Nearly everyone has had that dreadful encounter with the last person they want to see in places such as the supermarket, dry cleaners, or the movie theaters. What follows are a few awkward moments of strained conversation while one looks for signs of bitter regret in the eyes of his or her ex. Carolyn Kizer’s poem “Bitch” depicts such a meeting. The poem guides the reader to reality of what really occurs deep beyond conversation while seeing an ex. Through the use of personification, diction, and tone, Kizer illustrates the speaker’s strife with feelings of animosity, repression, and desire for reconciliation. The plot is centered around a random, but possibly planned meeting of two lovers. During the awkward reunion, the speaker fights an internal battle with her feelings. There is something inside of her trying to claw its way out, and the bottled up bitterness threatens to rip its way to the surface. Her suppressed emotions are personified in the form of a disobedient female dog, hence the name “Bitch”. When the woman is approached by the man, she refers to herself as a canine by saying things like “don’t start growling” (2). The command demonstrates the speaker attempting to restrain her feelings like trying to constrain a belligerent dog. She feigns a cool demeanor, and as her voice is saying one thing, the voice inside her is getting furious and yearns to express her true feelings, but fears her stability will be questioned. Throughout the poem, the speaker is trying to alleviate the “Bitch” from within by persuading herself that the man no longer poses a threat, but as the memories come rushing back to her, it becomes more challenging. She starts reminiscing about her past relationship in lines 19-27. The dog is no... ... middle of paper ... ...feel insecure with herself. Coming to the conclusion that she is not good enough for him, she writes “He couldn’t have taken you with him/ You were too demonstrative, too clumsy” (28-29). In the end, much to the chagrin of the canine female, the human female restraints her temper and ends up casting harmless words in the man’s direction : “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again” (33). The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
Nearly everyone has had that dreadful encounter with the last person they want to see in places like the supermarket, dry cleaners, or the movie theaters. What follows are a few awkward moments of strained conversation while one looks for signs of bitter regret in the eyes of his or her ex. Carolyn Krizer’s poem “Bitch” depicts such a meeting. The poem brings the reader to reality of what really goes on deep beyond conversation while seeing an ex. Through the use of personification, diction, and tone Kizer delineates the speaker’s struggle with feelings of animosity, repression, and desire for reconciliation.
The speaker continues to take on the role of beggar as she imagines the Hound “sometimes – at your side to run”, but only “When you were willing” (11-12). Again, she is implying that the poem’s subject holds the power. The speaker does not want to irritate and exert her own sense of empowerment, so will only act when or if the subject is willing. The final lines bring the poem to a close by asking, “May it come – Tell Carlo – He’ll tell me!” (13-14). Carlo was the name of Emily Dickinson’s Newfoundland dog, which lived from 1850 to 1865 and was a gift from her father. The moniker Dickinson bestowed upon the dog was an allusion to St John River’s dog in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. (Lexicon). The speaker is suggesting that, perhaps, her dog might serve as an emissary between the she and the subject of the poem. This is an abrupt change in tone and may be a light-hearted acknowledgment of the juvenile outlook that the speaker has toward her beloved. Since she has yet to fully develop a stable sense of self, this contributes to the speaker’s underlying fear of
...om her mother and transported to a pet store where she was locked in a cage until she was purchased by my friend Hailey. I want you to think about her excitement to have a home and Hailey’s excitement to have a new pet to love. Now I want you to think about Hailey receiving the devastating news that her puppy had to be euthanized and Daisy’s fear as she was taken from her owner’s hands and put to death.
Canine tales are becoming an ever-more-popular medium for expression, says Garber: “Just as the pathos of human love and loss is most effectively retold, in modern stories, through the vehicle of the steadfastly loyal and loving dog, so the human hero has increasingly been displaced and replaced by the canine one” (44). The spotlight has been shifted from the larger-than-life human to the humble family pet and his canine brethren. Stories that feature a dog rather than a person are able to more convey a deeper sense of meaning, establishing their...
In this poem, Belieu discusses how some men are smug and vain, but in a comical way. Belieu talks about hating Bill Parcells, who is a very wealthy football coach, because he is cruel and has no empathy. “...I hate Bill Parcells more, because he is the illuminated manuscript of cruel, successful men, those with the slitty eyes of ancient reptiles, who wear their smugness like a tight white turtleneck, and revel in their lack of empathy for any living thing,” (Belieu). In addition to that, Belieu also says that she does not enjoy football because the players find glorification in violence, and she does not support that. Finally, Belieu ends her poem with a metaphor comparing Bill Parcells to the dogs that live across from her. Belieu talks about how she wants Bill Parcells to be locked up like the dogs down her street in reincarnation. This poem has a connection to Belieu’s life because of the many things she does, in support of women’s rights. Therefore, Belieu’s poem, “I Heart You Dog’s Head”, mainly talks about how Belieu disagrees with the way men
But when [she puts] the lid on she [thinks] she [hears] something crying” (Mansfield 179). Miss Brill quickly locks up the fur without looking at it, much like she ignores her deep unhappiness. The fact that she thinks she hears it crying puts even more emphasis on the suppression of her happiness. Instead of even allowing herself a chance to feel deeply unhappy and come to terms with the criticism she faces due to her age, she attempts to suppress her sorrow. She wants so badly to be approved by society that she is willing to completely diminish her own happiness and not even allow herself to come to terms with her abuse by acknowledging it with sadness. Miss Brill sees the diminishment her own happiness as a worthwhile loss in order to be accepted by others.
The speaker is visiting “home for the weekend, /from school, from the North,” and her grandma asks her, “How’s school a-goin’?” The speaker replies with “School’s fine,” holding back her emotions on her lifestyle in college. “I wanted to tell her/about the nights I cried into the familiar heartsick panels of the quilt she made me,/wishing myself home on the evening star./I wanted to tell her/the evening star was a planet,/that my friends wore noserings and wrote poetry/about sex, about alcoholism, about Buddha./ I wanted to tell her how my stomach burned acidic holes at the thought of speaking in class,/speaking in an accent, speaking out of turn,” Understanding is a vital part of the bonds people share. She knew her grandma couldn’t comprehend any of it. The speaker sensed her grandma would deem her friends inadequate. “I was tearing, splitting myself apart/with the slow-simmering guilt of being happy/despite it all.” In spite of the hardships, the speaker enjoyed it
This is affecting the narrator greatly and is causing him to feel more depressed and lonely. A factor that can be responsible for this is how unaware the narrator’s wife is to her husband’s sufferings. For example, the narrator shows that he was not comfortable with “this blind man”, Robert, coming into his home and sleeping over. The narrator saw Robert as a threat since before the narrator and his wife got married, the wife worked for Robert and when she quit, her and Robert shared an intimate moment. The idea of Robert sleeping in the narrators home made the narrator a bit uneasy. Yet, the narrator did not say anything to the wife about how he feels about Robert’s visit. Then, again, if the narrator did, his wife might of just started yelling at him. This shows the lack of communication skills the narrator and his wife have. In addition, the narrator often would tell a few jokes to his wife; mainly about Robert’s arrival. The narrator’s wife did not laugh at any of them. Humour is used in order to release tension. The narrator is very tense, especially since a stranger is about to sleep in his home and also since his wife is very dominant. This is why the narrator makes many childish jokes. Yet, the wife does not respond to his humour with humour; instead, she just yells at him. This shows how the narrator and his wife do not understand each other. The fact that the narrators wife is always upset with the narrator and always puts him down affects the narrator mentally. When the narrator says, “I knew she didn’t like what she saw” (Carver, 126), the narrator is telling us that he is aware that his marriage is failing and he knows his wife doesn’t love him anymore. The narrator states that him and his wife would never even go to bed at the same time; this displays how they would never have sex or any intimate relations, which is an important part to a healthy
This can be seen in the first paragraph, “ We used to call her the face of love”. Using the word, we in this sentence means that Beard and her husband were still together at that point in time. Furthermore, the name of the dog, “ The face of love”, representing the young lover's excitement for one another. A love like a new puppy, always exciting, and no matter the situation it never seems that heavy a burden. Then with age problems begin to arise, small inconveniences seem like a bigger problem than they are, causing a wedge to grow between husband and wife. Beard when seeing her collie in the middle of the night thinking, the face of love, reminds her of how times used to be when her husband was still at home. The comparison between dog and husband is seen again when Beard talks with Chris, her colleague, who asks her “Why are you letting this go one?” (Beard. J. A., June 24, 1996, Para. 35). This can be interpreted as Chris asking about the phone calls Beard’s husband leaves, or about the collie. Beard responds by saying she isn’t letting it go on (Beard. J. A., June 24, 1996, Para. 36). When she isn’t doing anything, she's waiting for the problem to solve itself; for times to go back to what they were. Beard is scared to let go of her collie, her last real tie to what her marriage
Emotional discomfort can sometimes be perceived as mental instability. A person may look, act, or feel insane, when in truth they are just very uncomfortable in their own skin. The narrator has a genuinely difficult decision to make which far outside his comfort zone. He is choosing between a woman who has been like a mother to him and much needed job that he feels he may enjoy. This choice is tearing him apart from the inside out. From the ringing noises that interrupt his every thought to the skin he is scraping off. The author uses diction, syntax, and extended metaphors to express the complete and utter discomfort of the narrator, both physically and emotionally.
In poetry, the speaker is not necessarily the author but is the voice of the poem that conveys his or her situations or emotions. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker meets her ex lover “after all these years” (Kizer line 1). Kizer uses an extended metaphor of the speaker’s inner self as a dog, more specifically, a female dog, which explains the title, “Bitch”. The speaker’s inner bitch reveals emotions of being wounded, furious, and affectionate towards her former lover all at once. The speaker is miserable in how she has to hold back the dog. She says, “as I drag you off by the scruff” (Line 33). This gives the reader the imagery of a dog being pulled away from something the dog aspired to do, illustrating the miserable and wounded tone. The speaker is
In Miss Julie, by August Strindberg wrote about the naturalistic view of human behavior. He symbolizes the behavior through animal imagery. The animal image Strindberg uses helps him exemplify his naturalistic view. The first animal imagery Strindberg uses is the dog. Jean uses the dog imagery to describe to Kristen how Miss Julie made her ex-fiancé act before the break-up. “ Why, she was making him jump over her riding whip the way you teach a dog to jump.” A dog is mans best friend only because a dog is an extremely loyal animal. Having Jean compare what Miss Julies did to her ex-fiancé with what some one would do to a dog shows Miss Julies drive to be the dominant one or the master. Strindberg again uses the imagery of a dog when he has Miss Julie say, “dog who wears my collar” to Jean. Miss Julie feels that her social status is so much superior to that of Jean that their relationship could be compared to that of a master and his dog. The dog imagery in the play is also used to demonstrate the difference in social classes. In the play Miss Julie’s dog, Diana, is impregnated by the lodge-keepers pug. Kristen demonstrates Miss Julie’s disgust when she says; “She almost had poor Diana shot for running after the lodge-keepers pug.” The sexual affair between the dogs also represents the sexual affair between Jean and Miss Julie and how the two of them look down on each other. Jean looks down on Miss Julie for being surprisingly easy to obtain. While Miss Julie loo...
Monica, caving in back to her old self, expressed frown lines that I had never seen before in such a young face. Her eyes turned pitch black, as a dark force took over her. Anger. A feeling she had never experienced before. It steered so deep her soul became depicted, deconstructed, piece by piece. As the roller coaster of emotions went on her eyes lit, with lightbulbs of redness. Aggressively, she snatched her phone out of her pocket and texted the one name she should not have tested. Louisa.
Not too long ago, Ms. Morris’s beloved dog, Hattie, had 5 puppies. Everyone in town thought the puppies were boring and ugly. Their eyes were closed, made a little movement, and didn’t make any noise. Nobody thought the dogs were cute, and nobody wanted them.
The image of a short rope hanging from the dog’s neck is repeated throughout the piece to symbolize both, a past struggle, as well as a current obstacle, hindering his ability to move forward smoothly on his journey. Furthermore, the rope represents a past mentality of slavery and how even though this slave is now free, he isn’t really ‘free’ at all. The dragging rope is a constant reminder of where he has been and who he is on the surface. Society has fixed this idea that he carries no value and although he is persistent with repentance, this chastisement is seemingly perpetual. When the child introduced the dog to the family, “scorn was leveled at him from all eyes” as he made his case to the “family council,” announcing why this dog is worthy enough to become a member of the house (Crane 13). As it becomes evident that the dog is no longer being accepted, he becomes internally embarrassed and filled with shame as he is put on a display of mockery. The father returns home from work “in a particularly savage temper” and decided the dog could stay, but only because he believed it would provoke hostility in the family (Crane 13). Soon after, the child took the dog to his room and cried softly, while the father began his typical violent outbursts on the wife. The father’s ill humor is what permits the ‘acceptance’ of the dog in the family. A few nights later, the father storms the apartment drunk and throws the dog out of the window and the dark-brown dog falls to his