April 24, 2014. That day, I wore my black suit. I was in a large crowded room. People throughout the room smiled with tears and teared up when telling stories. Suddenly, the room became silent as the doors shut; the funeral service for my friend’s dad was about to begin. I regretfully remember that throughout the service I fought to contain my tears. For some unknown reason, I felt that it was unacceptable for me to cry for someone else’s dad. I thought that society would not acknowledge my grief since I was not part of his family. Similarly, the speaker in Elegy for Jane, My Student, Thrown by a Horse, by Theodore Roethke, ponders the same thing. This elegy exposes the grief that the speaker feels for his beloved student. Within these lines, …show more content…
The speaker begins by recalling Jane’s life in the world of the living with bittersweet images. First, the speaker zooms in on the vulnerability of Jane’s neck. The reader runs into the word “neckcurls” and immediately relates it back to Jane’s horse accident. The lack of vitality in the words “limp” and “damp” back up this idea. However, the poet describes the neckcurls as tendrils, like a living plant. Thus, it becomes clear to the reader that the speaker is recalling Jane’s soft hair near her neck. The poet relates images of Jane to images of nature to show how Jane is constantly on the speaker’s mind and how Jane is part of the speaker’s life. For instance, in line two, the speaker recalls Jane’s smile as a sidelong pickerel smile. The poet produces a rhythm to elongate these four words, painting the image of Jane’s awkward smile. Hence, parts of the natural world seem to remind the speaker of Jane. On the other hand, the poet creates energy in the poem when describing Jane’s “quick look.” The energy in Jane’s “quick look” reminds the speaker of the active and alive Jane. The speaker’s voice follows with grief since Jane now only remains as a memory in the speaker’s head. The poet creates emotion in the speaker’s voice by including several breaks in the subsequent lines. Additionally, the poet endeavors to bring characteristics of Jane back to life in this poem by intensifying …show more content…
The speaker reflects fondly on Jane’s impact, wishing for his beloved student to
“September Elegies” is a poem written by an American poet Randall Mann in memory of Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi. It articulates a gloomy story about four young boys who took their own lives by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The memorialization is a reminder of how cruel our world can be and how bigotry and indifference destroy people’s lives. The poet reveres their memory by making use of various literary devices in order to transmit the pain the boys experienced.
Avison puts the reader into the poem by making he/she sit in front of a park fountain. It is usually quite relieving to sit in a local park and watch the park fountain spew water from its spout and watch it crash down against the still water in the fountain’s bowl. The sound of crashing water clears the mind into a state of reflection and ease “In the sound of the fountain you rest.” However, a “rushing river of cars” creates “a heart-stopping blurt” that interrupts this state of reflection and ease, causing the reader to be one with the rushing society. In this image, Avison points out that society is not able to take the time to reflect and relax because it is always in a state of rapid motion, there are very little breaks. Avison wants society to take a break and notice the little things in life that can actually mean a
The symbolism of the color black in literature, has a strong connotation that involves intricate depths and brings realization to the surface. In All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, Alejandra embodies the characteristics of black, including mystery, power, and unintentional cruelty. Within the context of each passage and action of this character, the color black has a more complex and intricate meaning. McCarthy’s use of characterization, imagery, and point of view reveals the importance of symbolism and how it effects themes such as Romanticism versus Realism, and Masculinity versus Femininity.
Theodore Roethke analyzes the complex attitude in an "Elegy for Jane." In the beginning the tone was reminiscent, heartfelt and warm bringing up cherishing moments between the speaker and Jane. However, the tone shifted as the piece developed going from a warm heartfelt poem to a dark sorrowing work. Roethke accomplishes this transition by using dominant literary devices throughout the work such as personification, similes, and imagery. These devices help us understand that the teacher loves and cares for Jane but is fearful of letting her go.
In her article, Quindlen delivers her position to the massive mixed audience of the New York Times, drawing in readers with an emotional and humanizing lure; opening up about her family life and the deaths she endured. Later presenting the loss of her brother's wife and motherless children, Quindlen use this moment to start the engine of her position. Quindlen uses her experiences coupled with other authority figures, such as, the poet Emily Dickenson, Sherwin Nuland, doctor and professor from Yale, author Hope Edelman, and the President. These testimonies all connect to the lasting effects of death on the living, grief. She comes full circle, returning to her recently deceased sister-in-law; begging t...
In "Elegy for Jane", a poem by Theodore Roethke, the speaker communicates his intimate attitude towards his former student in an elegy. The speaker shows these emotions and feelings through the use of the figurative language and the use and repetition of “my.”
Death in a family seizes control over the emotional and physical health of the surviving family. Facing death is difficult, but it cannot be ignored. The trauma may be an opportunity to grow from the experience, if it is talked about and discussed and worked through with the support of others; or it may throw a family off course, misdirecting their actions or leaving them altogether emotionally stagnant. Two families confront death differently in William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily,” in which a well-respected woman degenerates into a reclusive spinster after the death of her father, and in Brady Udall’s “The Wig,” a flash-fiction story about a son who wears a discarded wig that resembles the hair of his dead mother. These two stories offer very different portraits of families who try to recover after the death of a parent -- in Udall’s story, the mom; and in Faulkner’s, the father -- yet each story, through imagery, metaphor, symbolism, and their climaxes, comment similarly on the importance of communication after a devastating loss such as death.
Elegy can be used as a way to grieve, or a way to get past the mourning stages for a poet. In "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" by Ross Gay, one of the pivotal points of the book is when he writes about the death of his dad. In his poem "Burial" we see how he travels through the mourning stages and eventually comes terms with his death. The specific elements of an elegy include, speaking with the dead, grief and shock, and naming the dead. Gay specifically targets all of these components. He begins by naming not how his father died, but by stating, "out back I took the jar which has become my father's house" (pg. 11). We know that he is in the process of mourning, and now the only thing he has of his father is his ashes. Gay begins to heal after
The theme of the poem, “Names of Horses” is the circle of life and how the author feels about animal labor. The poem has the story of this horse and a man’s life in this small poem perfectly aligned from the beginning to the end. Donald hall showed us a connection between the man and the horse; not just labor uses but the love between the two. The seasons go by and the author doesn’t hesitate to add more description to paint a picture of the lives they share. The author states in the poem, “When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze, one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning, led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond, and dug a hole beside you where you stood
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
To begin, the episodic shifts in scenes in this ballad enhance the speaker’s emotional confusion. Almost every stanza has its own time and place in the speaker’s memory, which sparks different emotions with each. For example, the first stanza is her memory of herself at her house and it has a mocking, carefree mood. She says, “I cut my lungs with laughter,” meaning that...
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.
Losing a loved one is one of the hardest experiences every person must go through. The experience does not end with the loss though, but begins with it. The loss of a dear person leads those left behind into a downward spiral of emotions and memories. A poem entitled “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth focuses on that loss and the emotions that follow it. By reading the poem one can objectively experience both the grief that Lucy Gray’s death brings on but also her parents’ acceptance of her death.