In this essay I am going to compare two poems. “Out, Out” by Robert Frost a rural-American poet and Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet. Both of these poems are based on child deaths. The title “Out, Out” is part of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “Out, Out Brief Candle”. This coincides with the storyline of the poem, Child Deaths, because ‘brief candle’ implies that the candle went out nearly straight away. So this coincides with the poem because there is a death of a child, therefore the death is like a ‘brief candle’. “Out, Out” was written by Robert Frost in 1916. It’s a narrative poem and is written in 3rd person. The use of 3rd person makes it feel and seem more realistic because it’s like Robert Frost is telling us, the audience, the story which suggests he could’ve been there when this actually happened. “Out, Out” is about a boy who cuts down trees in Vermont, but one day he got distracted and the chainsaw ‘leaped’ out of his hands and cut off his hand and later died in hospital. But no-one cared for him. ‘And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs’. Robert Frost is telling us the poem as if it’s a story so he’s telling everyone the poem not just a group or one person. The layout of the poem is one big stanza which has different sized lines. You could say there is a pattern because when the poem is turned on its side it looks like the teeth of a chainsaw or the ‘five mountain ranges one behind each other’. The poet has used this structure because he might have wanted to tell the poem as a story instead of telling it as a poem. The poem originates from Vermont a place where there is a lot of lumber jacking and there is beautiful scenery which surrounds the forests. The pace of the poem var... ... middle of paper ... ... I met my father crying’ and are about deaths. ‘Little – Less – Nothing and that ended it’ ‘He had always taken funerals in his stride.’ Also, that both deaths were accidents. ‘The saw ........ seemed to leap out of the boys hands.’ However, there are a few differences like: In “Out, out” the boy doesn’t really get noticed, ‘and since they were not the one dead, they turned to their affairs’ which suggest this, whereas in Mid-Term Break the boy who died has got his family and family friends surrounding him. In “Out, Out” the setting is in the country, ‘Five mountain ranges one behind the other’ whereas Mid-Term Break it is set in a city suburb. “Out, Out” tells us at the time that the accident happened whereas in Mid-Term Break it’s the aftermath. “Out, out” is third person so someone is telling us whereas in Mid-Term Break it is 1st person so it’s as it happening.
I have elected to analyze seven poems spoken by a child to its parent. Despite a wide variety of sentiments, all share one theme: the deep and complicated love between child and parent.
Both poems are set in the past, and both fathers are manual labourers, which the poets admired as a child. Both poems indicate intense change in their fathers lives, that affected the poet in a drastic way. Role reversal between father and son is evident, and a change of emotion is present. These are some of the re-occurring themes in both poems. Both poems in effect deal with the loss of a loved one; whether it be physically or mentally.
The title ‘out,out’ is taken from the shakespearean play Macbeth. In which the main character Macbeth begins to speak after finding out his wife is dead. There is a comparison between Lady Macbeth's death and a blown out candle, there is effective use of the simile “Out, out, brief candle!” The boy’s death and lady macbeth’s death are both tragic disasters. Both Lady Macbeth and the boy in ‘out, out’ have their lives taken away before it is time for them to die, they haven’t been given the chance to live a long life and die a natural life. The comparison between the two and the candle is effective as it symbolises how quickly a candle can be blown out, just like how quickly their lives were taken away from them. The use of the candle once again, shows how when the light it taken away from the candle, it is left with nothing but darkness, which is similar to how the families of Lady Macbeth and the boy would have been left with darkness in their hearts after facing such a loss. The use of “brief candle” is symbolic as it is a direct comparison to the boy, his life was taken way from him before he could even become a man and reach manhood. Another similarity between Lady Macbeth and the boy, is once both their lives have been taken away, their surroundings move on and go back to their regular routine, almost forgetting completely about the death. Macbeth shows how brief and meaningless life really is, “Life's but a walking shadow…is heard no more…signifying nothing…” Similarly, in ‘Out, out’ the boy also demonstrates how meaningless life is throu...
I will discuss the similarities by which these poems explore themes of death and violence through the language, structure and imagery used. In some of the poems I will explore the characters’ motivation for targeting their anger and need to kill towards individuals they know personally whereas others take out their frustration on innocent strangers. On the other hand, the remaining poems I will consider view death in a completely different way by exploring the raw emotions that come with losing a loved one.
"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost is a poem about a young boy who dies as a result of cutting his hand using a saw. In order to give the reader a clear picture of this bizarre scenario, Frost utilizes imagery, personification, blank verse, and variation in sentence length to display various feelings and perceptions throughout the poem. Frost also makes a reference to Macbeth's speech in the play by Shakespear called Macbeth which is somewhat parallel to the occurrences in "Out, Out-."
The first technique he uses is imagery. Frost does this at the beginning of the poem by talking about all of the beauty of nature that is around the boy. For example, he talks about the mountains in the distance that the boy does not see because he is too busy working. Another example and the most important use of imagery in this poem is the snarling and rattling of the saw. This is essential because it gives the readers a since of life to the saw. Lastly, the sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it gives the reader not only smell but also touch. All of these examples of imagery helps set the mood for the reader and puts them into the poem as an onlooker. Another technique that he uses is figurative language. The saw “snarled and rattled” is the use of figurative language and onomatopoeia because it represents the fate of the boy and the animal-like noise that accompanies the fate. Also, “Call it a day” is figurative language because this represents that if the boy was told to stop working earlier he might have never lost his and hand and would not have died. Frost also uses figurative language when he wrote “The life from spilling” meaning that literally the blood is gushing from his arm and so his life is quickly fading away because the more blood loss the faster arrival of death will come. Irony can also be found in “Out, out” when the boy laughs after his hand is cut off by the saw. This ironic because usually people do not laugh at these types of situations and have the complete opposite reaction which is usually panic. Frost also uses blank verse and no stanzas to convey emotion throughout the poem. He does this by showing the light heartedness of the setting at the beginning of the poem and is invested in the boy, but then as the poem continues he detaches himself from the emotional aspect of the situation the boy is in. For example, when is says, “Call it a day , I
For my poetry paper I chose to examine poetry from the family album. The family album stood out to me significantly because I thoroughly enjoyed all of the poems because I had a personal connection with it. Family has always been an important part of my life and I think this particular album speaks volume. This album has many levels to it, some deeper than others. I feel that from reading poetry, it expands our ability to think and form ideas that we would have not thought about before. Poetry gives readers the ability to make connections on a deeper level and see things from a different perspective. The two poems that spoke to me in this album specifically were “Those Winter Sundays” By Robert Hayden and “Begotten” by Andrew Hudgins. These two poems are both similar because they are from a son’s point of view, talking about their parent(s). “Those Winter Sundays” was one of my all-time favorite poems from this album because it shows a hard working father who is dedicated to his family, but does not get any recognition for his hard work.
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Story of an Hour," the authors use similar techniques to create different tones, which in turn illicit very distinct reactions from the reader. Both use a third person narrator with a limited omniscient point of view to tell of a brief, yet significant period of time. In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Bierce uses this method to create an analytical tone to tell the story of Farquhar's experience just before death. In "The Story of an Hour," Chopin uses this method to create an involved, sympathetic tone to relay the story of Mrs. Mallard's experience just before death. These stories can be compared on the basis of their similar points of view and conclusions as well as their different tones.
Watching a loved one suffer from physical distress can cause intense emotional pain. “As In The Beginning” by Mary di Michele focuses on a daughter’s observation of her father’s pain and suffering due to an accident(a loss of fingers). “Thanks for Not Killing My Son” by Rita Schindler deals with a mother’s emotional letter to her son’s attackers. Each piece of work looks back at a past event that has a profound effect on the writer. There are many similarities which include sarcasm, use of description and a common theme. However, both are presented in a different format as one being a poem and the other being a letter.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
For this assignment, I chose the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks. This poem is generally about abortion and the feelings a mother has. It's about the remembrance of the children aborted and the little things children do that the mother will miss. Many images are conveyed throughout this entire poem. When Brooks mentions "the singers and workers that never handled the air" it gives off an air of sadness. You get the feeling that Brooks is trying to convey, to the mother, a sense of longing for those little things mothers are know to be good at. This is shown in the line, "you will never wind up the sucking thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come" .Then when she starts to address the child saying, "you were born, you had a body, you died." its hard not to feel some sadness or even a feeling of injustice.
The Theme Of Death In Mid-Term Break And The Early Purges The Irish poet Seamus Heaney is renowned for evoking his very personal experiences and feelings throughout his poetry. He frequently calls upon those experiences from his childhood to support his adult feelings over given topics and circumstances. The two poems Mid-Term Break and Early Purges both present two very personal experiences of Heaney's surrounding his juvenile experiences of death. Both poems combine a variation of techniques in miscellaneous manners to present such views.
Overall, by the end of the poem, we are filled with disdain and disapproval of the state our world has come to. Louis MacNeice has brought us face to face with the undeniable reality through the eyes of an unborn baby. Moreover, as the child is not yet part of the world, the truth is delivered without bias and we come to grips with the actual state of things. The poet has suitably used language to depict a world of corruption and to open our eyes to the horrific truth we shield ourselves from.
The theme of death in the poems “War Photographer”, “Remember”, and “Mother in a Refugee Camp” were all portrayed in different forms to explore death and the suffering it brings. The variations of death in the three poems create a diverse image of death, which some people can relate to through the different situations of loss. “Remember” by Christina Rossetti fashions an image of death because the speaker wanted her husband to remember all the memories they had shared during her life. Rossetti found it necessary to portray death as a spiritual place rather than a physical state of decomposition so that she can finally escape to a place of silence to avoid all the darkness in her life. “War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy is about a man who takes photographs of death in vivid, dark and disturbing images of conflict, which Duffy conveys thoroughly throughout the poem to powerfully showcase his grief and disheartening on the situation. “A Mother in a Refugee camp” by Chinua Achebe, displays the struggles of a mother desperately trying to support and save her child while writhing in her caressing arms at death’s doors. These are the poems that represent the theme of death.
The poet begins by allowing the reader to visualize the – “Picture of a mother’s tenderness for a son she soon would have to forget. ” This immediately conveys the theme of ‘death of a child’ and also helps set the ‘sorrowful’ mood of the poem. The short introduction allows the reader to settle them down and focus more on the tragic scene, thus maximizing the response from the reader. Following the ‘theme’ and ‘mood’ set by the first stanza, the second stanza described the living environment of the “Refugee Mother and Child” as – “The air was heavy with odours of diarrhoea of unwashed children with washed-out ribs and dried-up bottoms struggling in laboured steps behind blown empty bellies” The filthy image of the environment that the mother and child lived in is projected through negative connotation.