A bluebird is a small songbird with a blue head, back and wings. It is only exposed in the spring season, when the flowers are growing and air is slowly getting warmer. It comes out of its nesting when it feels the joy of the environment; it lets himself fly free and lets himself forget the worries of when being on ground level. The bluebird is defenceless in flight, and is always trying to seek freedom and escape being locked up. Even though Charles Bukowski wrote because of his promiscuous lifestyle, he expresses his opinions through his development of complex emotions while using a bluebird to symbolize the human soul of emotion; and through Bukowski's poem, he uses strong writing styles to develop his ideas.
Bluebird by Charles Bukowski is a poem written by a drunken old man, who spent most of his life consumed by sex, violence, and alcohol abuse. Charles Bukowski opens the poem, with a soft sense of a blue bird wanting to escape the emotions it burrens. Bukowski uses a soft tone throughout the poem to communicate his ideas of the bluebird, trying to escape from his madness. The bluebird is a small sensitive animal, that smoothly flies through the sky. A bird is simple and soft spoken, just like how Bukowski writes. Bukowski uses this idea of a bluebird to show how something so small and beautiful, can be so vulnerable and defenseless. When in a naturally dangerous environment, a bird will always try to seek freedom, no matter the consequences. The innermost emotions, as a human, are always vulnerable. The bluebird is every human who is vulnerable, the bluebird is who a person is before they put the mask on of becoming guarded. The bluebird is our emotions and feelings; our pleasures and happiness as well as our depression. T...
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...Bukowski’s poem occurs when he changes the line, “there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him” to “there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody’s asleep.” This shift of emotion shows that as humans we all have secrets and we all are able to let go of our scaredness, even if it is alone and at the darkest of hours. Bukowski then writes, “then I put him back, but he’s singing a little in there, I haven’t quite let him die” this shows that no human ever completely lets themselves be oblivious to the natural sense of emotions. The persona is aware of the pain of not being able to let go the burden they conceal, but as humans we are afraid of being humiliated and we think that it is just easier to escape the truth, and just say, “but I’m too tough for him.”
The short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is an emotionally compelling story in which the narrator describes his relationship with his brother and the struggles they have been through together. Sonny, the narrator’s brother, was sent to prison for selling and using heroine. Time passes and the narrator writes to Sonny in prison when his daughter, Grace, dies. In a flashback, the readers learn that before Sonny’s improsinment the narrarator was in the army and their parents both died. The readers also learn that Sonny dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. After Sonny realizes he’s being a burden to his sister in law’s family he decides to leave and join the navy. When he gets back he and his brother fight, ending with Sonny saying that
Dunbar finishes off the poem with powerful lines: “But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea that upward heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!” The caged bird is depicted as battered, bruised, and beaten from his violent rebellion— praying as his last chance of freedom. The bird’s belief in its virtuous rebellion justifies the revolt, as we see the bird’s constant persistency, even as the mutiny is demoted to
In this essay James Baldwin’s world renowned story “Sonny’s Blues” will be analysed in detail, including Baldwin’s background, the artistic quality, thematic meanings, a plot summary, and the role this story plays in world literature. James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York’s Harlem. At the time the center of black culture, Harlem was once a culturally vibrant community of artists of all kinds, but it was also a neighborhood deeply afflicted by poverty and violence. Baldwin’s mother was eventually left by Baldwin’s biological father, and assumed a job as a domestic servant and married the preacher David Baldwin, whose strong influence on Baldwin was evident not only in Baldwin’s writing but in his religious faith as well. Baldwin’s religious faith had its follies. He had a difficult relationship with his stepfather, and while attending High School in the Bronx, he began to accept his homosexuality, which further complicated his role in the church. During his highschool years, Baldwin’s literary talent took off. He began spending time in Greenwich Village, which was widely considered the heart of the post–World War II artistic community.
The “Little Bird” by Imogen Heap, represents the human effort to hide ugliness. Humans are attracted to beautiful things, yet they themselves are not. Humans are naturally bitter and are without morals; it is society that puts us into place. So human effort is focused on fixing themselves and their surroundings. The little bird symbolizes a metaphysical being that humanity looks towards for help.
As caged animals, birds represent internal feelings of confinement and delimitation. While roaming and flying freely above open seas, birds emit emotions of self-reliance and freestanding independence. The imprisonment or liberty of birds throughout the storyline of The Awakening is the symbolism that Chopin utilizes to discursively illustrate the societal limitations and boundaries that are placed upon Edna. For the duration of the novel, vivid bird imagery elucidates both the struggle and freedom that she constantly encounters. One exemplification of this includes how Edna notices the “green and yellow” parrot that hangs outside of Madame Lebrun’s home. Edna is somewhat irritated by the sh...
The purpose of the poem was to express my interests of nature and how I felt and what I experienced when I was in the woods at that time. There’s also that life and death aspect in this poem, in which the bird has the lizard in his mouth and also by the word “fire”.
In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, John Updike uses a flock of birds to show that man can be uplifted by observing nature. Updike’s conclusion is lead up to with the beauty of autumn and what a binding spell it has on the two men playing golf. In Updike’s conclusion and throughout the poem, he uses metaphors, similes, and diction to show how nature mesmerizes humans.
Furthermore, Maya Angelou’s poem, ‘Caged Bird,’ there is a heavy usage of imagery to contrast the lives of the free and caged bird. For example, the first stanza includes vivid details about how free and easygoing the free bird’s life is. The text includes, “A free bird leaps/ on the back of the wind/ and floats downstream…” “...and dips his wing/ in the orange sun rays/ and dares to claim the sky.” Evidently, this bird can openly travel through the wonders of the world, such as streams and beautiful skies; there seems to not be a care in the world. However, the reader gets a peek into the life of the caged bird, who has a multitude of challenges and sorrow. These circumstances are first shown in the second stanza, but there is a more intense picture in stanza five, “But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams/ his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream/ his wings are clipped and his feet are tied/ so he opens his throat to sing.” There is an obvious switch in mood that is projected from the author, as the caged bird has lost its dreams and had many obstacles preventing it from breaking
James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues tells the story of the narrator and his brother and the hardships that they must endure. As Kahlil Gibran States “Out of suffering have emerged the strangest souls, the most massive characters are seared with scars.” (Gibran). In that very quote the real light is shown as it informs the reader that with suffering comes growth and once the person whomever it may be emerges out of the darkness they may have scars but it has made them stronger. The theme of light and darkness as well as suffering play a vital part in this story. For both men there are times in which they have the blues and suffer in the darkness of their lives but music takes the suffering from them.
Albeit the verbalizer doesn't mention any races or ethnicity, it is pellucid that she is exhibiting how the freedoms allotted whites are diametrically opposed to those given to the Africans Americans. In the first stanza, the verbalizer illustrates how the free bird, or white race, is untroubled. It withal shows how the white race has the audacity to own and govern society inequitably. The speaker concludes'' (the free bird) dares to claim the sky". This shows how anglos demonstrated discrimination and prejudice toward blacks. Haplessly, this deplorable conduct was condoned in
The speaker describes the skylark as a happy creature completely pure in its joy and unhampered by sorrow or misery. As the speaker watches the bird, he notes that it seems to soar through the sky "like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun" (ll. 15). The skylark seems to have an unending amount of "joy" as the bird's emotion has "just begun." Furthermore, it's happiness appears of extreme magnitude as it exists "unbodied" which suggests both the sense that nothing can restrain the lark's delight as well as the idea that mortals cannot feel such "joy." In addition, when the skylark flies out of sight the speaker can still "hear thy shrill delight" (ll. 20). Even though the speaker cannot physically see the joyful bird, he still can sense its "shrill delight." Because the lark possesses such intense happiness, the speaker does not need to see it to feel its pure, and thus powerful, emotions. Additionally, the speaker uses a series of metaphors, comparing the skylark with a poet, maiden, glow-...
bird as the metaphor of the poem to get the message of the poem across
Within her poems, Angelou will use metaphors and similes to hide the different meanings she is trying to express. In the poem Caged Bird, Angelou sets up a metaphor, and relates the pain and sorrow a caged bird feels when it cannot fly free to the despair her race feels, due to it’s lack of freedom within the American society. “The free bird leaps,” relates the white people to a free bird that, “dares to claim the sky.” Meaning that they don’t have to fear consequence for their actions because they are granted their rights by the law; whereas the bird trapped in a cage has, “his wings...clipped his feet...tied,” which doesn’t allow him to go anywhere or do anything, restraining him, and keeping him from seeing the beauty of the world as the white people did to African Americans. In the poem Still I Rise, Angelou uses similes to add the exact same effect. Throughout the poem, Angelou relates negative vocabulary to herself, emphasizing the hate she has received. She discusses how the people will write about her race with, “bitter, twisted lies,” distorting their culture, refusing to
I chose these three poems because the subject matter appealed to me and I believe that the poems convey their meaning very effectively. Upon researching the poems, I discovered that Caged Bird was in fact inspired by Sympathy, which accounts for the similarities in language and imagery, as outlined below. All three poems deal with the subject of freedom using the imagery of birds; On Liberty and Slavery is narrated as a human plea for freedom, and makes reference to birds in that context, whereas Caged Bird and Sympathy both use the imagery of caged birds to explore the theme of loss of freedom. The symbolism of birds is used to depict freedom, as birds are essentially without constraints; in comparison to the limitations of humans, they have limitless possibilities. When a bird is caged, however, it loses that potential and is restricted not by its own limitations, but the limits set by another.
“A Bird came down the Walk,” was written in c. 1862 by Emily Dickinson, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886. This easy to understand and timeless poem provides readers with an understanding of the author’s appreciation for nature. Although the poem continues to be read over one hundred years after it was written, there is little sense of the time period within which it was composed. The title and first line, “A Bird came down the Walk,” describes a common familiar observation, but even more so, it demonstrates how its author’s creative ability and artistic use of words are able to transform this everyday event into a picture that results in an awareness of how the beauty in nature can be found in simple observations. In a step like narrative, the poet illustrates the direct relationship between nature and humans. The verse consists of five stanzas that can be broken up into two sections. In the first section, the bird is eating a worm, takes notice of a human in close proximity and essentially becomes frightened. These three stanzas can easily be swapped around because they, for all intents and purposes, describe three events that are able to occur in any order. Dickinson uses these first three stanzas to establish the tone; the tone is established from the poet’s literal description and her interpretive expression of the bird’s actions. The second section describes the narrator feeding the bird some crumbs, the bird’s response and its departure, which Dickinson uses to elaborately illustrate the bird’s immediate escape. The last two stanzas demonstrate the effect of human interaction on nature and more specifically, this little bird, so these stanzas must remain in the specific order they are presented. Whereas most ...