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Theme of isolation in poetry
Poem the possession sharon olds analysis
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The Possessive - Empty Nest
A nest lies empty on top a forked branch of an old oak tree. Last spring children play, young lovers whisper into each others ear, and the elderly relax under that tree. When they do, they can hear the quiet chirps of little hungry baby blue-jays. The little blue-jays chirp until the mother blue-jay returns with food . Afterwards, one attempts to fly and fall out of the nest. The mother blue-jay then quickly swoops down and catches the little one before he hits the ground. The baby jay can always depend on his mother when he needs her, but she knows that one day he will no longer rely on her. On that day, instead of plummeting to his death, the young blue-jay will spread his wings and fly away. He will fly straight into the setting sun never looking back. Slowly all of the young will fly away and leave the mother alone in the nest. However, mothers do not always handle this situation calmly. In "The Possessive," Sharon Olds conjures intense images of betrayal and utilizes war as a metaphor to express a mother's emotion as her daughter leaves the nest. The poem reflects the separation anxiety the mother undergoes as she witnesses her daughter mature and distance herself.
To set the mood of the poem, Olds relies heavily on imagery to create the effect. The mother feels betrayed as she watches her daughter slip away from her. Small trivial acts like a simple haircut evoke strong images of discomfort. The barber is described as a "knife grinder" (4) sharpening the edges of her daughter's hair as if they are weapons. Olds slips words such as "slice" and "blade", which thrust images of separation into the mind of the reader. She follows these images with sharp edges and cold steel, and then she tops it off with a blazing, red fire The strong intense color red spills over the lines of the poem as blood of soldiers in a heated battle. The vibrant nature of the color red attracts the human eye creating intense emotions. The intense images express the intensity of the mother's emotions. The imagery in this poem aches the pain and discomfort the mother experiences as mother and daughter prepare for a battle.
The images create the war metaphor presence in the poem.
The descriptions and words used create the most vivid images of a mother’s escape to freedom with her son. This poem takes you on both a physical and emotional journey as it unravels through the treacherous demands of freedom. A beautiful example of her ability to rhyme both internally as well as externally can be seen here,
Those who believe the use of anabolic steroids should be allowed in professional sports have numerous arguments for those in opposition. Professional sports leagues have tried to stop the use of steroids by drug testing players and punishing those who do not pass. A number of major athletes, such as Lance Armstrong, have been stripped of their athletic accolades due to discoveries of drug use. Despite witnessing the fall of great competitors due to “doping,” people continue to use. Because of unsuccessful attempts at banning the drug, many people believe “it may be time to head in the other direction: legalize performance enhancers” (Smith 1). No matter how many rules and regulations are made against the use of steroids, athletes will continue to abuse the drug in order to get ...
By definition, a family is bound by relation, regardless of whether or not individuals are cared for and loved. However, Kingsolver rewrites this notion by the supportive and strong family that forms from unconventional roots; two single mothers, a lesbian couple, one of which is blind, a female mechanic, an illegal immigrant couple, and of course, an Indian and deeply abused toddler. Therefore, Kingsolver illustrates that a family is fostered out of love, protection, and admiration rather than bloodlines that bind people together. As a child, Taylor’s single mother instilled in her strength, courage, and fearlessness, and taught her never to succumb to the pressures that make one vulnerable. In the Doctor’s office scene, Turtle’s x-ray results expose clear contrast and heartbreak. It is evident that Turtle’s biological parents caused great harm and abuse to her fragile body, as she is littered with spiral fibular fractures and contraindications to her evolving psychomotor development (166). And, the physical scars are just scratch the surface to the fearful lens through which she sees the world at such a young age. Clearly, instead of a curious and carefree toddler, Turtle is a tragic child conscious of deep sexual and emotional abuse inflicted by her own parents. In this passage, Turtle is the bird trying to make a home for herself in the prickly “coat of yellow spines”, and
Margaret Laurence 's novel A Bird in the House is a collection of independent and intertwined short stories written from Vanessa MacLeod 's point of view. As an adult looking back on her childhood, the protagonist examines how she, and essentially everyone in her life, experiences a sense of entrapment and a need to escape. Because the author begins and concludes the novel with the Brick House, the major theme of escape is shown to have developed in Vanessa as she matures through childhood and adolescence and becomes an adult.
The poem begins with a childlike tone, misleading the reader on the upcoming subject matter. The first line echoes a nursery rhyme, feeling like a charm against some brooding curse. “You do not do, you do not do/ anymore black shoe” (lines 1-2). Metaphorically, the shoe is a trap, smothering the foot. The adjective “black” suggests the idea of death, thus it can relate to a coffin. The speaker feels a submissiveness and entrapment by her father. In an attempt to rid herself of the restriction in her own life, she must destroy the memory of her father. “Daddy, I have to kill you” (line 3). However, the description of the father as “marble-heavy” and “ghastly statue” reveals the ambivalence of her attitude, for he is also associated with the beauty of the sea. The speaker reacts with hate to her father who had made her suffer by dying at such a point in her development.
More and more, of our society views winning more important than itself. Success in competition brings status, popularity, and fame, not to mention college scholarships. Today’s athletes are looking for an advantage over the competition that will make them winners. Unfortunately, the drugs of today are caught up in the high stakes competition frenzy. Of this reality, teenage use of performance improved drugs is growing ever more popular. In colleges and in the professional league a lot of people are doing drugs and its ruining their health and life. Also, if some teenagers take performance drugs they are making them better than everyone else giving themselves an advantage over everyone else which is cheating, so why should they get money for using drugs to win, how do we know they aren't actually good at the sport? Performance drugs in sport should not be tolerated and should be illegal. Stores shouldn't give teenagers drugs that way they can do well in a sport. Many student athletes want to make their families proud by doing something their mom or dad never done.
“The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy (Roethke).” This sentence bombards the reader’s brain with sensory details. The reader can smell the sour, corrosive odor of whiskey what seeps from the father’s odiferous mouth into the innocent young child’s nostrils. Sensory details help give the reader a sense of what is going on in the story and transports them into the story, allowing the reader to feel, touch, taste, smell, and see what the characters are. A rich description such as in the lines, “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed, my right ear scraped the buckle.” reader can feel the hand grasping their wrist and see the bruised knuckle that holds their wrist. By the look of the bruised knuckle, the reader infers that the grasp on the wrist is tight because the bruised knuckles mean the father has been punching something or someone. The reader can also feel something or in this case a buckle scraping their ear as result of the father. The scraping sensation associated with scraping catches the child off guard and startles him, as he is not expecting it. This line al...
Imagery is a key part of any poem or literary piece and creates an illustration in the mind of the reader by using descriptive and vivid language. Olds creates a vibrant mental picture of the couple’s surroundings, “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood/ the
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
Upon reading Robert Hayden's 1970 poem, 'The Whipping'; (1075), one may find themselves feeling very disturbed. The title is not subtle in hiding the fact that the plot of the poem is of a mother beating her son. The tone of the poem is very violent, and filled with a lot of anger. The boy's character immediately demands sympathy from the reader and just as instantaneously, the mother is hated by the reader. From his first stanza, to his sixth, Hayden utilizes an arsenal of words, symbols, and images to create a scene that is intense and emotional to the reader.
Every athlete dreams of becoming the best player in their sport. For most athletes, this dream was created in their childhood watching their favorite player perform at great levels to achieve success. Most athletes will stop at anything to achieve success, even if that means breaking the rules. An athlete whether the biggest, fastest, or strongest, will always look for something that will give them and extra edge over everybody else, even if that means performance enhancing drugs. With new records being broken day by day, I believe performance-enhancing drugs should be legal in all professional sports.
Randall’s use of descriptive imagery shows the mother’s love for her daughter and sets up the dramatic situation. “She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair” (line 17). Through the carefully combing of her daughter’s hair, the reader can tell the mother takes a tremendous amount of pride in her daughter’s appearance. The quote also shows how profoundly the mother loves her daughter. Then when describing the girl’s shoes and gloves, Randall selects the color white. The color is represents of her purity and innocence.
To show how the African Americans straightened their hair. Gates says, “It made a scorching, crinkly sound, the hot iron did, as it burned its way through damp kink, leaving in its wake the straightest if hair strands, each of them standing up long and tall but drooping at the end like the top of a heavy willow tree” (41). This is a simile and also imagery because it is saying someone’s hair strands are long, tall and droopy at the ends comparing it to the top of a heavy willow tree. Also the imagery is describing what the iron is doing to the black person’s hair. Another use of figurative language to establish how the kinky hair was treated and how the barber talked about the quality of an African Americans hair when it was being trimmed, is in the text where Gates has stated, “It is like a doctor reporting the overall results of the first full physical that he has given you. “You are in good shape” or “blood pressures kind of high; better cut down on the salt” (Gates,44). This is a metaphor and means that the barber that is cutting the hair has analysed it and they gave him “not a bad grade” for how his hair is looking at the moment but there is room for improvement when they cut his hair for the first time. Personification is also used to
Today, drug use in sport has reached enormous proportions in society and is destroying athletics from the ground up. Nowhere is the problem more serious than in professional athletics, where athletes, coaches and trainers misuse drugs in search of ways of ways to improve performance. Many athletes fail to take their time when making the decision whether to use drugs to their advantage. Unfortunately athletes may use drugs for therapeutic indications, recreatio9nal or social reasons, as muscular aids or to mask the presence of other drugs during drug testing. But the safety of the athlete's health is being neglected. Drug use has led to an increased number of deaths and suspensions of athletes. Also, if this continues all athletes someday will have to choose whether to compete at a world-class level and take drugs, or compete at a club level and be clean. In sports, athletes, coaches and trainers will try their best to find a way to reach the top level. They not only search for a way to enhance performance...
Organization is a group of people brought to gather to achieve specific goals. Goals can be achieved if team member are performing well. Performance is the results of activities given to the employees in an organization to be achieved within specific period of time. Evaluating the current performance of employees against past performances and organizational standards is known as Performance Appraisal (Dessler, 2005). Furthermore performance appraisal helps the company know how individual employees are performing and how to improve their performance thus improving the performance of the company (Grubb, 2007). A performance appraisal is propose in which the performance management system in an organizations set work goals, determine performance standards, provide performance feedback, determine training and development needs and distribute rewards as well as evaluating an employee’s job performance during a period of time. The performance of team member is much more than appraising individuals’ works, it is managing the business, so the performance of an employee is influences by the performance of an organization. It is target to achieve the best results for the planned strategic by managing activities of employees. There are many different opinions on the performance appraisals, some organizations do performance appraisals without any aim just follow others., where some organizations do performance appraisals to make sure they have a record of a piece of paper in the employee’s file – they are careless about do corrective action. But successful organizations understand the importance of combining performance appraisals into their performance management process and strategy plan as the success of any organizatio...