There are two things in life one must understand in order to survive: One, it is better to give than to receive. Two, you cannot save people, you just have to learn to love them. Life is a beautiful horror film that we live everyday. With time, we as humans learn things we never knew, and forget things we once understood. We have this tendency to want to take control of EVERY situation, and sometimes ignore the fact that some things are completely out of our control. The say the as we age, we also gain wisdom, and while this is true, it is only true to an extent. In “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur, we are able to see the fact that life is a struggle that we cannot avoid, how easy it is to forget what it’s like to struggle, and what it is like to stand idly by while watching others go through times of turbulence.
In “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur, one is able to realize what the real battle in life is: watching the one that you love suffer, and having to stand idly by. Jane Nelson once provided the following statement, “The worst thing one can ever experience is watching someone drown and not being able to convince them that they can save themselves by just standing up.” In “The Writer”, we see this conclusion being made as the author compares his daughter to the trapped bird. Wilbur explains the story of a time that a bird had become trapped inside the room, but due to fear the bird possessed, Mr. Wilbur was unable to assist the bird in its escape, but rather forced to watch the suffering from a distance while hoping God has mercy. Mr. Wilbur describes the birds state as, “We watched the sleek, wild, dark and iridescent creature batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove to the hard floor, or the desktop, and wait t...
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...is race we call life: death.
“The power to cause pain is the only power that matters. The power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill, then you are subject to those who can. And nothing, and no one, will ever save you.” Enders Game. This evil power spoken of, is the power possessed by life. Richard Wilbur’s “The Writer”, is a prime example of what happens when life runs its course, is forgotten, and wins the race after tying your hands behind your back. Life plays dirty and consequently, some situations are out of our control, but the important thing is to never forget, because then in order to remember, one must have a rude awakening. As shown in “The Writer”, the only way to survive this masquerade of life, is to simply love, because you cannot save. So it’s up to you to realize, remember and try not to subconsciously write the end of your story…
Both awe-inspiring and indescribable is life, the defined “state of being” that historians and scholars alike have been trying to put into words ever since written language was first created. And in the words of one such intellectual, Joshua J. Marine, “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”. Essentially, he is comparing life to a bowl of soup. Without challenges or hardships into which we can put forth effort and show our potential, it becomes a dull and flavorless broth. But for characters in novels like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
“The Dark Night of the Soul” is a chapter in the book, Writing at the End of the World by Richard Miller. In this chapter, Miller gives many examples of how reading and writing help the world, and he asks questions to find out if literature, and his teachings cause a change in the present day. Miller states, “Why bother with reading and writing when the world is so obviously going to hell?”(Dark Night of the Soul 433). I believe that this is the best statement to summarize what Miller is trying to get across. Why read? Why write? Is it going to matter in the end? Does it truly help anyone? These are all questions that arise from the author while reading this chapter.
Throughout the lives of most people on the planet, there comes a time when there may be a loss of love, hope or remembrance in our lives. These troublesome times in our lives can be the hardest things we go through. Without love or hope, what is there to live for? Some see that the loss of hope and love means the end, these people being pessimistic, while others can see that even though they feel at a loss of love and hope that one day again they will feel love and have that sense of hope, these people are optimistic. These feelings that all of us had, have been around since the dawn of many. Throughout the centuries, the expression of these feelings has made their ways into literature, novels, plays, poems, and recently movies. The qualities of love, hope, and remembrance can be seen in Emily Bronte’s and Thomas Hardy’s poems of “Remembrance” “Darkling Thrush” and “Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave?”
There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.
Babies learn everything they need to survive in the culture of today from their parents. Monkey see monkey do. When children's minds develop and grow, all they know is the world of their family and perhaps a few other adults. Everything children catch in their young eyes and ears teaches them another lesson. Adults can teach about how to care for the sick, hospitality, and good manners but they also may pass on racist views and preconceived ideas. They seem to focus on the death, war, and financial problems; all present in every day life of characters in William Saroyan's novel, The Human Comedy. These problems may completely engulf the mind, body, and soul of busy men and women. Adults should take a second and watch their sons and daughters who have much more to teach but not enough pride and experience to lecture their brilliant ideas. According to Saroyan, children are the experts on living life, while adults have the greater knowledge of death. Children take time to recognize the smaller joys of life and therefore can live life with a worthwhile meaning. Adults have gained the experience to educate children on coping with sadness and humbling far out hopes and dreams. Characters such as Mrs. Macauley, Miss Hicks, and Mr. Spangler all play an important role in teaching vital lessons. Adults, in this novel, also state some pointers on how to truly live life, while many adults do not follow these teachings at all. To survive the severe ups and downs of our fluctuating world, adults and children must both teach and learn from each other.
The narrator watches helplessly as the bird tries to escape wondering “how did it get into this terrible place?” (520). As the narrator watches the bird, he slowly begins to turn into the bird himself. All of the paralleled imagery comes together when he physically turns into a bird. The narrator and the bird are in the exact same situation and the narrator has slowly begun to view his own situation through the bird’s eyes. In an airport there are so many factors that travelers have zero control over. In the narrator’s case, he is trapped in the airport because his flight has been delayed over and over. The bird is trapped because it flew in somehow and cannot seem to find it’s way out. The narrator, frustrated with the other people in the airport for not paying attention to the bird or his similar problem screams, “Help me! I want to go home! I don’t belong here!” (520), but no one will help because they either don’t have control either, or they do not care. He helplessly awaits his plane to come, just like the bird helplessly waits for a person to come and save it. All of the imagery about the airport at the beginning comes back to the narrator’s panic attack. He screams for help as loud as he can but no one listens. He becomes just one person among the large crowd of people in the airport. Everybody has his or her own things to do and places to be. The randomness and chaos of the airport leads the narrator to feel helpless and unheard. Both the narrator and the bird have become trapped and
Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of famed novel, The Scarlet Letter, came from a long line of puritans. The family name of Hawthorne, was one of strict puritanistic ideals, which translated into topics covered in his literary works. When Hawthorne’s father died of yellow fever at sea when he was only four, his mother became overly protective and pushed him to isolation. All of Hawthorne’s fictional characters are believed to be figurative confrontations of good and evil. Almost all of his characters can be classified as one of these two types. Most of Hawthorne's early stories were published anonymously in magazines and giftbooks, 19th century, lavishly decorated compilations of collected essays, short fiction, and poetry. Through both emotional and physical drama and literary elements such as symbolism, Nathaniel Hawthorne conveys his thoughts about who can truly judge a person for their sins, saying that it is not society’s job to judge but rather God himself.
During the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne graced America with The Scarlet Letter. Out of all of his works, the commended author’s most enduring and well-known novel is The Scarlet Letter. The narrative was set in the 1600s around the same time as the historical Salem Witch Trials. Over the years, this classic story has been reviewed by numerous essayists. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most popular novel reflects the injustice of the Salem Witch Trials and received notable analyses from major literary critics.
When Richard Wilbur was ten, a very traumatic thing happened when he lost his dog. This event led him eventually to write the poem “The Pardon,” which is based on that event. He shows us in this poem that death is nothing to be scared of, and we need to learn to forgive ourselves for our prior mistakes.
• AW has had some problems of her own; she was very depressed after an abortion in senior year at college. She slept with a razor under her pillow for three nights as she wanted to commit suicide. Instead she turned to writing and in a week she wrote the story “To Hell with Dying”. She only stopped writing to eat and sleep.
Only once during the two years that we have him under view, does he venture
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan, his famous work that detailed his physicalist outlook and his concept of the value of a social contract for a peaceful society and the nature of man. His major belief was that man is a beast that defines his identity through the need to be controlled under some kind of external, oppressive power. This essay will explain Hobbes’ views of man’s identity in the society and will demonstrate how it was mirrored in the political structure.
“A Bird came down the Walk,” was written in c. 1862 by Emily Dickinson, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886. This easy to understand and timeless poem provides readers with an understanding of the author’s appreciation for nature. Although the poem continues to be read over one hundred years after it was written, there is little sense of the time period within which it was composed. The title and first line, “A Bird came down the Walk,” describes a common familiar observation, but even more so, it demonstrates how its author’s creative ability and artistic use of words are able to transform this everyday event into a picture that results in an awareness of how the beauty in nature can be found in simple observations. In a step like narrative, the poet illustrates the direct relationship between nature and humans. The verse consists of five stanzas that can be broken up into two sections. In the first section, the bird is eating a worm, takes notice of a human in close proximity and essentially becomes frightened. These three stanzas can easily be swapped around because they, for all intents and purposes, describe three events that are able to occur in any order. Dickinson uses these first three stanzas to establish the tone; the tone is established from the poet’s literal description and her interpretive expression of the bird’s actions. The second section describes the narrator feeding the bird some crumbs, the bird’s response and its departure, which Dickinson uses to elaborately illustrate the bird’s immediate escape. The last two stanzas demonstrate the effect of human interaction on nature and more specifically, this little bird, so these stanzas must remain in the specific order they are presented. Whereas most ...