Alistair MacLeod has a unique style of writing in the story, “The Boat”, which is composed of fairly simple words to present the reader with a smooth read. The context of the passage is witnessed in the eyes of the narrator, and it voices the dedication of his father; whom works diligently as a fisherman with his son following his footsteps. The excerpt from the story relates to the story as a whole since his father carried on the tradition of fishing at sea from previous generations - despite his appreciation for books, he gave up on his dreams for the sake of family heritage. MacLeod describes the father in the story with detail about what he was wearing “rubber-booted heel” (228), his age “sixty-five” (228), and also reveals facial features …show more content…
The theme of concurring through fear and believing in the light of success is tied to the personification because the father acknowledges that the voices he listens to have restricted him throughout his entire life, which has caused a battle of depression within himself. The symbol of desolation is displayed in the story; the father reaches a point where he can no longer live a life filled with misery, and therefore, commits suicide to escape his pain. MacLeod combines numerous coordinating conjunctions, specifically “and” (228), to join words together, and since it’s the narrator’s thoughts; it would be reasonable for the sentences to run-on longer. A simile in the sentence, “his blue eyes flashing like clearest ice beneath the snow that was his hair” (228), is to implicate an image for the readers of the father’s colorful eyes. At the beginning, there is color in the passage that shows his father is an ordinary man that has feelings and wants happiness. However, the next sentence, “his usually ruddy face was drawn and grey” (228), shows a shift in the atmosphere; considering there is no longer color in the setting. When the narrator describes his father working, the color in the scene disappears to show his hatred of being a
Our journey starts in the year 1853 with four Scandinavian indentured servants who are very much slaves at the cold and gloomy headquarters of the Russian-American fur-trading company in Sitka, Alaska. The story follows these characters on their tortuous journey to attempt to make it to the cost of Astoria, Oregon. Our list of characters consists of Melander, who is very much the brains of the operation as he plans the daring escape from the Russians. Next to join the team was Karlson, who was chosen by Melander because he is a skilled canoeman and knows how to survive in the unforgiving landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Third was Braaf, he was chosen because of his ability to steal and hide things, which made him a very valuable asset to the teams escape. Last to join our team is Wennberg who we know is a skilled blacksmith who happens to hear about their plan and forces himself into the equation.
While on the subway, the speaker is sitting on the opposite side of the car, facing the boy. The speaker utilizes imagery in this line, “He has the casual look of a mugger, alert under hooded lids. He is wearing red, like the inside of the body exposed. I am wearing dark for fur, the whole skin of an animal taken and used.” This imagery appeals to the audience by the sense of sight. The speaker is depicting the boy’s appearance as well as her own. She does this to contrast the differences between his raw appearance and her opulent appearance. She wants to elucidate that he looks treacherous while she looks like she could be the victim of a burglary. All of the imagery in the rest of the poem serves to describe the variations between the boy and herself.
He uses personifications specifically in this poem to write about what is going on and to describe things. “It's a hard life where the sun looks”(19)...”And its black strip of highway, big eyed/with rabbits that won’t get across ”(2)...”A pot bangs and water runs in the kitchen” (13) None of these are really human body parts on things such as the sun, a pot, or a highway, but they help describe what something does or what something looks like. In the first instance, the sun cannot actually look at something, but it could mean that the sun is visible to the humans, and if humans are out for a long time in the sun, they can get hot and exhausted. For the second line, the big-eyed highway could mean that the highway has many cars with bright headlights that are dangerous for the rabbits, the immigrants, to get across. For the third and final line, pots are not able to bang things on their own, and it could have possibly been a human who made the pot bang, preparing the meal of beans and brown soup that they survive on. There is also a simile in this poem, “Papa's field that wavered like a mirage” (24). This simile could suggest that the wind is moving the grass or crops on his father’s field and looked like an optical illusion. According to Gale Virtual Reference Library, the literary device, “tone” is used to convey the significant change of the author’s feeling in the poem. In the beginning lines, the tone is happy. The poem talks about nostalgia of when he was little, “They leap barefoot to the store. Sweetness on their tongues, red stain of laughter (5-6). (GVRL) These lines illustrate the nostalgia and happy times of Gary Soto’s life when he was probably a child. However, after line 11, the tone becomes more of a negative one. Soto later talks about Farm Laborers and how the job was not a great one. After line 19, a brighter
The Sky Fisherman by Craig Lesley is a story about a boy learning about life’s way of balancing out. Culver and his mother, Flora, moved to the small town of Gateway, for a fresh start from their troubling past. Culver will witness the effects of guilt and repayment of debt on his Uncle as he tries to balance out the community of Gateway. Guilt and debt encourage people to make unwise decisions in favor of those who they are repaying. Their goal is to make things even and fair. Life balances out.
The diction helps exemplify the imagery even better, the reader can sense how the speaker’s home felt like as well as the father’s hard work. The speaker awakens to the "splintering, breaking" of the coldness. This allows the audience to feel a sense of how cold it was in the speaker’s house. One can infer that the poem is set in a cold city or town during the winter, which gives the reader an idea of how cold it might be. “Slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,” represents how the father battles to keep the family away from harm of the cold and darkness, implying that the speaker grew up in poverty. His father’s “cracked hands” shows how hard his father worked to keep his family safe.
This can be perceived in the names of her characters, the sky, and even the weather. Jennifer Bouchard explains O’Connor’s hidden meaning behind the antagonist’s given name, “The aptly named character of The Misfit serves as a symbol both of evil as well as a symbol of the villain’s inability to fit into society.” (82) Flannery articulates how symbolism is used within her stories stating “You might say that these are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction.” (334) Understanding the elements within a story not only has superficial meanings, but hidden implications as well expand the reader’s knowledge and enjoyment. “O’Connor includes several symbols in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. For example, skies and weather are always symbolic to O’Connor, and she often uses such descriptions to reveal a character’s state of mind.” (103) To represent this technique take this excerpt from the story, “…the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at a cloudless sky.” (309) Upon first glance we might miss the true meaning in this passage, which is the grandmothers receiving of salvation and happiness in her final moment. O’Connor’s use of symbolism causes the reader to dig deeper into a story, so be mindful of
While reading the poem the reader can imply that the father provides for his wife and son, but deals with the stress of having to work hard in a bad way. He may do what it takes to make sure his family is stable, but while doing so he is getting drunk and beating his son. For example, in lines 1 and 2, “The whisky on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” symbolizes how much the father was drinking. He was drinking so much, the scent was too much to take. Lines 7 and 8, “My mother’s countenance, Could not unfrown itself.” This helps the reader understand the mother’s perspective on things. She is unhappy seeing what is going on which is why she is frowning. Although she never says anything it can be implied that because of the fact that the mother never speaks up just shows how scared she could be of her drunk husband. Lines 9 and 10, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle”, with this line the reader is able to see using imagery that the father is a hard worker because as said above his knuckle was battered. The reader can also take this in a different direction by saying that his hand was battered from beating his child as well. Lastly, lines 13 and 14, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt” As well as the quote above this quote shows that the father was beating his child with his dirty hand from all the work the father has
Harper begins the poem by detailing the start of the speaker’s relationship with a man, developing it through the use of metaphor and concrete diction. From the first few lines of the poem, the reader learns that the relationship was destined to be futile through Harper’s use of metaphor: “If when standing all alone/ I cried for bread a careless world/ pressed
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he
...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
The phrasing of this poem can be analyzed on many levels. Holistically, the poem moves the father through three types of emotions. More specifically, the first lines of the poem depict the father s deep sadness toward the death of his son. The line Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy creates a mental picture in my mind (Line 1). I see the father standing over the coffin in his blackest of outfits with sunglasses shading his eyes from the sun because even the sun is too bright for his day of mourning. The most beautiful scarlet rose from his garden is gripped tightly in his right hand as tears cascade down his face and strike the earth with a splash that echoes like a scream in a cave, piercing the ears of those gathered there to mourn the death of his son.
Throughout the poem, the author uses various types of figurative language to immerse the reader in the thoughts and feeling of the speaker. The personification of fear in the form of Mr. Fear provides one such example.
The opening lines of the poem are more shocking than the grimness of the detail because they illustrate the bleak mood of the hero. He is distrustful "My first thought was, he lied in every word" and bitter: "That hoary cripple, with malicious eye". His despair and paranoia become evident in the inconsistency of his thought: if the man was lying about where to find
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
...defining words. The symbolism is to show the reader and the audience that life is only for so long. Once that old age is reached your youth is over. Try and accomplish all that you can when you have the time and the energy, because we are all going to be in the same place as all the characters in the churchyard before we know it. Gray uses imagery and symbols very well, and smoothly pulls the attention of his readers in to the poem.