I chose this essay based largely on the title. I am not sure if that was the best way to go but my decision has been made. Of course we all know that the meaning behind the word “reluctant” usually means to struggle with something or to be cautious. When the word attached is the word “mistress”, I think I can understand why these two words are paired next to each other. A mistress struggling with her role in man’s life or feeling cautious does not seem like such a crazy thought. Personally, if I was in that situation I would feel a huge need to be cautious because who would want to be found out by someone else’s significant other? This begs me to question the morals of this mistress. Deciding to get involved with someone who already has a …show more content…
She could also feel this feeling when he leaves her to go be with his family. “A haunting melody trails her, and she cannot hide in the sunlight;” I believe this is the mistress feeling the weight of the bad decision of her having an affair follow her around. Her explaining of how she cannot hide in the sunlight could be her feeling that she can no longer hide her feelings for her lover. Could she be preparing to let her secret be known to someone else? The next line reads, “she prays for the ability to take root somewhere” and I believe this means she is looking for something stable. I can only imagine the chaos the mistress must feel in her life. She may believe that be letting go of her secret, she will feel the dead weight of that relationship off her shoulders. Somehow this could make her feel …show more content…
Cassandra thought she wanted to be a mistress to Apollo, or maybe she even planned to betray him all along. This then begs the question of, what did the mistress do to her lover? Was the betrayal her not keeping their arrangement a secret? Or was there some internal problem within their relationship? The last lines of the poem read, “You don’t understand, she’s saying, what he gave me was a gift, but the gift was the same as the curse.” I believe this is of course a reference to the story of Cassandra and Apollo. Did the mistress feel as though her lover blessed her with some type of gift the way Apollo did? This leaves me with another question, what was the curse for the mistress? If I am using the model of the story between Apollo and Cassandra, I began to wonder if the curse was exactly the same thing. Did the mistress decide to go public with the relationship and was met with objections to her claims? Was she comparing her lover to Apollo, meaning he was seen as someone in great power in their world? When I reached the end of the poem, I was then forced to think that maybe this was
Like I stated above, I picked essays that I believed I could resonate with, and I was correct.
The following Essay must be a minimum of 5 paragraphs of 10-12 sentences each (a sentence is 10 words or more) .
If I would have delved more assiduously into the meaning of the poem, I think I would have raised my grade
This heavy word choice made by Harper continues throughout the following stanzas as well, and this evokes a sympathetic feeling from the audience. At this point, it has not been revealed that the person with the "burden'd heart" is a mother, but it still conveys the anguish that the woman is feeling. The woman is also described as having a "bowed and feeble head," and this conveys the helplessness that the woman is feeling in the scene (stanza 2, line 6). The author continues with this tone when the son is introduced as well. He is described as having a "trembling form" that the mother is trying to hide behind herself (stanza 4, line 16). At this point in the poem, it is made much clearer that the mother and son are slaves because the narrator says that "he is not hers," meaning that even though she gave birth to the boy, he was owned by the slave owners (stanza 5, line 17). Therefore, her own son could never truly belong to her. Slavery has created this situation, and the woman was so desperate to get out that she was willing to run away with her son in order for him to have a better love. When they were caught and the threat that he would be taken from her became real, she became devastated and desperate. However,
It sounds like her father’s death made her angrier at the fact that she is not able to get anything from him anymore. There are several times in the poem when she switches emotions on her father. She forgives him and then is angry again. It’s hard for her because she does not know whether or not she can forgive him, considering all the pain and hardships the family was put through. She tries to justify her father’s actions by blaming his father, but is still angry because her father didn’t help the situation. At the same time, the daughter is almost as upset with her mother as she is with her father when she says “you were each other’s bad bargain, not mine” (Line 21). By the end of the poem, she is able to accept the fact that the broken relationship with her father and content relationship with her mother has to remain untouched. She is able to see that she cannot fully blame her father for being the reason why she is not emotionally content with their relationship. There’s nothing she can do about it now since both her parents are dead, but she is able to let go of it at this
...ience the same situation has her father. When she tries to commit suicide she reconnects with the “bag” again, relating to the “a bag full of God”. It is very difficult for her to move on from her deceased father based on the matrimonial mistake. The speaker of the poem could have has Electra complex, which means the daughter is actually in love with the father through childhood. That assumption could relate to the hatred/ love relationship with her father. This then contributes to her inferiority and childish qualities that are emphasized throughout the poem. The tone changed frequently during the poem in order to repress the love for her father. The story is no longer the daughter’s attempt to reunite with and to marry the dead father; it is now the daughter’s wish to overthrow his dominance over her imagination and to “kill” him and the man who takes his place.
In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
The first essay assignment of the class was a simple five-page narrative essay about any moment in my life that left a large impact on me. This
The story begins when she and her husband have just moved into a colonial mansion to relieve her chronic nervousness. An ailment her husband has conveniently diagnosed. The husband is a physician and in the beginning of her writing she has nothing but good things to say about him, which is very obedient of her. She speaks of her husband as if he is a father figure and nothing like an equal, which is so important in a relationship. She writes, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction." It is in this manner that she first delicately speaks of his total control over her without meaning to and how she has no choices whatsoever. This control is perhaps so imbedded in our main character that it is even seen in her secret writing; "John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition...so I will let it alone and talk about the house." Her husband suggests enormous amounts of bed rest and no human interaction at all. He chooses a "prison-like" room for them to reside in that he anticipates will calm our main character even more into a comma like life but instead awakens her and slowly but surely opens her eyes to a woman tearing the walls down to freedom.
NOTE: This isn’t even close to how I would like the essay to be laid out. I’m just writing paragraphs and eventually I will get them in an order I like them and revise.
For me, I found this aspect of my essay to be the most challenging to accomplish because I felt as though there was no clear way I could do this without using first person narration. I tend to avoid first person narration in my essays at all costs because especially at my high school, using first person narration was heavily looked down upon. But in this essay I subtle transitioned to my personal opinion and experiences in order to show a strong connection between my personal experience and the arguments I’m trying to make and
In the last line of the second stanza, the subject enters dramatically, accompanied by an abrupt change in the rhythm of the poem:
The title “The Willing Mistress” instantly suggests the action taken by the female protagonist. She has little or no sexual inhibitions, and is a full participant in the tryst. The title also alludes that the woman may be unmarried, or betrothed to another man. This poem describes how the female speaker becomes aroused by the excellent courtship of her lover; to such an extent that she is open to engage in a passion exchange. She explains this by saying, “Which made me willing to receive / That which I dare not name" (Lines 15-16). Behn allows the character to embrace her sexual passion which was forbidden by social standards. Further, she can be said to assume the position of a man, resulting in role-reversals. Albeit the position of sexual power is normally held by the man both in literature and in reality, she takes control of her sexual pleasure, and boldly assumes charge of her desires.
At first I had a lot of doubt in myself because I did not think I could write a two-paged paper on one word. I proved myself wrong, and it was an essay that I enjoyed. I started out by thinking of words that meant a lot to me personally which made the assignment less complicated. However, even though it was a shorter page length, it took me quite a while to write. I had a difficult time coming up with examples instead of only defining the word with other words. At the time, I felt like I put full effort into this essay, but looking back at it I feel like I could have done a little better. Some improvements I would have made would be to go deeper with some of my examples. Some of my thoughts I feel like I could have taken a lot further. To me, they seemed explained fully, but as another reader it may have been hard for them to understand my full view. For instance, I mentioned that I chose to become a nurse rather than a doctor. Many would not understand why because it seems logical to pick an occupation on top for obvious reasons. I should have explained that I do not want to spend 8-10 years going to school to become a Pediatrician when they are on the lower pay scale compared to most doctors. Also, I would rather be doing more hands-on work while doctors tend to spend less time with their patients than nurses. Overall, I decided to listen to myself instead of others because I wanted to be happy and that to me is