For centuries innumerable poets have used their craft to explore and make statements the human condition, one notable instance of was 20th centenary poet E.E. Cummings’s short poem “pity this busy monster, manunkind”. E.E. Cummings wrote “pity this busy monster, manunkind” in 1944 in accordance his unique irregular structure style and considered to one of his greatest works. Like most all artists, Cummings’s life and the world around him influenced his writing. In order to fully understand the purpose, methodology, and meaning of “pity this busy monster, manunkind” it must be analyzed with Cummings’s life and what was going in the world at the time it was written in mind. The meaning of the “pity this busy monster, manunkind” appears to allude casual glance but upon thorough examination …show more content…
E. Cummings uses unusual linguistic devices in “pity this busy monster manunkind.” The most noticeable of these devices that he uses is the bizarre spacing, disregard for grammatical rules, and the unorthodox stanza structure of the poem. His reason for doing so is to mock the mankind’s tendency to organize and label everything, even if it outside understanding or control. One particular irregularity that holds significant meaning is that the line “the world of made” (Cummings) is positioned in the center of the poem. The position of that particular line is to show how humans place the things that we make at the utmost importance while casting the “…world of born” (Cummings) aka the natural world aside. This theme of man’s obsession with creation is furthered with use of the linguistic device of making up words such as “manunkind” and “hypermagical ulteraomnipotence” (Cummings). Cummings made up the word “manunkind” to lower mankind’s status just like mankind does with human invented concepts like war but his use of “hypermagical ulteraomniptence” illustrates how mankind will simply make up reasons that prove that it has not be
All in all, there will always be people that will judge every move everyone else does in life just like the grandmother did in the story. As a result, people will just have to learn how to deal with it because if others decide to judge them they are probably doing something right. However, if you decide to judge someone else before you do it turn the critical eye on yourself and judge your personal life and ask yourself how is your life doing?
I think the main idea the narrators is trying to emphasize is the theme of opposition between the chaotic world and the human need for community with a series of opposing images, especially darkness and light. The narrator repeatedly associates light with the desire to clear or give form to the needs and passions, which arise out of inner darkness. He also opposes light as an idea of order to darkness in the world, the chaos that adults endure, but of which they normally cannot speak to children.
In nature, someone can hear the sounds of a creek flowing and birds chirping and insects buzzing; in civilization, someone can hear engines roaring, people chattering, and buildings being built. In nature, one feels happiness and contentment; in civilization, one feels guilt and misery and sorrow. These simplicities of nature are what appeals to William Cullen Bryant in the poem ‘Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood’. The poem tells the reader that nature is a happier place than civilization and that nature gives one the answers to their existence and problems of life that civilization created. Civilization is ugly and corrupt while nature is beauty and tranquility.
Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel, Cat's Cradle, might well be called an intricate network of paradox and irony. It is with such irony and paradox that Vonnegut himself describes his work as "poisoning minds with humanity...to encourage them to make a better world" (The Vonnegut Statement 107). In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut does not tie his co-mingled plots into easy to digest bites as the short chapter structure of his story implies. Rather, he implores his reader to resolve the paradoxes and ironies of Cat's Cradle by simply allowing them to exist. By drawing our attention to the paradoxical nature of life, Vonnegut releases the reader from the necessity of creating meaning into a realm of infinite possibility. It appears that Vonnegut sees the impulse toward making a better world as fundamental to the human spirit; that when the obstacle of meaning is removed the reader, he supposes, will naturally improve the world.
One example from the text that shows Cummings have the incredible heroic trait of humility is found on page 120 of the Good Soldiers. In lines 150-152, Cummings says,”man ,I haven’t felt this good since i got to this hellhole”.
Millay follows a tendency to use personification to display Chaos as masculine by using words as “him” (2) “his” (10) and “he” (11). Millay transcends her inner thoughts as a man incapable to abide by rules – such is the stereotypical portrayal of a man in literature. By using personification on Chaos she is able to connect her audience to a human rather than a word. Millay also laments the idea that certain measures were laid on Chaos: “…years of our duress/… our awful servitude” (9-10). With “duress” (9) Millay believes Chaos did not have a say into what was going to become of her work and have him assimilated into what is expected in a camaraderie. Despite cynical connotations with words as, “Flood, fire, and demon…” (4) used to flaw Chaos throughout the octet, Millay breaches a sense of confidence that she will tame “him” and let everyone know that there isn’t anything to fear. Ultimately, Chaos is able to establish a relationship for those who have difficulty fitting in a group due to his/her physical appearance or even their reputation proceeded by individuals unfamiliar with
The author's diction manages to elicit emotional connotations of genuine happiness and well-placed helplessness as he depicts the chronological events of his chance to live a better life in the north. As the road Douglass takes unwinds before him the "loneliness" follows him in pursuit like a "den of hungry lions"
While speaking to Walton, the monster first shows that he is very regretful and remorseful about his actions. He starts by making no attempt to exculpate himself from blame. The creature, in fact, emphasizes his guilt instead by saying: “No crime, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine” (189). Here he highlights his wrongdoings by using a multitude of words to describe them, each with a subtly different meani...
In Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, he provides the reader with a fictional account of the Bhopal Disaster through the eyes of a deformed teenager in a fictional town named Khaufpor. This teenager calls himself ‘Animal’ because his deformity bent his spine to the point where he must walk on all fours, making him feel inhuman. With his mother and father dead, he accepts the name as his own and denies his own humanity. Although Animal tries to separate himself from his humanity because of the pain it causes him, he is forced to accept his humanity through his friends’ guidance and the inner and external conflicts that he faces meaning that humanity is unavoidable.
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.
Farewell To Manzanar On December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, leading to the United States entrance into World War II. A couple months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered that all persons of Japanese descent must be secluded. The Japanese were sent to internment camps outside of the Pacific military zone, due to the fear Americans had of Japanese espionage.
The poems facilitate the investigation of human experience through illustrating life’s transience and the longevity of memory.
Pain and suffering is an inevitable part of the human condition; feelings of empathy and sympathy the benchmark of human decency. However, with the mass production of shocking images, we may become desensitized and lose our sense of humanity. This idea is explained in David Axelrod’s lyric poem “Once in a While a Protest Poem”, using specific word choice as well as repetition to express the changes in the constitution of humanity.
Man is a poem that has fully formed stanzas - each stanza can be viewed as a separate point, and has it’s own central metaphor. When all of the stanzas are added up, they act as points in an essay, each a fully developed argument on the importance of man, and humanity’s closeness with
It is this moment of recollection that he wonders about the contrast between the world of shadows and the world of the Ideal. It is in this moment of wonder that man struggles to reach the world of Forms through the use of reason. Anything that does not serve reason is the enemy of man. Given this, it is only logical that poetry should be eradicated from society. Poetry shifts man’s focus away from reason by presenting man with imitations of objects from the concrete world.