youth is very similar to restless children, a long insipid lecture about deep insights is very difficult for them to buy into. In the same time, a harsh, threatening warning will only make them obey unwillingly, and creating a doubtful relationship will make them uncomfortable to communicate or appeal to their parents. Clearly, the percipient father recognized the ineffectiveness of these unsuitable parenting methods. Instead, he conveyed the message in a uncomplicated, friendly way that made his son to accept his teachings more comfortably. A
trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and
Diamant has Dinah effectively tell her story from three different narrative perspectives. The bulk of the novel is related by Dinah in first person, providing a private look at growing up and personal tragedy: "It seemed that I was the last person alive in the world" (Diamant 203). Dinah tells the story that she says was mangled in the bible.
Poets Louise Gluck and Percy Bysshe Shelley use symbols and poetic techniques to convey themes of human experience such as death and haunting memories. In the poem, “Gretel in darkness,” Louise Gluck draws out a childhood fairytale and suffuses it with two fundamental human experiences: guilt and fear. In “Ozymandias”, Percy Bysshe Shelley discusses the idea that time and nature stop for no one. The poems reinforce the main themes through a variety of techniques. Louise Gluck’s, “Gretel in darkness” is a haunting poem about the horrors the speaker, Gretel, faces and tries so hard to forget.
“And as all the undesirables contents left the jar, Pandora catches hope before it can escape.”- Theogony, Hesiod. Pandora’s Box is a story that has been told for many generations, this time it is retold by Louis Untermeyer. The story tells how Zeus gathered certain gods together to make the perfect human alive that will be sent down with a dowry that will destroy Prometheus brother, Epiretheus. They name the human Pandora, she given many different traits that will shape how her life will go down on earth. The story then goes on to tell you how hope is something that can never be last or taken from you, even after something tragic.
In a dream the boy has an “Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, he’d have God for his father, and never want joy” (Blake 19-20). This gives the boy the motivation that he needs to continue his life and so as he awoke, he “was happy and warm; / [and] if [he did his] duty [he] need not fear harm” (Blake 23-24). The young boy decides to suffer through his brutal everyday life so that one day he can go to heaven, where he will be happy. These two polar opposite approaches to dealing with the misfortune of the characters is what shapes both the theme and tone of the poems. Another similarity between these two poems is their extensive use of imagery.
In the poem The Glass Jar we witness the heart-wrenching episode in a little boy’s life, where he is made to discover a distressing reality. Putting his faith first in a monstrance and then in his own mother, he finds himself being betrayed by both. With the many allusions to nature (for example the personification of the sun and references to animals and woods and so on) Gwen Harwood constructs a dynamic backdrop which allow the responder to dwell on the subtle shifts in the child’s personality. The setting is the terrain of nightmares and dreams, where conscious will is suppressed and the reigns are handed to the subconscious mind.
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
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.... ...
Right away in the first lines of the poem we learn through the child narrator his life is about to change dramatically for the worse. “’When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!'” (1-2). The use of the word ‘weep’ is a clever play on words to get the reader to understand the grief the boy experienced and also foreshadows what is to come next. If you add the letter “s” to “weep” the word becomes “sweep”. Repeating the words “weep, weep, weep” almost sounds like a chorus of a song or maybe even the raising of an alarm. We know the child was small, otherwise he would not have been able to clean chimneys, but it is possible also that the child was so young that he couldn’t even pronounce the word “sweep” correctly and instead pronounced it “weep” which would account for the poet’s use of the words “scarcely cry” (2) and “tongue” (3). We get the impression that th...