When someone thinks of a hurricane, it is not often that fruit is the first thing that comes to their mind. In “Problems with Hurricanes,” Victor Hernandez Cruz brings mangoes and bananas to center stage in the midst of a hurricane. The poem, as told through the eyes of a “campesino” (a native of a Latin-American rural area), gives the fruit a dangerous, deadly part in contributing to casualties during a hurricane (Webster’s 178). The campesino believes that death by produce is a dishonorable way to die and points out that people need to be aware of the things that may be happening around them because there is a possibility that they don’t appear as all that they are. Throughout “Problems with Hurricanes,” Cruz reveals that the most beautiful sweet things can be the most dangerous.
A flower or dove or the goddess Aphrodite are all easily associated with beauty, but the color red or warnings are associated with danger. Humans as a whole don’t normally associate beauty with danger. However, in some rare, unexpected scenarios, for example, a hurricane, the beautiful things can become the danger. The campesino points this out when he references flying fruits being deadly amidst the winds of a hurricane. “A mango smashing/ [someone’s] skull/ or a plantain hitting [their]/ temple at 70 miles per hour,” are his examples of the fruits causing death (Cruz 786, 20-23). The fruits he mentions, mangoes and plantains, are symbols of all sweet, beautiful things with their flowering blossoms and vibrant colors. Neither shows any signs or symbols of being dangerous, but according to the campesino, when thrown about in a hurricane,
W a l l | 2 they can be dangerous enough to cause death. Even though a symbol can portray an object or feeling as bea...
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...l/sweet things,” but warnings don’t associate with
W a l l | 3 beauty, giving an example of how the majority of the human race doesn’t normally think of anything beautiful as dangerous (Cruz 787, 32-35).
Victor Hernandez Cruz uses symbols, images, and tones in “Problems with Hurricanes” to get the point across that people should be wary of sweet beautiful things, as they can cause the most damage and be the most dangerous. Through the words spoken by the campesino as the poem progresses, readers are brought to the conclusion that just because an object looks enticing on the outside (a banana or mango), doesn’t mean it can’t turn into something deadly under the right circumstances, even if it is the cause of an outside force acting on the object that makes it deadly. Thus, the things that are the most appealing- sweet and beautiful- can cause the most harm and danger.
In James S. Hirsch’s book about Rubin "Hurricane" Cater, Hurricane, the author describes how Carter was wrongfully imprisoned and how he managed to become free. Hirsch tells about the nearly impossible battle for Carter and his friend John Artis for freedom and justice. Both, Carter and Artis, were convicted of a triple homicide, and both were innocent.
This hurricane brings Dove back these memories and daydreams because she compares the two, and finds them similar. Hurricanes are destructive, and a whirlwind, which is another way to describe her teenage relationships which lacked worth, and were destructive when it came to the emotional side of the relationship. Dove writes, “Were thin as licorice and as chewy,/ Sweet with a dark hollow center” (Dove 19-20). Referring to her teenage crushes, Dove explains the boys were “hollow” meaning they lacked originality and depth. These boys were sweet on the outside, but had nothing on the inside. This is similar to the structure of a hurricane, where the inside, or the eye, has nothing, and is calm. It is hollow, just like Dove’s teenage crushes. Lastly, in the third and final stanza of this poem, Rita Dove explains the ordinary routines, and never changing rituals we go through
Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, in their poems “We Real Cool” and “Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict”, are both alike in their idea of dealing with troubled youth. Brooks discusses in her poem “We Real Cool” rebellious pool-playing youth that “sing sin” (Line 5) and “thin gin.” (Line 6) The whole poem centers around disturbed youth. The narrator in Sonia Sanchez’s poem “Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict”, is also a disturbed young woman who is addicted to heroin, and seems to live a rather rebellious lifestyle. In addition, both of these poems use tone via word choice, sentence structure, and meter in order to vividly describe the scenarios in their poems, and to impact their reader. However, both poets use the literary elements mentioned above differently in their poems.
Symbolism is the key to understanding Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street”. By unraveling the symbolism, the reader truly exposes the role of not only Latina women but women of any background. Esperanza, a girl from a Mexican background living in Chicago, writes down what she witnesses while growing up. As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Esperanza hardly comprehends the actions that take place around her, but what she did understand she wrote in her journal. Cisneros used this technique of the point of view of a child, to her advantage by giving the readers enough information of what is taking place on Mango Street so that they can gather the pieces of the puzzle a get the big picture.
Didion paints uneasy and somber images when describing the Santa Ana winds. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air… some unnatural stillness, some tension,” starts the essay off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. She further adds, “Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66… we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” propagating the uneasy and stark image of Los Angeles. “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” she adds, giving a depressing view into the effects of the Santa Ana winds on people. Didion, in an attempt to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana winds, points out the Indians who throw themselves into the sea when bad winds came. At any rate, Didion attempts to show the negative effects of the Santa Ana winds through images of stillness, uneasiness, and sobriety.
Junot Diaz’s “Otravida, Otravez” postulates a perspective of life where one’s present and future always reflects their past in some way. Diaz incorporates symbolic figures to convey how a person’s past can be carried into the future. Diaz’s use of symbolic figures includes the dirty sheets washed by Yasmin, the letters sent by Virta to Ramon, and the young girl who begins working with Yasmin at the hospital. These symbolic figures and situations remind the readers that the past will always play a major role in one’s present. Additionally, Diaz’s word choice, where Spanish words appear in many different parts of the reading, suggests that indirectly, one’s past habits are not easily broken.
When I first watched the video “Strange Fruit” I found it nothing short of gruesome. The words swelled my eyes with tears as the images thwacked into my empathetic heart like an axe cutting into a tree. I could feel each clang as each picture changed. I listened intently to the words that sadly sawed through the lyrics leaving sawdust and residue in my mind. The song bears the pain of the fruit that has been lost. The title, like the trunk of a tree, is the foundation of the song, the representation of its strength but not what is most remembered. The pictures, are the flowers, of the video blooming of the face of each hanged man. The leaves, as Billy Holiday sings them, so simple but yet the crown of the tree, the sadness over the hierarchal rank
...way that the story is being interpreted and how the storm influences the story as a whole. Sometimes people need a wakeup call or a 'storm' to make them aware of how good they have things. In this short story Alcee and Calixta both come to realization of how good they have things with their spouses and how that they already found the ones that they love, which weren't each other. This made me aware of how we as people can take things for granted or believing we know what’s best for us. In reality we don't always know what’s best until something occurs and shows us that what we already have is the best.
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.
I have always found the ocean to be a very intriguing part of the Earth. There are infinitely many discoveries that have yet to be made about it. My fascination with the ocean sparked the idea to do my class paper on hurricanes and what they are along with their effects. I remember hearing about all the damages from Hurricane Katrina after it hit the coast near New Orleans. The only information I really know about them is what is briefly covered on the news. I thought it would be interesting to discover the true effects they can have on not only people that endure them, but also the environment as it gets ripped to shreds by the plethora of winds and water.
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 idiom “revenge is sweet” appears so frequently that one might think the cliché is true, yet the nature of revenge is far more complex and may leave more bitterness in its wake. The cyclical nature of revenge and man’s inhumanity to man means it has a propensity to intensify and devastate the people in its wake including the inflictor. Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits examine the theme of the nature of revenge through the presence and significance of prominent characters seeking revenge in both Latin American novels.
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.
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.
Nichols also uses symbolism in her poem, the hurricane is a symbol of her Caribbean culture. They are very irregular in