How do the Poets Explore the Theme of Death in Educating for Leisure, Mother in a Refugee Camp, Do not go Gentle into that Good Night, Remember, T...

Language plays a crucial role in helping a poet get his point across and this can be seen used be all the poems to help them explore the theme of death with the reader. This includes the formal, brutal and emotive language that Chinua Achebe uses in “mother in a refugee camp.” This can be seen when Achebe says, “The air was heavy with odor of diarrhea, of unwashed children with washed out ribs” this is very brutal and the is no holding back with the use of a euphemism or a simile as seen in the other poems but he would rather invite the reader to uses their senses to get a vivid description of what the refugee camp is like and how life is like while living there. On top of that the juxtaposition of the polar opposites “unwashed” and “washed” allows for the emphasis of each respective word, which allows for the reader to realize the difference and contrast in their respective societies. For the reader these two words would usually be used in alternate with “washed” being used to describe the “children” and “unwashed” to describe the “ribs” but the society portrayed in this poem it’s the complete opposite. With “remember” Christina Rosetti uses a formal, descriptive and old-fashioned type of writing with a romantic element to it. This is very successful with this sonnet due to the fact that it helps get her point about death across to the reader more easily. The romantic side of the language can be seen when the poet says, “When you can no more hold me by the hand.” This shows us the intimacy that the character had with the person she loves and it includes the physical approach of holding hands. To show us the more descriptive and old fashion tone we can look at when then poet says, “For if darkness and corruption leave a vestige of...

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...ime that “great expectations” by Charles Dickens was written. It also correlates with the status of miss Havisham, which was rich and upper class. In both “E for L” and “Havisham” we see that aggressive and derogatory language is used and this is due how in “Havisham” Miss Havisham is jilted and how in “E for L” the character has an unquenchable thirst for murder. This aggressive language can be with the use of the words “stabbed”, “bang”, “kill” and “squash” and they emphasize how aggressive and dangerous these character can actually be. Finally we can see that within “The man he killed” a lot of reflective language is used to look back at when the character killed the opposition’s soldier. This can be seen when the poet says, “I shot him dead because- -.” This reflective language shows us how much the character did not want to shoot him but was forced to shoot him.