An analysis of metaphor can offer us insight into the deeper meaning within literature. As almost nothing is directly revealed regarding its nature, such analysis is vital in the case of Thomas Wolfe’s short story ‘Only the Dead Know Brooklyn’. While the plot may be simple, even bemusing, it is in fact a delicately woven philosophical allegory. Wolfe is alluding to the theme of what it really means to live life to the fullest, can we merely wait for our ‘train t’ come’ or must we “thrust our feelers in distressful ooze” in order to truly appreciate the world around us, even if we end up ‘drownin’? The aim of this essay is to consider how Wolfe’s enigmatic story, expounded by metaphor, delivers an urgent defence of our threatened individuality, one which transcends the ordinary encounter at a Brooklyn subway station. The ideal platform for the metaphor in ‘Only the Dead Know Brooklyn’ is the utterly literal, pragmatic character of the narrator, providing a poignant juxtaposition throughout. The big guy asks figuratively “What becomes of people after dey have drowned out heah?”, b...
In the short story “The Metaphor”, author Budge Wilson depicted a story about a girl named Charlotte discovering her own life through her teenage years. Throughout the duration of the story, Charlotte had moved from a shadow of her mother to becoming the unique and distinct herself today. It was evident that Charlotte was aware of her own thoughts and values for the first time when she wrote a metaphor describing Miss Hancock; an individual which no one around her loved.
Even from the first paragraph, Hurst's use of vocabulary evokes an emotional response to the story line. His word choice as the narrator describes his surrounding and hints to a fatal event that awaits the reader's attention. Hurst uses words and phrases such as “dead autumn,” “rotting brown magnolia,” “graveyard flowers.” The last sentence, “...speaking softly the names of our dead” adds one final melancholy statement (91). The imagery throughout the paragraph helps to imagine an eerie swamp land surrounded by death and depressing memories. This melancholy setting foresha...
Many times in life things are not as they seem. What may look simple on the surface may be more complicated deeper within. Countless authors of short stories go on a journey to intricately craft the ultimate revelation as well as the subtle clues meant for the readers as they attempt to figure out the complete “truth” of the story. The various authors of these stories often use different literary techniques to help uncover the revelation their main characters undergo. Through the process of carefully developing their unique characters and through point of view, both Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway ultimately convey the significant revelation in the short stories, “Roman Fever” and “Hills Like White Elephants” respectively. The use of these two literary techniques is essential because they provide the readers with the necessary clues to realize the ultimate revelations.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
Death is a common theme in literature. It is the end of the line on the human train of life. People have different views on death, with some fearing it and some embracing it as a passage to something else. Death can be interpreted in ways other than just loss of physical life, including loss of a loved one or even loss of sanity. Both Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” deal with the theme of death, albeit in different ways. However, they are both losing what they hold dearest to them. These two pieces of work by Dickinson and Bierce are similar in that they convey the theme of the death or something they care about.
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
Poetry is a part of literature that writers used to inform, educate, warn, or entertain the society. Although the field has developed over the years, the authenticity of poetry remains in its ability to produce a meaning using metaphors and allusions. In most cases, poems are a puzzle that the reader has to solve by applying rhetoric analysis to extract the meaning. Accordingly, poems are interesting pieces that activate the mind and explore the reader’s critical and analytical skills. In the poem “There are Delicacies,” Earle Birney utilizes a figurative language to express the theme and perfect the poem. Specifically, the poem addresses the frangibility of the human life by equating it to the flimsy of a watch. Precisely, the poet argues that a human life is short, and, therefore, everyone should complete his duties in perfection because once he or she dies, the chance is unavailable forever.
Throughout T. C. Boyle’s work, “Greasy Lake”, a young man’s intrepid night leads him to discover how close death is to life. This realization causes a sombre awakening for the narrator as he falls in the midst of fatality; and practically becomes a casualty himself. Following each traumatic event, the narrator’s innocence disappears and morality is called into question. When death fast approaches, and the grim reaper is breathing down his neck, the narrator subsequently realizes his mistakes, but not before it’s almost too late.
I will discuss the similarities by which these poems explore themes of death and violence through the language, structure and imagery used. In some of the poems I will explore the characters’ motivation for targeting their anger and need to kill towards individuals they know personally whereas others take out their frustration on innocent strangers. On the other hand, the remaining poems I will consider view death in a completely different way by exploring the raw emotions that come with losing a loved one.
In the first instance, death is portrayed as a “bear” (2) that reaches out seasonally. This is then followed by a man whom “ comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse / / to buy me…” This ever-changing persona that encapsulates death brings forth a curiosity about death and its presence in the living world. In the second stanza, “measles-pox” (6) is an illness used to portray death’s existence in a distinctive embodiment. This uncertainty creates the illusion of warmth and welcomenesss and is further demonstrated through the reproduction of death as an eminent figure. Further inspection allows the reader to understand death as a swift encounter. The quick imagery brought forth by words such as “snaps” and “shut” provoke a sense of startle in which the audience may dispel any idea of expectedness in death’s coming. This essential idea of apparent arrival transitions to a slower, foreseeable fate where one can imagine the enduring pain experienced “an iceberg between shoulder blades” (line 8). This shift characterizes the constant adaptation in appearance that death acquires. Moreover, the idea of warmth radiating from death’s presence reemerges with the introduction to a “cottage of darkness” (line 10), which to some may bring about a feeling of pleasantry and comfort. It is important to note that line 10 was the sole occurrence of a rhetorical question that the speaker
Ernest Hemingway captures the essence and origins of nihilistic thought in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, written in a time of religious and moral confusion shortly after The Great War. The ideas expressed in this short story represent the post World War 1 thinking of Hemingway, and the notoriously nihilistic Lost Generation in Paris, which was greatly influenced by the many traumas of war. Learning from his unnerving experiences in battle, Hemingway enforces the idea that all humans will inevitably fade into eternal nothingness and everything valued by humans is worthless. He develops this idea by creating a brilliant mockery of two coveted religious documents, revealing authority figures as typical, despicable, human beings, and reducing life into the most raw, simplistic, and frightening reality imaginable. He states that all humans will naturally die alone and literally be “in despair” about “nothing” (494), and that people will either seek a “calm and pleasant cafe” (496), or a self-inflicted death simply to escape despair. Undoubtedly, Hemingway destroys any existence of a higher meaning because, in reality “[life is] all a nothing, and a man [is] nothing too” (496). By viewing the actions of three different generations, Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” elaborates on the idea that life is not continual enlightenment and growth, but gradual despair, and an inevitable death into “nada” (497).
“…so distinctly black, black as only coffins can be-it conjures up hush-hush criminal adventures in the rippling night and, even more, death itself: the bier, the obscure obsequies, the final, silent journey.”(Mann 2004 pp. 36)
The novella "The Dead" by James Joyce tells the tale of early twentieth century upper class society in the Irish city of Dublin. The story tells of the characters' entrapment, and the tragic lives they lead, hiding behind the conventions of their society. Joyce uses the symbolism to draw a parallel between the natural way in which the snow covers the land and the way in which the characters use their culture unnatural to cover reality. This story comes together, not only to tell of the individual tragedy of these peoples lives, but to tell the tragic story of all of Ireland, as it's true problems become obscured in so many ways.
By rethinking the carpe diem theme, Andrew Marvell makes his point more effectively than many other poets working with the same ideas. Using the methods described above, he makes the ideal scene of timelessness more concrete, so that when it is swept away the alternative seems all the more frightening and imperative. In this way he recreates a feature of real life- death is imperative, but trivialities can often make it seem distant. Invariably, however, it will greet us all.
This poem portrays in a metaphorical manner the constant awareness by men that they must die; and it does this without appealing to the pity or horror acquainted with death. This poem leads the reader to contemplate the fast within the metaphor quite steadily.