By using the personification of nature Mary Oliver creates a personal relationship between the narrator and the comfort she finds within it. In the last stanza Oliver takes inanimate and nonhuman objects and gives them human traits in order to give the reader a more vivid image and help them personally connect to the events. By personifying the river to “rolling its pebbles” Oliver states that the river is its own being capable of attaining the pebbles as its personal possession, when, in reality, the pebbles and the river are completely separate entities. By giving an inanimate object human-like traits it helps the reader easily picture something they may not be familiar with with something they know about in order to help them picture the …show more content…
After explaining the rut of life and the sickening of school, Oliver goes on to reminisce about the narrator's joyous summer by personifying nature to help connect the reader to her feelings about it and create a metaphor to encompass her view on life. Earlier in the passage “machines and oils and plastics and money” are used to illustrate the repetition and inevitable rut that the narrator feels school leads to. By personifying “the way the river kept rolling its pebbles” Oliver connects the rut of machines to a constant eroding that the river ensures. Oliver uses the personification of the river “rolling its pebbles” to help suggest the consistent beating of a life of conformity. The persistent flow of the river and operating of machines is idealized by the personification of the river connecting the two. Personification is also used to connect the happiness of singing with the wild wrens. By saying “the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank” conveys that the birds are satisfied even though they do not have any possessions and have no connections with materialistic objects such as money. This personification shows that even though the birds have no possessions they are able to participate in joyous acts such as singing, which expresses the narrator's feelings when immersed in nature. In the final line personification is used to create a metaphor for the flowers well being in their natural state. “Dressed in nothing but light” Oliver shows how the flowers can remain elegant while untouched by variables among society. In the wild they are able to remain as pure and beautiful as may be even though they have nothing but the sun to dress them. This shows that the narrator thinks it is possible to appear beautiful when remaining as simple as possible. In the last stanza
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
7. The personification in the second stanza is that she gives poems the ability to hide and are waiting to be found. The author states that poems are hiding in the bottom of your shoes, and they are the shadows drifting across your ceiling before you wake up. This is personification because she gives the poems traits that only a living organism can possess.
The author uses personification in lines 16-17 where he writes “ the shadows of this loneliness gripped loose dirt.” ( Soto 1). This use of personification is the narrator’s way of helping the reader to further understand the loneliness he experienced in life. The last use of personification relates back to the water in the last line where he describes it as “racing out of town”. The water racing out of town represents what the narrator wishes he could do. He is envious of the water’s ability to come and go as it pleases and that’s why he phrases this line in that
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
As a way to end his last stanza, the speaker creates an image that surpasses his experiences. When the flock rises, the speaker identifies it as a lady’s gray silk scarf, which the woman has at first chosen, then rejected. As the woman carelessly tosses the scarf toward the chair the casual billow fades from view, like the birds. The last image connects nature with a last object in the poet's
In John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, he uses diction and figurative speech to depict the beautiful autumn season to show how inspiring and uplifting nature is to man. Updike chooses autumn as the season to set his story in because generally, it is the season that has the most vivid vibrant colors in nature such as the ripe apples which are described as “red fish in the nets (limbs)”. (Line 3) Updike paints the picture of the beauty of nature with the simile about the apples to show the reader what a powerful effect nature has on man. Updike goes on to discuss the elm trees that were “swaying in the sky” (Line 7) and the “dramatic straggling v’s” of geese. Updike uses these descriptive portrayals of na...
The conceit in line 8, “like an iceberg between the shoulder blades” (line 8), illustrates the briskness death emanates whilst taking the life from the warmth of your body. This ice and fire comparison coaxes the reader to pursue the unwelcoming thought of death as the adverse path to travel by. By no means does Oliver attempt to romanticize the idea of a brief and painless endeavor. Furthermore, the recurrence of cessation illustrated by the “hungry bear in autumn” (2) simile suggests the seasonal regularity death’s toll takes on the living. The presence of frequency characterizes the shift in forbearance to the acceptance of the inevitable. Oliver is caught up in reminiscent thought as she employs worldly imagery to describe life. For example, in lines 15-16 Oliver writes “and I think of each life as a flower, as common / as a field daisy.” This line stands out in the fact that it represents the first occurrence of communal thought. Describing each life as a “flower” in a “field” suggests that life is supposed to be about the people whom you surround yourself with, and less about the solidarity that stems from the notion of darkness. Oliver’s implication of poetry and down-to-earth imagery captures not only the progression of thought, but also her feelings towards the concepts of life and
“We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of
I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Not only is this showing the kind of fulfillment he receives from nature, but also the power that nature possesses in his mind.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...