An Annotation of John Crowe Ransom's Blue Girls
Simply put, Blue Girls is about beauty. The poem focuses on the realization and truthfulness that beauty undoubtedly fades. The speaker appeals to young girls, warning them to not put all their hope in their beauty, but to still utilize it before it diminishes.
Blue Girls
By John Crowe Ransom
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teacher old and contrary
Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.
Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our power shall never establish,
It is so frail.
For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a lady with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished &endash; yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.
The "your" in this poem signifies young adolescent girls attending school. While the moral of the poem could apply to anyone, he probably chose young girls as his audience because they are often the most aware and the most controlled by outward beauty. He also chose the color blue here, which can mean "intellectual" when speaking of a woman. So, "blue" could very well refer to the knowledge the girls hold, or it could just be the color of their skirts. I prefer the first meaning, especially since we find out that they are attending school in the next line. A sward is a grassy area of land, thus suggesting that the girls lead a carefree life of "twirling" and "travel...
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... his point across here: beauty does indeed fade away, so some other purpose in life is necessary.
In this poem, Ransom offers the girls three main lessons, which, although they seem contradictory, are really closely related:
(1) Beauty does fade.
(2) Use your beauty as much as you can before it fades.
(3) Have something in your life besides beauty, so that when it fades, you are not left with nothing.
He describes beauty as delicate and rare, unable to be established. He focuses on the lightheartedness of young girls, how they are caught up in beauty, and he warns them to be conscientious of the fact that their beauty will fade and that they cannot put all their hope on their beauty. At the same time, he encourages them to "practice" their beauty until it is gone, and he promises to celebrate that beauty as best he can, with all its value and frailty.
The poem starts with the line, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a girl is born, society already expects her to learn the role she will soon play in when she hits puberty (1). Thus, showing why we are given dolls as little girls to illustrate how we should act and appear according to society. After we learn all the roles we will soon take part in, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying the ideals to their own lives (5). As if this attempt to conform is not enough we have other people telling us we are not to perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl (6). This type of pressure can slowly but surely destroy even the little confidence women do have in themselves.
Have you ever wondered how your phone company started out? Or the new innovations it has brought about? And maybe even how the business is run? Well, today I’m going to talk about AT&T’s history, the products it sells, the employee jobs and U-verse.
Branding/Promotion – AT&T is leading to be the only telecommunication company their customers need by connecting people better than anyone else.
Les Misérables (1862), a novel set in early nineteenth century France, presents a story of obsessions in honor, love, and duty, and through it redemption and salvation. It is the story of the poor Jean Valjean, condemned to an unfair amount of time in prison and a life on the run for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family. The kind act of forgiveness from a Bishop with whom Jean Valjean stays one night, changes the course in which he chooses to live his life. Under a different identity, he becomes wealthy from a business he starts and later is elected mayor of the small town of Montreuil. He falls madly in love with Fantine, one of the workers in his factory. Because Fantine, one of the very poorest and most pitiful residents of Montreuil, has a child born out of wedlock, Jean Valjean as the respected mayor must keep his love for her a secret. When Fantine dies unexpectedly, Jean Valjean vows he will raise her daughter Cosette, and shield her from all the evils in the world. Through all of this, Jean Valjean is being pursued by Javert, a policeman whose entire life has been dedicated to finding Jean Valjean. While running from Javert, Jean Valjean and Cosette find themselves in Paris in the middle of the 1832 Revolution. As Cosette matures, she falls in love with Marius, a young revolutionist. Despite the objections of Jean Valjean, Cosette continues to secretly visit Marius at night. During the revolution, Marius is injured badly and Jean Valjean, after finding a love note from Marius to Cosette, quickly comes to the rescue of the wounded gentleman. Eventually Jean Valjean and Marius' Grandfather consent to the wedding of Cosette and Marius. In this novel, "there is a point at which...
... similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty, but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside.
Hugo’s social commentary focuses on three main concepts that he believes must be reformed in the French society: criminal justice, education and the treatment of women. By showing the unreasonable punishments both Valjean and Fantine shows how the social structure has turned innocent and good people into criminals.
With imagery she provided a detailed visual of what that looks like, how it sounds and gave readers an understanding of what magic feels like. Finally, characters told the tale with ambiguity so that each and every member of the audience could relate and draw references to the people in their own lives. The poem perfectly unified beauty with basics, showing that true beauty does not always have to be elaborate. True beauty lies within the simplistic details, the character of those involved, the love that is felt and the goodness of mankind, that alone is magic. The theme that all moments are worthy of gratitude no matter how often they occur or how simple they appear is beautifully exemplified in the poem “Common Magic”.
“There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles,” George Eliot. Beauty has caused men to move mountain, and jump through countless hoops. It is a quality that is subjective and affects the beholder differently. In Poe’s Ligea and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, Ligea, Rowena, and Georgina all had different orders of beauty that similarly affects how their husbands saw them. In these two pieces of literature there was an exaltation of beauty as an abstraction that hid the depth of the women and led to deceit and the sense of superiority in their husbands.
...taphors, and the simplistic approach are all ways she used to express the feelings of a young fifteen year old girl, wondering when they will grow into their bodies and out of the awkward stage they are stuck in. She beautifully illustrates the longing for that perfect dress which will solve all of their problems for even just one night. But even after it is said and done with, and we have grown into our skin, we will more than likely not be perfect by Cosmopolitan standards, but perfect just the way we are supposed to be.
However, as Walker discovered, beauty is when someone learns to love him or herself. No matter how perfect a person can seem they may have insecurities about the smallest physical things. As seen in Walker’s narrative, the definition of beauty changes over a lifetime, however, once a person is thankful it is easier to find the true definition of beauty. True beauty is learning to dance through like with oneself and not focusing on the physical fleeting things but on qualities of character that matter. Beauty is in finding oneself
... Therefore, instead of losing mental stability because of old memories, one should try to embrace sanity and perpetuate it in life. Moreover, the poem emulates society because people fantasize about looking a certain way and feeling a certain way; however, they are meddling with their natural beauty and sometimes end up looking worse than before. For instance, old men and women inject their faces to resemble those in their youth, but they worsen their mental and physical state by executing such actions. To conclude, one should embrace her appearance because aging is inevitable.
For this report, our team performed a scan of the general environment concerning T-Mobile. Topics which were reviewed include the economy, demographics, technology, legal and political events, and social attributes. Significant events and trends dealing with the segments are analyzed throughout.
Life for humans is dictated by the yearning for more through our experiences. We strive for more knowledge, more wealth, and more happiness, but it all is endless like an abyss. Beauty, however, is pure and can be found in the simplest matters in life. Throughout the novel Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann, Aschenbach works his whole life rigorously day by day searching for more and more until his introduction to Tadzio in Venice. Upon Aschenbach’s first site of Tadzio he falls in love with the perfect beauty of the child. For the first time in his life he sees the simplicity of beauty and how perfect it is, however, he is consumed by it. Aschenbach’s introduction to beauty consumes his mind from the rest of the world. Aschenbach searches for beauty in life, but is trapped and consumed by it and is pulled away from the rest of the world.
Overall company will find it extremely hard to succeed without the support of teams. Work group members will not only help each other improve their performance but also help improve the performance of the business. Teamwork allows them to learn to trust and respect each other; this will come in handy when the business is forced to deal with a loss of a team member or loss in revenue. Creating strong hard working teams will benefit a business in the short-run as well as in the long-run. That’s what business of the 21st century should strive for.
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