On the first read Batter My Heart appears to be about a complicated love triangle, but with multiple readings, a deeper meaning becomes more obvious, it’s a personal appeal to God. In the poem the speaker asking to be broken and rebuilt again, because despite their intense love for the other person, they are unfortunately promised to another; their love’s enemy. They ask to either be cut off completely or to be taken in and imprisoned. The tone of the speaker’s voice is very intense, reflecting in the words they use such as, “overthrow me”, “Your force”, “imprison”, “ravish”. There is also a desperate pleading tone because the speaker is repeatedly asking for physical action, or punishments almost, to be taken against them. He or she wants …show more content…
In the very first line where it states, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God”, the first image that comes to mind is one of three figures of the same person hitting someone in the chest to batter their heart. A few lines down the poem continues, “and bend Your force to break”, one can see someone forcing an item back and forth repeatedly until it begins to crack and finally breaks. The line where the speaker says, “But I am betrothed unto your enemy”, the picture created is one of an unwilling bride standing next to her fiancé. There are lots of pictures presented in this poem with the use of simple and yet descriptive …show more content…
Again starting with the first two lines of the poem, the speaker is asking to be battered, however they go on to say that God is not one who physically hurts but instead He, “knocks”, “breathes”, and “shines”, those actions are the opposite of what the speaker wants done to him. He also goes on and compares himself to a town that has been overthrown or seized by an enemy: “I, like an usurped town to another due.” There is a metaphor that is not obvious at first but after slowly re-reading it, it reveals itself. He speaks of Reason being a captive, which is impossible because reason is an idea not a physical thing that can be kept in a prison and chained. A second metaphor that is not obvious is the one of the speaker being “betrothed unto Your enemy”, this is also impossible because the enemy of God is
This imagery has to do with aggression that the narrator alleges God of perpetrating against the victim of this lynching. The narrator claims that “you (God) dug your nails in his ribs” and “pierced knives into his breast,” (Yehoash 107 line 24-26). These lines discuss the victims body as if it were violated by God, and the harm caused to the body was a result of Gods actions. This is a very contentious claim made by the author as he uses this imagery to parallel a crucifixion and blame a higher power. The textual echo has traversed from describing an anonymous body in harm, to explaining that harm has lead to death, to finally finding somebody to blame for that death. This textual echo both helps the reader to visual the victim of this lynching, while also understanding the train of thought that the author is going through in this
Our second poem displays the lost meaning of religion, confusion of love and how our misinterpretations on both lead us to think. Take for instance this line: “No way is [he] bringing me home. He wants someone to fix his religion.” Humans constantly want another human to give meaning to their lives in any kind of way. Some even go as far as interpreting sex and one night stands as actions of sincere love. Our secondary character is trying to find meaning in his religion once more, probably thinking if he finds someone to have sex with, eventually they’ll fall in love and it’ll give his life meaning again, ultimately “fixing” his religion. The character’s self-doubt about his religion and his actions to recuperate that meaning displays the lost meaning of religion. The line “Believe me I love religion, but he’s too quiet when praying” shows the lack of knowledge in America when talking about religion. Praying is a sacred time for people to talk to God and be thankful for them or to ask for guidance. Stating that “he’s too quiet when praying” shows a kind of lost in the meaning of religion, as it’s not a thing that’s enforced as much as it was decades
The piece itself is about a man (the narrator) who commits some form of domestic violence against his partner/wife, and is begging for forgiveness - asking God to understand that he didn’t truly mean to hurt her and that he is sorry, ‘I’m just a soul whose intentions are
Still even more evidence of these mixed feelings is illustrated in the third stanza. "This love dance, a kind of blood rite between father and son, shows suppressed terror combined with awe-inspired dependency" (Balakian 62). "The hand that held my wrist/was battered on one knuckle;/ At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle"(Roethke 668). The speaker's father's hand being "battered on one knuckle" is indicative of a man who...
Firstly I will be exploring metaphor as it is used so much in this poem. The first metaphor which I will examine is “Haunting Flares” on line 3 of the first stanza. This quote has so many connotations, my first opinion on this was that the flares which the enemy are firing to light up the battlefield are said to be representing the souls of the soldiers fallen comrades. This could also be said to represent the power the enemy has on their own mortality as the bright flares would light up the battle-field exposing everything to their view, this indicates that the enemy always seem to have power upon the soldiers, almost godly. The second metaphor which I will explore is: “An ecstasy of fumbling” in line one of the second stanza.
In the third stanza, the language becomes much darker, words like: anger, explode, and against make this stanza seem even more warlike than the first stanza.
In the second stanza of the poem Larkin begins to use harsh reality to break down the illusion and destroy the image that was built up. ‘She was slapped up one day in March.’ This harsh sentence shows the reality of the world and that vandalism was expected. ‘A couple of weeks and her face was snaggle-toothed’, this flippant remark also suggests casualness about the violence. The violence of the girl in the picture being disfigured also represents the illusion being destroyed.
For instance, Edwards utilizes imagery when he mentions, “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide bottomless pit...with the flames of divine wrath”. In hope of instilling a vivid image of the underworld, Edwards uses repetition with the word “wrath” to put emphasis on the alarming situations that occur in hell, as well as showing God’s anger. Furthermore, Edwards uses diction when he states “you hang by a slender thread” to illustrate God’s ruthlessness to sinful behavior. With this in mind, it depicts God’s powerfulness and superiority, compared to man who is weak and powerless. In another example, Edwards states “the God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect...abhors you”. This simile is paramount because man is compared to a spider, portraying mankind to be disgusting and futile. Moreover, with the use of diction with the words “loathsome” and “abhors”, it emphasizes Edwards conception that God is outraged and heartless to the people that reject their faith.
“Power” is an outcry at what is going on and has been going on with the African American peoples throughout the last four-hundred years: “they had dragged her 4´10´´ black woman’s frame/over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval” (35,36). The lack of rhyme scheme is the vent of the outrage of the speaker. When we are mad (as mad as this speaker is), things become jumbled. We do not think in a normal way. Things that are usually normal are not so normal. The speaker is only consumed by the anger built up inside of it, and we see that by some of the things that it says, and by the overall construction of its poem. The difference of the structures of the stanzas is another thing that denotes this `action´ of anger, and the thought that the speaker is consumed by its anger and showing it. The speaker, in its state of anger, is not thinking of how many lines it is putting into each stanza. The poem is also thought about , but the words are spilling out of the speaker’s mouth in an anger ridden breakdown.
The poem begins with the speaker addressing God as “Our Father who art in heaven” (1.1). If this prayer is a metaphor for writing, it would seem that the he is actually speaking to the audience, the group of people who will ultimately judge his writing and his ideas. The casual nature of the prayer is partly based on the fact that the speaker is admittedly drunk on red wine, but also because the writer is trying to establish a relationship with his audience: A rapport with his readers is important to a writer’s success. He thanks his readers for the red wine, because it is they who have made it possible for him to maintain a lifestyle wherein he can afford the wine, and this wine acts as the liquid courage he needs to write in the first place.
...and the way that the opposing sides think of each other is awful. The fact that one side is praying for disaster to come on their enemies isn’t showing God’s love and at the end of the poem it says, “We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love.” It is out of love for their own soldiers but not for the soldiers on the other side. This poem shows the real aspects of people’s feelings about war. Many people don’t want their own side to be crushed, but they don’t care if the other side does get crushed.
Along with the imagery we get from the title, there is a lot of imagery within this poem. Let us start with the first three lines:
Any attempt to change that or threaten it is met with increased brutality. As the poem continues, the author speaks of dying but only accepting death if it is honorable and not in vain. The speaker proceeds with saying, “then even the monsters we defy / Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!” (Lines 7-8).
I analyzed the poem “Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you” which is one of Donnes earlier erotic poems. The title of this poem is taking away the usual love for women and turning it towards a love for god (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). First off, it was a Petrarchan sonnet because the poem is made of 14 lines,three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet at the end. The speaker appears to be a pathetic desperate lover (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). The poem is written in first person because the speaker is narrating himself.
“God’s Grandeur” is a poem that embraces the grace and glory of God in everything, and is certainly an example of his strong faith in God. Imagery is found from the very beginning of the poem. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” and “charged” here is very significant because it is a metaphor symbolizing the world being engulfed with God’s electricity (ll. 1). Electricity is a primary source for us as humans, which makes this an image of light associated with faith found in a single word in the first line alone. The second says that the electricity “will flame out, like shining from shook foil” (ll. 2). Line 2’s simile now connects with line 1’s metaphor as it further describes the metaphor. Moreover, if one has ever seen how light hits shook foil, then it becomes easy to understand the imagery because it glimmers so much. This enhances the relationship Hopkins establishes between images of light and his strong Christian faith.