The Sea as a Metaphor for Love in Valediction

623 Words2 Pages

In this poem, the author tells of a lost love. In order to convey his overwhelming feelings, Heaney tries to describe his emotions through something familiar to everyone. He uses the sea as a metaphor for love, and is able to carry this metaphor throughout the poem. The metaphor is constructed of both obvious and connotative diction, which connect the sea and the emotions of love. In the first line of the poem, Heaney says Lady with the frilled blouse and simple tartan skirt. At first, it simply appears that he is describing her clothes. Tartan, however, has a second meaning of a small ship. Therefore, before Heaney even mentions the sea, he compares the lady in the poem to a ship. In the next line, he uses several words related to the sea and ships, such as rode,anchored,rocked,balance,and unmoored.î By using the descriptive words buck, bound and pitched, the reader can sense the uneasiness and danger of both the sea and of love. Pitched is also a connotative word, because it can be used as both a verb and a word to describe the sound of the lad...

Show More
Related

  • The Twain Juxtaposition

    658 Words  | 2 Pages

    The juxtaposition of the Titanic and the environment in the first five stanzas symbolizes the opposition between man and nature, suggesting that nature overcomes man. The speaker characterizes the sea as being “deep from human vanity” (2) and deep from the “Pride of Life that planned” the Titanic. The diction of “human vanity” (2) suggests that the sea is incorruptible by men and then the speaker’s juxtaposition of vanity with “the

    Read More

  • Themes in The Boat by Alistair MacLeod

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...He is still anchored to his past and transmits the message that one makes their own choices and should be satisfied with their lives. Moreover, the story shows that one should not be extremely rigid and refuse to change their beliefs and that people should be willing to adapt to new customs in order to prevent isolation. Lastly, reader is able to understand that sacrifice is an important part of life and that nothing can be achieved without it. Boats are often used as symbols to represent a journey through life, and like a captain of a boat which is setting sail, the narrator feels that his journey is only just beginning and realizes that everyone is in charge of their own life. Despite the wind that can sometimes blow feverishly and the waves that may slow the journey, the boat should not change its course and is ultimately responsible for completing its voyage.

    Read More

  • ?The Wreck of the Hesperus? and The Perfect Storm

    801 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some of the most intriguing stories of today are about people’s adventures at sea and the thrill and treachery of living through its perilous storms and disasters. Two very popular selections about the sea and its terrors are The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Longfellow. Comparison between the two works determines that “The Wreck of the Hesperus” tells a more powerful sea-disaster story for several different reasons. The poem is more descriptive and suspenseful than The Perfect Storm, and it also plays on a very powerful tool to captivate the reader’s emotion. These key aspects combine to give the reader something tangible that allows them to relate to the story being told and affects them strongly.

    Read More

  • Comparing Sea Rose By H. D And Vague Poem By Elizabeth Bishop

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poems “Sea Rose” by H.D and “Vague Poem” by Elizabeth Bishop were both written by two women who took over the Victorian era. H.D’s works of writing were best known as experimental reflecting the themes of feminism and modernism from 1911-1961. While Bishop’s works possessed themes of longing to belong and grief. Both poems use imagery, which helps to make the poem more concrete for the reader. Using imagery helps to paint a picture with specific images, so we can understand it better and analyze it more. The poems “Sea Rose” and “Vague Poem” both use the metaphor of a rose to represent something that can harm you, even though it has beauty.

    Read More

  • I Started Early Took My Dog Summary

    1213 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...a and her response to it at the beginning of the fifth stanza. The speaker being “followed” by the sea shows its hunt after her. Repeating the pronoun “He” alerts us to her continuing terror after she escapes the immediate site of the vulnerability. The sexualized motions of the sea follows the speaker’s that signal a transformation from the sexual aggressor to just a responsive partner from the sea’s part. When the speaker’s sexual urges and energies awakened or started, they outstrip those of the previous aggressive sea and exceed them in enjoinment. The repetition of “he” serves to discriminate the speaker’s state of arousal from the sea. When the speaker defines herself in terms “ankle” and “shoes,” she domesticates limits the irresistible sea with only these two phrases “his Silver Heel” and “ Pearl” because she restricts the sea to rise higher that her ankle.

    Read More

  • Casino Gambling Forecast

    1768 Words  | 4 Pages

    If digital television is not yet a significant boon for the gambling industry, it will be soon enough. Digital television is a new broadcasting technology that is expected to transform the television experience. By banding information into digital bits, broadcasters will be able to stream more product into the home than was previously available with analog broadcast technology. Wholesale sales reached $17 billion in 2005, and a household penetration rate of 15%, according to the CEA.

    Read More

  • Watching Television: Social Stereotype

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    In spite of the social stereotype that watching TV is bad there are many advantages of TV which either people don't care or don't want to care. But the fact is either people love or hate TV they cannot avoid it and it keeps on playing the major role in their life as a mass communication media, entertainer and education provider. The new generation of the TV is the smart TVs which even simplifies the three aspects gaming, web surfing and watching TV and they are eye friendly as well which only keeps on making it better. It is not wrong to say that TV is the major weapon to be in touch with the new technology and the things that are going around the world before being left behind.

    Read More

  • Change and Changlessness

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    Second of all, in the poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree”, the reader sometimes fails to understand what is really happening. “I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water...

    Read More

  • Love In Shakespeare's 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning'

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Shakespeare 's 'Sonnet 73 ' highlights the continuous anxiety; of speaker the due to the inevitability of old age. Through various poetic techniques Shakespeare underlines that the deterioration of time is arbitrary; and it therefore naturally decays beauty and life. However there is a sense that he expresses love as a stronger force which overcomes the constant decline of youth and time. This is strongly represented by the use of seasonal imagery. Similarly, John Donne utilizes formal aspects in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning ' to convey the same view of the strong force of love. Unlike, Shakespeare 's constant reflection on deterioration; Donne presents arguments to reassure his lover that their love can overcome all aspects.

    Read More

  • Symbolism and Devices in Stephen Crane's The Open Boat

    1931 Words  | 4 Pages

    The opening paragraph of the story emphasizes the limitations of the individual’s vision of nature.  From the beginning, the four characters in the dingy do not know “the colors of the sky,” but all of them know “the colors of the sea.”  This opening strongly suggests the symbolic situations in which average peo...

    Read More

  • Use of Poetic Devices in Two Love Poems

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    Relief,” Millay used a similar form of imagery to describe the rain that resulted in the remembrance of the persona’s love: “…I miss him in the weeping of the rain…” (Millay, 3). This description of the rain not only helped better visualize the rain itself, but also emphasized the sorrowful and desolate undertone of the poem. Another exemplification of visual imagery utilized in Millay’s poem was used to illustrate the tides: “…I want him at the shrinking of the tide…” (Millay, 4). The retreating of the tides was easily concei...

    Read More

  • Started Early - Took My Dog, by Emily Dickinson

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through metaphors, the speaker proclaims of her longing to be one with the sea. As she notices The mermaids in the basement,(3) and frigates- in the upper floor,(5) it seems as though she is associating these particular daydreams with her house. She becomes entranced with these spectacles and starts to contemplate suicide.

    Read More

  • Informative Essay On New Media

    1410 Words  | 3 Pages

    First of all we are going to go back in the past, talk a bit about “television” history, and how television became something necessary in a household.

    Read More

  • Digital Piracy

    369 Words  | 1 Pages

    All around the world people connected to the internet are downloading free digital content through P2P file sharing software.

    Read More

  • Dill Pickle

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    “A Dill Pickle” is a story of a run in between two old lovers. The story begins with a nameless man eating a snack at a Chinese Pagoda. While waiting he sees a woman in the distance, as she walks forwards he sees Vera, a woman he dated six years prior. He invites her to sit down and have something to eat with him. She takes him up on the offer and sits down. They begin talking about the usual and then about the times that they spent together. He reminds her of the day they spent at Kew Gardens. What the man remembers of the day was how he was ignorant to all that she spoke to him. What Vera remembered was him confessing his love to her and telling her that no matter how much he lover her, she would never love him back.

    Read More

More about The Sea as a Metaphor for Love in Valediction

Open Document