In this paper I will argue about the points where John Donne, Emily Dicks, and Michael Obi are struggling with their faith. The speaker in Holy Sonnet 14 struggles with not deserving to have a relationship with God because of sin. Emily Dickson fights with if there is an afterlife, if it is real, and can I belong in there (Poem 501). Michael Obi struggles with whole ideas of religion and remaining to look to the past since he is all about the looking forward (Death Men’s Path). The themes that are underlines is the desire to reconnect with God, believing in a God, but with some doubts, and completely not wanting a relationship with God at all. In the Holy Sonnet 14 the speaker in the poem is expressing that he is a believer in God, …show more content…
That God has only knocked on the door, only after the scriptural ideas to write down that God knocks and that each person must let him in, is not working for the speaker. This relates to the larger argument that they are firm believers in God, but they need more attention for God in order to follow him. In the next couple line the speaker expresses God need to enter his life more with a force in order to make the speaker new again “As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; that I may rise, and stand, overthrow me and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new” (line 2-4). This relates to my argument that the speaker is directly asking God to force is way back into his life and for someone people once they feel they have angered God they feel they would be able to connect again. The speaker at one expresses that “Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain,” …show more content…
Michael Obi who a character becomes the headmaster of a school, first what he wanted to do to the school “high standard of teaching was insisted upon, and the school compound was to be turned into a place of beauty” (pg. 228). Michael Obi is worried about is that the school is modernized instead of maintaining the tradition beauty of the school that already exists. Obi see a path that goes through his school and ask a "The path," the teacher said apologetically," appears to be very important to them. Although it is hardly used, it connects the village shrine with their place of burial" (pg. 228), Obi doesn’t care about the path villagers use to connect to the place of where their loved ones and preserving the path he is just worried about the idea of don’t look back keep going forward. When the priest tries further to tell Obi about the “priest tells Obi, “this path was here before you were born and before your father was born. The whole life of this village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart from it and our ancestors visit us by itself. But important it is the path of children coming in to be born…” (pg. 228). Michael Obi is so closed minded, looking future and the past is the past there is no room for considering that there is an religious belief system, he is completely missing the importance of how important to the villagers '
In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.
William Penn, an English philosopher and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, once said that, “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” He is saying that death is not the end of our lives, but just another stage. In the poem “Holy Sonnet 10” by John Donne, the poet talks to death itself and gives his opinion on his view of death and others’ views: it is something that cannot control anything, can be replaced by others things, and is not the end of a person’s life. Through the use of his figurative language, Petrachan form, and tone and language, Mr. Donne expresses the message that death is not to be feared because one lives on in heaven.
My thesis, in brief, is that the painful "God is dead" period of history we are presently going through can best be understood as a necessary "transitional period"— the immediate consequence of mankind’s intellectual advance, in the preceding period, viz., the Modern or Age of Reason, beyond the Middle Ages, the Age of Belief. With the apotheosis of the development of the principle of subjectivity in Modern philosophy, i.e., with the attainmeUnprioritized— SDO meetingnt of "absolute knowing," or Reason’s "knowing of the absolute," humanity had outgrown its former manner of relating to substance, the divine: — its eyes opened, it could not go backwards but only forward. From the highest standpoint, it can be said that the movement of history is from the God "outside" to the God "inside"— an inversion process involving three distinct and necessary phases: Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity, to be correlated with Thomas Aquinas, Hegel, and Nietzsche, respectively.
Every writer leaves his mark, his imprint, in his writing; a thumb print left behind the ink if you know how to look for it, and Donne is no exception. The problem is extracting Donne’s imprint, and essence, from the poem, and understanding what that tells us about him. In one poem in particular this stands out, his Holy Sonnet IX, where Donne’s imprint lingers, giving another story behind the text, of his belief in God, but also his inner questioning, and confliction and doubt which come out as contradictions. Behind the text, Holy Sonnet IX, as Donne speaks through his speaker and poem, we come to understand that he is a religious man, though conflicted, which leads to doubt and contradictions, as he resents God in a way, while also just craving for his absolution and for him to forget and forgive his sins and wash them away, sins which weigh on him heavily and he believes taint him.
In this essay I aim to study the poem in more depth, analysing what Donne says and how he says it. Holy Sonnet XIV was written at a time of crisis and confusion in Donne's life; a time when he was torn between spiritual longing for religion, holiness, and physical passion. The poem conveys a feeling of utmost ambivalence - at one point, Donne expresses his. feelings toward God in the line "Yet dearly I love you. " profession comes just one line after his description of Jesus as "weak" and "untrue" are the same.
The first quatrain In this sonnet the speaker starts to reveal more about the relationship between him and the Dark Lady, and also his fear of growing old. He starts the sonnet by saying “When my love swears she is made of truth/ I do believe her, though I know she lies” (1-2). In these first two lines the speaker contradicts himself right away by saying that he believes her, but knows she is not telling the truth. He is very aware of the delusion he is in, but he is willing to let it pass. He is willing to let it pass because of the mutual dishonesty that exists in the relationship. In the next two lines, he talks about youth, and age. He is talking about the Dark Lady considering him a younger ma...
Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. New York: Oxford UP, 1958. Print.
Michael Obi was a secondary school teacher. “The Ndume Central School had always been an unprogressive, so the mission authorities decided to send a young and energetic man to run it” (331). Obi was a juvenile and a jaunty man. Within Obi’s confidence, the reader can see his ardent desire. “He had many wonderful ideas and this was an opportunity to put them into practice” (331). By this golden chance he wanted to show other people how a school should be run. Obi wanted “his associates to give all their time and energy to the school” (331) because they were not married. He and his wife were very excited to work for the school. They both had made a plan to make the school modern and delightful. Even though Obi accepted his responsibility with enthusiasm, he could not become a great principal. Why? There should be some ...
In poem 378 the reader is introduced to the mental world of a speaker whose relentless questioning of metaphysical “truths” has led her to a state of complete “faithlessness”: l...
The reflection paper that I will discuss touches on some topics of importance to me that have been outlined in the first four weeks of this Course. I would like to discuss two topics that have proven relevant to me which are Mind, Reason and Logic and most importantly Faith and the Heart. I would like to start off by stressing that I am in a continual daily process of improving my beliefs and striving for my faith to become stronger daily. Fundamentally, the readings would not serve to be prudent if one did not get spiritually aroused in some capacity
This is an enjoyable sonnet that uses nature imagery, found extensively in Petrarca, that Shakespeare uses to get his point across. Not much explication is needed, aside the sustained images of nature, to fully understand its intent, but I would like to point out a peculiar allusion. When reading line 3, "the violet past prime" has made me think of Venus and Adonis. In the end, Adonis melts into the earth and a violet sprouts where his body was, which Venus then places in her heart, signifying the love she has for him. Reading this into the poem makes the few following lines more significant. Having Adonis portrayed as the handsome youth, Shakespeare is alluding to the death of youth (in general and to the young man) through the sonnet. In the next line, it is not certain if "sable" is an adjective or a noun and if "curls" is a noun, referring to hair (which is plausible) or a verb modifying "sable." Invoking the allusion to Adonis here, Shakespeare portends that if Adonis did live longer, he too would have greying hair; thus, Shakespeare sees ["behold"] an Adonis figure, the young man, past his youth.
John Donne Death is a very complicated subject that people view very differently in different situations. In John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, he writes about death in Meditations X and XVII. Both meditations use many similar rhetorical devices and appeals, but the tones of the meditations are very disparate. Donne’s different messages in Meditations X and XVII convey tones of defiance and acquiescence towards death, respectively. His apparent change of attitude towards death could be accounted for by his differing life situations while he was writing the meditations: mid-life, and near-death. “Meditation X”, which Donne wrote in mid-life, has a very defiant and powerful tone.
John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donne's poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donne's states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation.
1-2: 'I do not draw my conclusions from the stars, and yet I think I understand astrology; 3-4: 'but (astrology) has never forecasted (to me) good or bad luck, or of plagues, or of dearths, or of the quality of the forecoming seasons:' 5-6: 'Nor can I prognosticate (from the stars) every single minute, assigning to each minute [that is, whether or not it will] thunder or rain or wind,' 7-8: 'Or say that all will be well by signs (of the stars), which looking to the sky (for answers) is my habit:' 9-10: 'only from your eyes do I form my knowledge, and, in your eyes (which are constant stars), do I see such art' 11-12: 'As truth or beauty thriving together, if you would convert from yourself to store [as in store cattle]:' The paraphrase for the three quatrains may not seem necessary, as it is fairly straightfoward in its meaning; however, the couplet provides ambiguity. The couplet is where Shakespeare usually makes an antithesis of the three quatrains or presents some ambiguity, the latter of which is this one. I have found
Because Donne describes the connection between the body and union with God in the form of a poem, Donne is able to evoke his readers. Unlike Augustine 's readers who just read of Augustine’s anguish and experience, those who read Donne 's poems actually experience anguish, frustration, and ultimately the unavoidable reliance one has on God, which most Christian followers eventually experience on the road to redemption. Furthermore, writing in a Petrarchan sonnet form, Donne provides an alternate meaning to Augustine’s medieval concept of the souls’ journey to unity with God. In the examination of Donne’s language, which is permeated with many emotions, Donne introduces the new idea that the journey to redemption involves not only a movement away from loving sin but a movement towards loving oneself so that one is not afraid to be loved. In other words, Donne introduces—through his diction—that the process of redemption involves self-love, which will, in turn, allow one to accept God’s already existing