Speaker for the Dead Essays

  • Character Analysis: Speaker For The Dead

    587 Words  | 2 Pages

    Speaker for the Dead taught me that I have been and will always be my own main character, but that I should read the books of others. Ironically, Ender Wiggin, Ender the Xenocide, and the Speaker for the Dead are all the same person. Ender Wiggin: hero of the world who wiped out the entire Bugger race for the sake of mankind. Ender the Xenocide: the face of evil who slaughtered millions of innocent people just because they were different. Speaker for the Dead: the most understanding

  • Summary Of The Vacuum By Howard Nemerov

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    Vacuum” by Howard Nemerov, the vacuum cleaner comes to represent so much more than an everyday cleaning tool. In the three verse five line poem, an old vacuum in the closet is used to represent the speaker’s dead wife. She was the homemaker and now that she is gone the house is very dirty. The speaker is full of grief over his wife’s death and uses the vacuum in this short poem to commemorate his wife and what she stood for. “The Vacuum” uses figurative language such as word choice, symbolism, personification

  • Analysis Of The Starry Night By Anne Sexton

    1945 Words  | 4 Pages

    mental illness and her numerous encounters with suicidal feelings. Sexton became known as a confessional poet because of her autobiographical style of writing. The main themes of her poetry are depression and death. “Wanting to Die”, “The Truth the Dead Know”, “The Abortion”, and “The Starry Night”, are all examples of Sexton’s writing that portray her central poetic themes. Through the use of vivid visual imagery, especially natural

  • Analysis Of William E. Stafford's 'Traveling Through The Dark'

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    left on roads relates to the problem the speaker has to face in the poem by William E. Stafford, “Traveling Through the Dark”. The speaker encounters a dead pregnant doe that has been hit and left on a narrow, mountain road. He has a dilemma between whether to save the fawn or roll the doe

  • The Hollow Men

    542 Words  | 2 Pages

    beginning epigraphs and supported throughout this section.First, there is a reference to Joseph Conrad's The heart of darkness wherein it is said that "Mistah Kurtz- he dead." Kurtz was the reflection or the Shadow of the protagonist and as such it wasn't that he was physically dead, but spiritually dead. Like Kurtz, the speakers claim that they "are the hollow men," claiming a spiritual emptiness. Still, they don't claim to a complete emptiness for in the second line they also that they "are the

  • Oh Captain My Captain Poem Analysis

    1123 Words  | 3 Pages

    the first stanza the speaker is overjoyed with happiness and is celebrating their return home. “O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done / the ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won” (L1-2). They have won their victory and freedom over whoever they were in battle with, and they are rejoicing their victory. However, by the end of the first stanza the speaker lets the audience know the captain he speaks about is actually deceased. At this point the speaker is in denial that his

  • Theme Of Death In The Spirits Of The Dead

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    of the Dead” and “The Sleeper,” relates to Poe’s theory and is used express his differential views about death. Although both “Spirits of the Dead” and “The Sleeper” display dark, yet dream-like aspects of death through figurative language, “Spirits of the Dead” illustrates a more optimistic idea that the dead still surrounds the living, while “The Sleeper” ends with a resignation that the living should move on from the dead because the dead will never return. In “The Spirits of the Dead,” Poe uses

  • Teacher Analysis Poem

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    certainly lyric it is irregular in rhythm with a general rhyme scheme of “abcb”, Hughes divides the 16 lines into four quatrains, or four stanzas of four lines. Enjambment, or continuing a thought to the next line is used in the last two lines, when the speaker fears that “the darkness teach/Me that nothing matters.” There is not a set meter or feet, ranging from a spondaic monometer in lines such as “No lights gleam” to trochaic tetrameter in lines such as “In this narrow bed of earth”. There is also an

  • An Explication Of William Stafford's Traveling Through The Dark

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Dead Dear” An Explication of William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark” The main theme of William Stafford’s blank verse poem “Travelling through the Dark” is the juncture of technology and nature. The author considers near the connection between technology and nature without telling a certain judgment. Nevertheless, Stafford offers the readers to reflect cautiously with him about the consequences of the world that individuals are generating. The opening stanza of the poem sets the tone and

  • Traveling Through The Dark Diction

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    uses and enjambment that separates deer from dead, “Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road”. This makes the first line that makes the poem seem like a description of nature and scenery that a person might see at night, and instantly makes the theme slightly dark and sad. The edge of the road can be connected with life and its many twist and turns, but here it signifies the end of a life. Later when the Speaker says, “It is usually best to roll them into

  • Edgar Allan Poe's 'For Annie'

    1091 Words  | 3 Pages

    as something to be averse to, but instead as something inviting. A rescue in and of itself; the only thing able to save the speaker from the painful throngs of life. The poem begins with “Thank Heaven! The crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness, Is over at last.” Without any other information, the reader would naturally draw the conclusion that the speaker has been cured of a deadly sickness. However, when they continue reading

  • Poem Analysis: O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

    570 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem basically tells a story about the death of the captain of a ship men crew. The speaker of the poem is a sailor of the ship crew. He grieves mournfully about the death of his respectfully captain. Gloomy and dreary atmospheres are vividly sensed throughout the poem as the speaker lamenting the captain’s death. The poem begins with the speaker calling out his captain that they have finally made it home after their “fearful trip”. The boat is in sight of land and the people in the shore watch

  • Marriage in Christina Rossetti's Promises Like Pie-Crust and Edgar Allan Poe's Bridal Ballad

    2718 Words  | 6 Pages

    Like Pie-Crust and Poe's Bridal Ballad In Christina Rossetti's "Promises Like Pie-Crust" and Edgar Allan Poe's "Bridal Ballad" female speakers encounter the milestone of marriage. Facing strong pressures from society, Rossetti's speaker refuses marriage in three well-reasoned arguments which are veiled in a guise of superciality. Conversely, Poe's speaker accepts marriage, but by the end of the poem realizes the dire consequences of her decision. Rossetti knows what she wants and does not want

  • The Man He Killed Poem Tone

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem, "The Man He Killed" begins with the speaker saying that if he and the man could have met in the inn, then they could have had a few drinks and maybe chatted. It is clear that the person in context met the speaker once, but something happened that could not allow them another chance of meeting. That's why he wishes they could have met in the inn (line 1-4). The speaker expresses himself in a bitter tone that reveals much of regret and wishes yet the turn of event in the poem later shows

  • Summary Of The Vacuum By Howard Nemerov

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    use of symbolism, the speaker is able to portray a common household item, a vacuum, as being a physical reminder of his dead wife. The speaker, a widower, also personifies the vacuum and his heart in order to express his sorrow. The poem uses symbolism and personification in order to show how death seems to stop the passage of time. The speaker uses the vacuum as a symbol throughout the poem. In the beginning, the vacuum is an object used for cleaning the house. The speaker says, “The house is so

  • Analysis Of Tom Disch's Birdsong Interpreted

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    Humans and the Mark on Nature Tom Disch in his poem "Birdsong Interpreted" takes an aggressive approach on attacking an intruder in hopes of scaring them away and reclaiming the peaceful homestead. In "Dead Armadillos" Gail White calmly, yet effectively discusses what she witnesses on her daily commute. On the surface the two poems may seem as if they would be two contrasting pieces, however with further investigation it becomes apparent just how comparable these two poems are. While both poems

  • The Relations Sex and Death in Poe’s “For Annie” and Browning’s “Porphyrias Lover”

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    death. He is masochists, who takes pleasure in envisioning himself dead and resolves his own sexual worries by visualizing a situation in which he is motionless and immobile, while his lover takes on a maternal role. In Robert Browning’s “Porphyrias Lover,” on the other hand, the speaker is vicious, resolving his problems through murdering his lover and rationalizing his actions in terms of an imagined post-sexual state. Both speakers believe they are honorable figures and victims of their own desires

  • Moral Justification In The Ender Series By Orson Scott Card

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    This creates a scale of justification, a spectrum that Orson Scott Card explores using the Ender series. Card uses the first three books of the series (excluding books from the Shadow series), Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide to explore this concept of the moral justification. Through portrayals of alien species, the government and figures of authority, and his main character Ender, Card reveals various takes on the philosophy of moral justification

  • Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus

    1358 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although the imagery and diction and allusions are all dark and dreary, it seems that the speaker’s attitude towards death is positive. The speaker longs for death, and despises the fact the she is continually raised up out of it. From the title, Plath gives us immediately the theme of the poem. The title is a reference to a man in the New Testament that had been dead for four days, and was raised to life by Jesus. Plath uses this literary allusion to establish right off the bat that she is going to

  • Language Loss: Native American Languages

    2009 Words  | 5 Pages

    French. English has the highest number of speakers with 215 million. Spanish is the second most spoken language with 28 million speaker. The French language is the third most spoken language with a million and a half speakers in the U.S (Many Languages). If one goes through the list of languages that are spoken in the U.S. They would recognize familiar languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Greek. Each of these languages have their own large number of speakers. But if one is continuing through the list