Summary Of Janet Waking

433 Words1 Page

Norman Cousins once said, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” In his poem “Janet Waking”, John Crowe Ransom invites us to experience death through the eyes of a young girl who misunderstands the situation and does not want to be informed. In this poem Janet wakes from sleep. She runs to Chucky’s hen house, only to discover that her beloved pet had passed on. She begs her parents to bring Chucky back, but they tell her that they can’t. She then has to live not only with the loss of her pet, but the loss that has taken place inside of her. Ransom, through the use of diction and imagery, shows the reader that death causes us to blow the smallest details out of proportion. Diction is used in this poem to describe and point out the grotesque features of the knot on Chucky’s head. This is proven when the narrator states, “It scarcely bled, but how exceedingly and purply did the knot swell with the venom and communicate its rigour!” These lines describe the knot by calling it purply, large, and swelling. The author helps the reader understand what had happened to Chucky …show more content…

Evidence provided from the poem is suggested when the narrator states, “...purply did the not swell with the venom,” and, “So there was Janet kneeling on the wet grass, crying her brown hen to rise and walk upon it.” These two lines help the reader get a better look at the knot by describing how it looks “purply” and “swelling”, and also saying that the knot sticks off of the top of Chucky’s head. The last two lines help the reader visualize how Janet reacted by explaining how she fell into the wet grass and kneeled, crying, holding her hen, and begging for Chucky to still remain alive. The author helps the reader understand both the situation and Janet’s character throughout his use of

Show More
Related

  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Paul’s Case by Willa Cather, and Daisy Miller by Henry James

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    All in all, the premature deaths of Edna Pontellier, Paul, and Daisy Miller disclose themes to the readers of The Awakening, “Paul’s Case,” and Daisy Miller, correspondingly. When associating similar situations to their own lives, these themes can teach people valuable lessons that can aid individuals in living their lives. In any case, witnessing or even reading about deaths can abet a person from living well, in other words, living life to the fullest. Life is too short and as proven by the examples above can end in an untimely manner, even so one must enjoy the precious moments they have for it can all disappear in the twinkling of an eye.

    Read More

  • The Tooth by Clara Spencer

    1523 Words  | 4 Pages

    As Laurell K Hamilton once said, “death is the last intimate thing we ever do”. It comes in different ways and at different times, but death comes for all of us. In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, Edna is faced with enormous heartache and desperation that she feels she has no other choice but to take her own life. This is paralleled in The Tooth and The Lottery, two short stories by Shirley Jackson. Both stories feature a character who is met with their death at unexpected moments in their lives, but in very different situations. The event of death plays a central role in these three works.

    Read More

  • Coping with a Tragic Death in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

    1287 Words  | 3 Pages

    A natural death due to old age, or illness is often easier to cope with, as opposed to a death that is unexpected, for example murder or a tragic accident. Often times, people consider the thoughts of death and the afterlife. We think of the impact these situations may have on ourselves, however not our family or community if this issue were to arise. The death of a loved one can create a large amount of tension because not only does it create grief; but can slowly unveil the underlying problems within a family. Alice Sebold explores several of the ways in which people process grief along with loss in her novel The Lovely Bones when 14-year old, Susie Salmon is murdered on her way home from school. As Susie goes through the stages to continue on to heaven, she tells the recovery story from her first person perspective in the limbo between earth and heaven. She tells how her entire family undergoes an immediate sense of infelicity while trying to cope with their loss. The Lovely Bones is not a novel that can be taken lightly, however, one that leaves the mind in an endless fathom over if someone can take another life are they truly worthy of their own? Sebold shows all the elements of death on earth, heaven, and the area in-between by conveying realistic and relatable characters, along with valuable themes that occur in several aspects of life, and a style that is coherent for any mature teen or adult to read and connect with.

    Read More

  • Hard Knight's 'Hard Rock Returns To Prison'

    1404 Words  | 3 Pages

    The main character, Hard Rock as a kind of “Superman” to other penal patients is recognized immediately in the poem through a repeating of the accounts that are strewed about him; the forthright narrative of the poem sets up the vagueness of how he will respond after his "treatment" in the sanatorium. The poem associates with those who anticipate his return; they are confident that Hard Rock's essence has not been shattered by a surgical “treatment” or shock therapy, and the lines slither nearly to a halt with dissatisfaction in verse four. The "nothing" (line 27) of Hard Rock's reaction to mockery and provoking and the hollowness of his eyes, "1ike knot holes in a fence," (James 194-195) decrease the valiant expectations and delusions to desolation. The final section recounts the spectators' efforts to reinterpret, to grasp onto faith that their idol of heroism could counter against the greatest determinations to dominate him, but the spirit has disappeared out of the hero-worshipers too, and the poem reports them as hammered, submitted, denied of their inner self as Hard Rock has been of his. The poem expresses the anguish of the despondent and it rallies against the implementation of power that can restrain even as fractious a character as Hard Rock.

    Read More

  • Balzac And The Little Seamstress By Dai Sijie

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    The passage is filled with hideous descriptions of the headman’s mouth. The passage starts describing the headman's mouth as a “jagged mountain ridge” with “tobacco-stained canines.” This highlights the fact that the headman doesn't really care about his appearance or what people think about him. He just wants to care for how he feels and he doesn't care if it looks bad. His mouth is described as a “porous coral reef” which he is “caressing” with his “yellow tongue.” This grotesque imagery gives the reader a chilling feeling and proves the way the headman is

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Coleridge Jackson

    978 Words  | 2 Pages

    The third stanza starts using the technique of involving outside interpretation to evaluate Coleridges situation '' So everyone used to wonder why...'' this is primarily used to include the reader in the poem and make them feel a part of the drama. This is also the stanza that the reader is enlightened to Coleridges dilemma, ''Coleridges puny boss, a little white bag of bones, frowned at Coleridge and sneered at him'', it later says ''when that skimpy piece of man meat called Coleridge a sorry nigger, Coleridge kept his lips closed, sealed, jammed tight'' this shows size is irrelevant in this battle as obviously Coleridge could harm his boss easily but does not, he keeps his mouth shut, he doesn't even murmur a retaliation.

    Read More

  • hjljljlk

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    Carol Ann Duffy shows how the jealousy of Medusa turned her into a powerful monster through the quote, ’turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes’. Medusa's transformation into monster becomes a metaphor for the power of jealousy to corrupt. The theme of jealousy is shown in the rule of three on the first line: 'a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy'. The rule of three evokes a growing tension and the fact that the word ‘jealousy’ is placed at the end of the line suggests that it is the strongest emotion she is feeling. She says later it was 'as though' her thoughts 'hissed and spat on her scalp.' .The reader can infer that her thoughts sound like a snake hissing which gives the impression that they are angry and dangerous. Also, the fact that the snakes were actually coming out of her head suggest that there were evil thoughts of jealousy coming out her head. The assonance in ‘hissed’ and the onomatopoeia of ‘spat’ emphasises the powerful, menacing tone of the poem. The structure is regular: six lines per stanza and each one perfectly end-stopped but the line length is as jagged like the mood. The rhymes, when they come, are out of step, as in stanza three where 'own' rhymes with 'stone' and in four where 'ground' only half-rhymes with 'down' - echoing the colloquial phrase 'ground down' showing how emotionally exhausted she is. The co...

    Read More

  • Louise Mallard's Death

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    Death is the one concept that we can not avoid and at some point we all encounter it, how we arrive or how our fate will be decided is what will vary. This being the case with Louise Mallard, the main character from Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour and the grandmother, the main character from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. They physical aspects of their respective deaths and their backgrounds which gives an insight on why they died are different, but both their deaths represent an emotional and symbolic characteristic. Louise Mallard and the grandmother both have a story to tell and it is told through the eyes of death.

    Read More

  • A Costly Treasure Figurative Language

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    “They looked like someone's brain petrified by a sinister sea.” “Across the road, prickly cactuses grew in the dry scrub.Cactuses, at the edge of the sea - as if a desert had stopped dead in its tracks when it saw the water.” “ Searing Pain and a quick flash of teeth, like fifty tiny knives biting into my arm.” The Author adds this to the story to give it a more dramatic touch mixing it with Mick’s life or death situation. Plus with the simile, it gives more descriptive details about what’s going on. Especially during Mick’s little diving-Fiasco with the Giant eel, giving it that Suspenseful, stressful feeling while

    Read More

  • The Loss Of Death In Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    There comes a time in a person’s life in which they encounter a tragic event that will change them for the rest of their life. The repercussions of this event can be catastrophic, causing them pain and agony, even sending the person into a deep depression. These events are usually the loss of the persons closest loved one, such as their parents, spouses, or children. Edgar Allen Poe expressed these feelings in his poem “The Raven,” as he is coping with losing his wife Virginia who had tuberculosis. “The Raven” demonstrates that pain from the passing of a loved one will stay with a person forever causing them unhealthy grief and sorrow for the rest of their life.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Blackberry Picking By Seamus Heaney

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Heaney’s poem “Blackberry Picking”, the narrator describes the blackberries as sweet so he picked as many as he could find and stored them. He then expresses that “it wasn’t fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not” (Blackberry Picking). Heaney wrote this based on his own experiences of blackberry picking where he realizes that time turns the berries’ once sweet juices into something vile. Visual imagery is used as an element to vividly describe the deterioration of nature and discuss that as time goes on, things that seem so beautiful and vibrant eventually turn to dust. The blackberries symbolize the narrator’s, or in this case Heaney’s, innocence as he comes to the honest conclusion that death is inevitable and that nothing, especially the blackberries, lasts forever; making every moment so precious since time is relentless. Heaney describes the narrator in “Death of a Naturalist” as happy and enthusiastic about taking frogspawn until “angry frogs invaded the flax-dam; [he] ducked through the hedges to a coarse croaking that [he] had not heard before” (Death of a Naturalist). The use of alliteration in “coarse croaking” portrays the “angry frogs” who express their deep-seated dislike of the boy, or the narrator, who continues to collect “jampotfuls” of the frogspawn. Since the narrator is Heaney, the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Amy Hempel's In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

    1444 Words  | 3 Pages

    Death is painfully unpleasant for anyone who is approached with it. It can be difficult to comprehend and scary to live through, but just because death isn’t very well liked does not mean it doesn’t happen. In fact it happens every day through every hour; no rich, poor, healthy, or sick can escape it. The contemporary writer Amy Hempel gracefully writes about death between a friendship in her piece titled “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” showing a relatable situation everyone will undergo at some point in their life. Hempel’s relatability to the subject of death and reactions, unique style of characterization, and rhythmic balance display the great qualities that make her work so rare; making it belong to the 21st century literary

    Read More

  • Figurative Language In Blackberry-Picking

    421 Words  | 1 Pages

    At the beginning of the poem, the author describes the “green hard as a knot” berries to remark on a time when he too was “green” and inexperienced in life. Then over time, the berries ripened, like the narrator, and he developed a “lust” and a “hunger” that he would go to great lengths to satisfy. The narrator matured and began to hunger for human comfort and “flesh” before it “would turn sour,” instead of just the blackberries. Eventually the narrator realizes that blackberries would soon rot and he as well would lose some of his vitality so he “hoarded the fresh berries” to try to hold on to the good days before they began to “ferment” and “rot.” This reveals to the reader that desperation of the narrator to maintain his youth for as long as possible even though he knew that it “ would not

    Read More

  • What Is The Mood Of The Poem The Snake By Emily Dickinson

    1310 Words  | 3 Pages

    “A narrow fellow in the grass.” Describing the snake as “a narrow fellow” indicates the snake is narrow in circumference, and through the descriptive use of “fellow” it is indicated with the use of personification that the snake is male. This stanza also serves to make the reader aware that having an encounter with a snake is sudden. “His notice is sudden.” The encounter with the snake can be compared to being snuck up on. The second stanza starts by describing how the snake appears and then goes on to describe how the snake passes the speaker by. “The grass divides as with a comb, / A spotted shaft is seen.” The first line uses a simile to describe the snakes first appearance, the use of a simile allows the reader to imagine the snake parting the grass as it slithers through, in the same way that a comb parts the hair. The second line tells the reader that the snake is spotted, which gives the reader characteristics to further visualize the snake. The third and fourth lines of this stanza describe how the snake moves closer to the reader, closing in on his feet, and rather than stopping, continuing to slither on by. “And then it closes at your feet / And opens further on.” The third line allows the reader to imagine the grass in the field parting as the snake approaches, and then closing behind the snake as it slithers

    Read More

  • Funeral Blues Analysis Essay

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Summary Of Janet Waking

Open Document