In Martin Espada’s 1987 poem “Latin Night at the Pawnshop,” setting affects the mood of this poem. First, the title highlights setting in this poem. It is nighttime. In contrast to the night, the poet’s use of “Latin” invokes colorful images of Latino Culture. Furthermore, combining the words Latin and night creates a vivid mental picture of fiesta for me. This might be because of the many nights I’ve spent in Mexico. Nonetheless, had Espada made the title “Latin Day at the Pawnshop”, I would be visualizing some weekday sales event for Latinos. You can see why the title is important here. Additionally, Espada treats the poem like music. A salsa band begins to play. Music erupts from the stillness of a cold, darkened street. The speaker’s phantom band plays the salsa one musical layer at a time until it comes to an abrupt end. The mood initially gives the speaker a sense of nostalgia and hope. However, that nostalgia turns to reality. Finally, the speaker finds himself face to face with the realization that his treasured culture is disappearing in this country.
The first stanza contrasts with the title. In the first stanza, “Chelsea Massachusetts / Christmas, 1987” (1-2),
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For it only lived inside a single thought. The speaker comes face to face with a sad reality. In this country, his cultural traditions are fading. The speaker compares the price tags on the instruments to the tags on a dead man’s toe (9-11). The speaker is offering the realization that five musical instruments aren’t serving their purpose while sitting in a pawn shop window. The pawn shop has become a morgue to the instruments. The instruments are lifeless like a body at the morgue. Both serve no purpose. All we have are their memories. The speaker brilliantly uses metaphor here. The dead man’s toe represents finality. The speaker has accepted this reality. It seems he might be giving up hope though. The instruments could find their purpose
Alfredo Corchado — is the author of the book named " Midnight in Mexico:A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness”. We are, probably, all interested in finding out the facts, news, and gossips about Mexico. This country was always associated with something mysterious. For me personally, the title of the book seemed to be very gripping, I was interested in revealing the secrets of life in Mexico, thus I decided to read this book. I was really curious, what can Alfredo Corchado tell me about the life in this country, the country, where the constant massacre is the picture, people used to see. In his book, the author tells the reader about the real situations, which took place in Mexico, reveals the secrets of the people’s lives and tells the story from the “inside”. He describes the way he lives his life, and does his work. The " Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness” is a memoir. Author tries to transform his own experience into the story line. Corchado shows the reader the darkest episodes of Mexican society, while relying on his own experience.
The poem “Exile” by Julia Alvarez dramatizes the conflicts of a young girl’s family’s escape from an oppressive dictatorship in the Dominican Republic to the freedom of the United States. The setting of this poem starts in the city of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which was renamed for the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo; however, it eventually changes to New York when the family succeeds to escape. The speaker is a young girl who is unsophisticated to the world; therefore, she does not know what is happening to her family, even though she surmises that something is wrong. The author uses an extended metaphor throughout the poem to compare “swimming” and escaping the Dominican Republic. Through the line “A hurried bag, allowing one toy a piece,” (13) it feels as if the family were exiled or forced to leave its country. The title of the poem “Exile,” informs the reader that there was no choice for the family but to leave the Dominican Republic, but certain words and phrases reiterate the title. In this poem, the speaker expresser her feeling about fleeing her home and how isolated she feels in the United States.
Castillo refers to all words in poems as gold. Every word must be picked and placed with all the care in the world. Along with her imagery and choice of words, metaphors, poetry form, and flow are essential to creating the two featured poems. After many reads of both “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” and “El Chicle” I have been able to visually interpret the worlds created in both poems. “El Chicle” is all about imagery, however, “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” also contains valuable imagery.
In the novel, Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo, settings serve the purpose of being much more than merely locations. Various settings are utilized to represent symbols throughout the novel in order for Rulfo to develop the plot of the novel. Comala is a location that clearly acts as a symbol in Rulfo’s writing; however, to truly recognize the symbolism in the novel and to acknowledge the presence of key themes such as those of purgatory, religion, and oppression, it is necessary to analyze less conspicuous settings, particularly, the home of doña Eduviges, the church, and the Media Luna.
Vega, Ed “Spanish Roulette” Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. James, Missy and Merickel, Alan P. 5th ed. Boston: Longman, 2013. 417-423. Print.
To show a humorous tone, Valdes makes every line of the poem some how related to the latin culture and how they change it to fit with their likes. On the first line the author says “Welcome to ESL 100, English Surely Latinized…” (692), instead of saying English as a Second Language she reaffirms that English is being twisted by the latinos. She does ...
In the first stanza, it is established that the poem is written in the first person, when “I” is referring to the speaker, which illustrates this person’s point of view concerning the tragedy of 9/11 during a whole day of events. The speaker begins by setting a tranquil mood as the opening of a long list of last names. In line 1, he says: “Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.” He describes the night like a tropical tree gently swaying in a peaceful beach setting. He calmly observes the gentle raindrops dripping slowly down his windows until they disappear in “A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze, / And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,” (2-3). For a brief moment, he enjoys going outside to his garden at sunrise to forget the sorrow that death brings when “In the morning, I walked out barefoot / Among thousands of flowers” (11-12).
Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem “Green Chile” describes a personal experience growing up with a staple food of the Southwest tradition. In the 3 stanzas and 45 eloquent lines, Baca uses symbolism through red and green chile peppers. The red chile peppers symbolize strength and progression and are also the peppers the author prefers. On the other hand, the green chilies represent youth, which are Baca’s grandmother's favorite. Both the red and green chilies are differentiated by the flavor and taste to tell a story of Baca and his history of growing up with his grandmother.
Gina Valdes in her poem English con Salsa used many literary techniques. One of them was humor and throughout the poem it is used greatly. An example of it starts in the beginning where the po...
The 1990 poem “I Am Offering This Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca is themed around the life of a prisoner who has nothing else to offer except poetry. As one learns, more about the author’s background, the context of the poem becomes clearer. Examine this piece of information taken from the biography of Baca, “A Chicano poet, Baca served a ten-year sentence in an Arizona prison and his poetry grows out of his experience as a convict” (Baca). Baca’s experience as a prisoner reflects in his writing in that prisoners are often deprived of their rights and many of their possessions while serving a sentence. In his poem, “I Am Offering This Poem”, Baca speaks from the point of view of a prisoner having nothing to offer his love interest except the
Lines 9-17 of the poem state “lyric you in lilacs, dash you in the rain, blend into the beach, to complement my see, play the lyre for you, ode you with my love song, anything to win
Rendon, Mario. "The Latino and His Culture: Chronicle of a Death Foretold." American Journal of Psychoanalysis 54.4 (Dec. 1994): 345-358. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 162. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Jan. 2013.
Pablo Neruda is from Chile and gives a voice to Latin America in his poetry (Bleiker 1129). “The United Fruit Co.,” the poem by Pablo Neruda that will be analyzed in this essay, is enriched with symbolism, metaphors, and allusions. These allusions have great emphasis to the Christian religion, but some allusions are used to evoke negative emotions towards the United States (Fernandez 1; Hawkins 42). Personification and imagery along with onomatopoeia and metonymy are also found in “The United Fruit Co.” Neruda’s use of these literary devices makes his messages of imperialism, Marxism, and consumerism understandable (Fernandez 4). In this essay each of these literary devices with its proper meaning will be further analyzed in the hope of achieving a more complex understanding of Neruda’s message.
The second stanza depicts a scene of a poet asleep in the city as a wind passes him by that carries with it poetic inspiration. The accompanying wind in the second stanza...
In the last line of the second stanza, the subject enters dramatically, accompanied by an abrupt change in the rhythm of the poem: