Analysis Of John Keats

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What is one thing you want to do before you die? If you were to go into the doctor with a bruise that won’t go away and he tells you its bone cancer how would you react? Not to mention, that same day, the doctor also informs you they must amputate your leg with the bruise to try and save your life. This sounds awful, but that is exactly what happened to Kris Sheaff. After hearing this news, the first and most important thing for her to do before she died was to graduate. Anyone who knew Kris Sheaff knew she was an exceptional athlete who was going to play volleyball at Standford with the help of her ACT score over 30. She was staring death right in the face knowing she was going soon and all that was important to her was graduating. …show more content…

John Keats even wrote up to the night before he died. As mentioned before, his poem In Seeing Elgin Marbles, Keats compares his current situation in knowing he has much work left to write but not enough time to write it. Similarly, in his poem When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, John Keats opens by saying he fears running out of time to write something worth remembering. Denis Donoghue comments on this work by saying, “It has in its relaxed self-abandonment something underbred and ignoble, as of a youth ill brought up. . . The sensuous man speaks in it, and the sensuous man of a badly bred and badly trained sort . . .” It can be argued that Kris Sheaff worried about not having enough time to accomplish her goals. After getting the terrible news of her condition and then her operation, Sheaff set a goal to graduate. She didn’t expect to travel the world or touch a volleyball again, she just wanted to graduate. Through the support of the community and especially her teachers, Kris Sheaff did graduate, only to die in June of 1990. Like Keats, Sheaff was driven and determined. Her colleagues would argue her work ethic as being unmatchable and inspiring. Although she couldn’t attend school due to her lack of strength from the chemotherapy, Kris Sheaff studied at home and listened to lectures given and took notes to reach her

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