Ghost House

1106 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The theme of life and death in literature

In “Ghost House”, Robert Frost uses various analogies to show the beauty of the cycle of life and nature. Frost’s analogies are used in the themes of nature, remorse, and nostalgia. Throughout the poem he uses metaphors, to enable the reader to view his work from numerous perspectives. His use of imagery throughout the poem, implements the reader to expand their speculations on the meaning of the poem. Frost’s use of imagery and analogies allows the reader to envision an abandon house that nature is reclaiming. in the poem “Ghost house” the speaker is visiting his old residence and is feeling very remorseful. it is very evident that he is feeling remorseful through his descriptions of his old home. In lines 1-3 he says “I dwell in a lonely house I know that vanished many a summer ago, and left no trace but the cellar walls.” By his description of the house he seems unhappy with the condition of the house. In lines 11-13 he says “I dwell with a strangely aching heart in that vanished abode far apart on that disused road.” It is evident that he is feeling wistful and melancholy. Also you can tell he is not pleased with the visit and the way the house looks.
In lines 1-3 the speaker says “I dwell in a lonely house I know that vanished many a summer ago, and left no trace but the cellar walls.” It is evident that the speaker is feeling remorseful. You can conclude that the speaker once lived in this house and that there is no one living in this house, because he says “a lonely house I know.” From the description of the house you can infer that the house is in very poor condition, this may be his main reasons for feeling this way. There is nothing much left of the house except for the cellar. Also you can assume that the house is...

... middle of paper ...

...inger for a little while.
In lines 11-13 he says “I dwell with a strangely aching heart in that vanished abode far apart on that disused road.” The speaker is feeling bittersweet. He is longing for those many memories he had while living in this house. He feels emotional over the fact that the house is forgotten. It is similar to coming back to an old house you lived in as a child but now it is abandoned and decaying. You might feel sad because of the condition but think of all the memories created in the house.
Frost’s use of imagery enables the reader to envision the house through the eyes of the speaker. His metaphors induces the reader to expand their thoughts. His analogies show the beauty of nature and the cycle of life. With all bad things come good. Even though we go through tough experiences in life such as death there is always a positive side of things.

Show More
Related

  • Southern Mansion: Sounds of Silence; Living Death

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    Every story, every book, every legend, every belief and every poem have a reason and a background that creates them. Some might be based on historical events, some might be based on every culture´s beliefs, and some others might be based on personal experiences of the authors. When a person writes a literary piece, that person is looking for a way to express her opinion or her feelings about a certain situation. A good example is the poem “Southern Mansion” by Arna Bonptems. The main intention of “Southern Mansion” could have been to complain, or to stand against the discrimination and exploitation of black people throughout history. However, as one starts to read, to avoid thinking about unnatural beings wandering around the scene that is depicted is impossible. The poem “Southern Mansion” represents a vivid image of a typical ghost story which includes the traditional element of the haunted house. This image is recreated by the two prominent and contradictory elements constantly presented through the poem: sound and silence. The elements are used in two leading ways, each one separate to represent sound or silence, and together to represent sound and silence at the same time. The poem mixes the two elements in order to create the spooky environment.

    Read More

  • Comparing Abandoned Farmhouse And Ode To Family Photographs

    416 Words  | 1 Pages

    Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a tragic piece about a woman fleeing with her child, the husband ditched in isolation. The mood of the poem is dark and lonesome, by imagining the painting the writer was describing I felt grim because of what the family went through. As reported in the text, ”Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.” This demonstrates the understanding of why they deserted the farmhouse. The author also composes, “And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.” This proves that the residence was unaccompanied. When placing the final touches, the reader begins feeling dark and lonesome, asking about the families disappearance.

    Read More

  • Descriptive Images in Two Hangovers by James Wright

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    As he slouches in bed, a description of the bare trees and an old woman gathering coal are given to convey to the reader an idea of the times and the author's situation. "All groves are bare," and "unmarried women (are) sorting slate from arthracite." This image operates to tell the reader that it is a time of poverty, or a "yellow-bearded winter of depression." No one in the town has much to live for during this time. "Cold trees" along with deadness, through the image of "graves," help illustrate the author's impression of winter. Wright seems to be hibernating from this hard time of winter, "dreaming of green butterflies searching for diamonds in coal seams." This conveys a more colorful and happy image showing what he wishes was happening; however he knows that diamonds are not in coal seams and is brought back to the reality of winter. He talks of "hills of fresh graves" while dreaming, relating back to the reality of what is "beyond the streaked trees of (his) window," a dreary, povern-strucken, and cold winter.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Sometimes Mysterly By Luis Omar Salinas

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s tone is solemn and his/ her voice, filled with sadness, “My loneliness arrives ghostlike and pretentious, it seeks my soul, it is ravenous and hurting.” The speaker's choice of the words “ghost-like” convey that his loneliness arrives effortlessly, implying he is lonely a lot of the time. His choice of the word ravenous and hurting suggests that loneliness is causing the speaker pain. Through Salina’s diction, he is able to create a solemn and gloomy tone in the first 12 lines. In line 13, the speaker’s tone beings to change, “I want to find a solution, so I write letters, poems, and sometimes.” The speaker's tone has shifted from pessimistic to optimistic, revealings that the speaker’s attitude has changed to be more persistent and determined. It is this determination and persistence that allows the speaker to fill his void of loneliness. By Salinas shifting the speaker’s tone and attitude he is able to further develop the theme by revealing that by changing his attitude, the speaker was

    Read More

  • The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, by Angela Carter

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    Another instance in which his anguish at her abandonment is connoted is when the “house [echoes] with desertion” (Carter 50). Despite the fact that the house is rather grand and is beautifully furnished, there fails to be the reverberations of any sounds that would deem the dwelling alive. Rather, it is only the sounds of emptiness which engulfs the house. Comparatively, the mindset of the Beast is st...

    Read More

  • Summary Of Abandoned Farmhouse By Ted Kooser

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a poem in Ted Kooser’s book Flying at Night, which discusses themes such as loss, loneliness, and scarcity of basic human necessities; the poem also incorporates literary devices such as simile and alliteration. “Abandoned Farmhouse” invokes a sense of sadness in the reader, because Kooser shows the remnants of things left behind by a couple and their child. It can be inferred that the poem was meant to paint a picture of how these people lived their lives before the house was forgotten.

    Read More

  • Winter in the Blood by James Welch

    1518 Words  | 4 Pages

    The narrator continues with describing his resentment towards his home life, 'Coming home was not easy anymore. It was never a cinch, but it had become a torture (2).'; This excerpt provides the reader with an understanding of the sorrow that the protagonist feels at the beginning of the novel and throughout the first half. Further narration includes the protagonists feelings of distance from the land and blame that he places upon himself, 'But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me (2).'; Thus, as the reader, we understand that the narrator has removed himself from the land and his culture.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Robert Frost's and Seamus Heaney’s poetry,

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.

    Read More

  • Robert Frost’s, “Design”

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    Robert Frost’s “Design” is a poem of finding natural cruelty in the serenity of nature, a melody of understanding. Upon reading the first line, not unlike the whole poem, a joke in tone, rhythm is building up an image that grows into something else. In “Design”, the joking discovery progresses gradually through a sequence of conflicting images. . Frost uses imagery, allegory, and characterization to accomplish what could only be described as an American emblem poem. This essay will analyze Frost’s “Design”, interpreting the underlying message and overall theme Frost may have been trying to convey.

    Read More

  • The Haunted House

    695 Words  | 2 Pages

    a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped

    Read More

  • Themes of Alienation and Control in James Joyce's Araby

    1851 Words  | 4 Pages

    The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Home Burial By Robert Frost

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    In “Home Burial” by Robert Frost, Frost portrays an argument between a couple and examines the grief two individual’s go through along with their response to each other’s grief. The poem follows a married couple and illustrates a confrontation between the two concerning their feelings towards the loss of their son, but the confrontation later reveals a deeper problem in their relationship. Frost, drawing inspiration from his own life experiences, utilizes these characters to portray that individuals have differences that cause them to respond differently to grief and how having to alter such things to please another can cause a rift in any relationship. Specifically, Frost portrays the unraveling of a relationship.

    Read More

  • James Joyce's Araby - Setting in Araby

    1591 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the opening paragraph, North Richmond Street is introduced as "blind," and "quiet", yet on it rests another house which is unoccupied. The narrator states that the house is, "Detached," from the others on the street, but that, "The other houses on the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces" (379). This creates an image of isolation, and uncertainty, for the one uninhabited house. The image of the lone house, lays in the shadows of the crowd of other houses who stand so remarkably calm, and collected. This enhances the image of the adolescent narrator, and perhaps foreshadows, his blind inclination towards self discovery on the road of life.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Setting in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    Similarly, the furniture in the house is as sullen as the house itself. What little furniture is in the house is beaten-up; this is a symbol of the dark setting. The oak bed is the most important p...

    Read More

  • Robert Frost Uses Imagery and Analogy in His Poem, Birches

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Frost’s use of comparisons helps the reader to better interpret the meaning of this poem. The picture created, with his use of imagery allows the reader to view his work from various perspectives. His analogies are very pragmatic. The reader is able to relate to the speaker’s feelings. After reading this poem it gives the reader a sense of understanding why the speaker wished he could go back to his past so much.

    Read More

More about Ghost House

Open Document