Robert Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is a poem about torture. Whether Roland is actually in Hell or just trapped in the madness of his mind, his own failure and the way in which he wasted his life will continue to torment him for all eternity. The imagery throughout the poem displays a completely despairing attitude, and several bitter ironies which he cannot escape plague him during his quest.
The title "Childe" implies an untested knight, but Roland is already jaded at the beginning of the poem. Reliving his failure, Roland has no reason to have any positive thoughts. Everything he sees is negative and ugly. The grass "[grows] as scant as hair in leprosy," and the oak tree is "gaping at death." The way in which he views Nature is almost Puritanical. It speaks to him peevishly, saying that it is waiting for Judgment Day. To him, the land is sparse and dead because it is being punished, just as he is. Even the river seems to have a life of its own when he describes it. First he ascertains that the...
The idea of the innocence having been created or forced to exist is lost as the poem focuses on the children and how innocent they are. This stands out particularly in the second stanza which uses end rhyme and repetition to underline just how many children seemed to be going into the church. It is also in that same stanza that the children are referred to as lambs, which is a common symbol for innocence. It is not simply the multitudes of children, but the multitudes of the innocent that have been gathered. ...
The actor Keanu Reeves once commented, “Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” Perhaps, nowhere else is this idea of never-ending grief more prevalent than in dark romanticist Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.” The popular eighteenth century poem follows the despondent narrator’s encounter with the Raven, the ominous bird later forces him to realize his never-ending isolation and sorrow due to the loss of his love, Lenore. In his poem, through the use of allusions and the literary devices of repetition and comparison in stanza 17, Poe explores the perpetual effects of loss.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
All of his stories have a trend of darkness and fearfulness. In “Masque of the Red Death” the Prince and his 1000 friends were hiding from the red death. The people were terrified to get this disease, “There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution”. In the poem “Alone” the mood is shown in the lines “My sorrow -- I could not awaken” and “My heart to joy at the same tone – “. He was never accepted, making him fear that he will forever be alone. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the mood shares similar qualities with its setting, “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day…”. In “Cask of Amontillado” the mood is expressed when they enter the catacombs “a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess”. The mood throughout all his stories are very similar and can be compared to the depressing events in Poe’s
Water is a polar molecule. A water molecule has a negative pole exposed on the oxygen atom and two positive poles exposed on the hydrogen atoms. The negative ends of the hydrogen atoms bond with the positive end of the oxygen atom. Water molecules exist in a bent shape. This allows for water to be a universal solvent. Water can dissolve many common solids and liquids.
Daniel Song2/2/2018“The Raven” Analysis“The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a poem about the narrator's grief over his lost love, Lenore. Sunken in deep sorrow, the narrator encounters a raven. From then on, the conversation between them reveals the narrator's unconscious reliance on the raven, hence expecting this new “friend” can set his soul free from deep despair. Unfortunately, raven's repeating of one-word “nevermore” fails to comfort him, hence not being able to accept harsh reality, he is eventually driven to psychological and emotional breakdown. The overall plot clearly conveys the theme of how excessive disheartenment and depression can easily cloud one's senses. In harmony with this theme, theentire poem is written in a despairing,
Then she hung up the phone on me. There was nothing I could do to get her to talk about what was really going on with her. She was not acting like her upbeat, bubbly self. Again I was forced to let it go, there was nothing that I could do. I loved her and she knew it. That was all I could do.
... that explore the vastness of human suffering. However, though they both state that human suffering is unavoidable, there is a sense of levity in the Inferno that is absent in King Lear. The final message of King Lear implies the idea that human suffering is universal and that one’s choices not only cause one’s own suffering, but also invariably lead to the suffering of others. King Lear ends on a note of immense sorrow, while Inferno’s final message is a much more hopeful one, giving voice to the idea that the ubiquity of human suffering does not mean that all hope is lost. In Inferno, suffering is an aspect of the human experience, but not the only aspect, and it does not have to define one’s life.
In the short horror story “The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allan Poe exhibits demonic evil, the evil of harming others for enjoyment and pleasure of their pain, through the character Montresor. Fifty years after the events occur, Montresor informs the readers of his descent with Fortunato into his family’s catacombs, leading Fortunato to what he anticipates is a cask of Amontillado—but what is actually his death. Montresor is the embodiment of humanity’s malevolence for he takes it upon himself to chain his “friend” to a wall in the catacombs. Throughout his text, Poe exemplifies demonic evil with the use of irony and first-person narration; he instills horror into readers by bringing to light to the evil in the world.First person narration allows the reader to witness Montresor’s demonic nature through his pleasure in killing Fortunato and his lack of guilt in doing so.
While “The Song of Roland” is, an epic poem dissected by a dichotomy with mirroring to rival that of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”, a story with a clear bias as to which side is in the right with their actions. Yet once you realize that it is written in such a way to vilify the Muslims, even though had any other culture done this while they would not be portrayed as hero’s they would not be so vilified as the Muslim in the author’s attempt to slander them and feed the flames of the Crusades with their demonization of the Muslims. King Marsile of the Muslim kingdom of Spain at first attempts to parlay with Charlemagne, but upon hearing of the demands of Charlemagne on top of what he, King Marsile had already offered, Count Ganelon did not have
Before she left she asked if we could pay the bills that meant that we had to take care of the house bills that we lived in, and all her credit cards. During her that she was gone I took the role of the taking care of everybody in our house because my cousin, and her husband would work so I tried to help by doing everything in the house. At the same time, I had to go to school and work right after. We We would get phone calls by her asking if we where doing ok, and if everything was good. After a month passed, since she was gone her job stopped paying for her vacation leave so she had to come back because she had so much to pay. When she came back, I felt like a different person because for about a month I had to be a grown up and become an adult. When she was back with us I still kept helping because during her abuse I realized that it was time for me to become an adult and figured that I needed to try harder at school for graduation. During her abuse I would missed school many times and I wasn’t proud of that was my education that I was messing with. It was hard to balance work and try to help take care a
Imagine a person had a normal life. My mom was that person. She worked at News Center 7 as a reporter which was a job she always wanted, she also had twin daughters. Her life was great. Then one day everything changed. Life had already been hard for my mom; she was the primary caretaker of my grandmother who had been fighting brain and lung cancer for six months. In early 2003, my grandmother had a stroke. Since then my mom took care of her, while taking care of most of our family. Since my grandmother could no longer be the glue that held us together, it had to be my mom. My grandmother lost her b...
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...
When my mom was nineteen years old, she became pregnant with my big brother Domz. She was attending a nursing program but had to drop out. Although she was with my father at the time she needed to work to help support her new family. Things were going good until after she gave birth to me three years later. My parent’s relationship didn’t last and she was left a single mother. While my dad went on and married and started a new
I put myself under so much unnecessary pressure that distracted me from having a normal peaceful mind. During that time, I had to pause and think deeply about the reasons why I was dramatically broken into pieces. After many days of struggle and therapy, I was able to realize that my approach and concept about taking care of my mother was absolutely unnecessary and incorrect. I realized that by giving more attention to my mother, I was not helping her to deal with our separation. However, I was unable to understand why I couldn 't think like any of my friends who had left their single parents. I tried to change my old habits and gave my mother some space and time to deal with this separation. I kept practicing many new ways which helped my mother to start dealing with the