Sir Philip Sidney's poem, “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” conveys the speaker’s deep hatred for desire, a natural human characteristic, through intimidating metaphors as well as echoing alliteration and repetition of certain words and phrases in order to establish the fact that excessive desire for worldly possessions will cause self-destruction if caution is not taken. Poets often use figurative language to disguise the message they want to get across to readers. In this case, Sir Philip Sidney uses intimidating metaphors to convey that human desire leads to self-destruction. For example, Sidney describes desire as a “blind man’s mark” which compares a person with strong desires and is metaphorically blinded by them to a person who is physically blind and literally cannot see what has been in front …show more content…
This is what happens when people allow their desires to get in the way of what is truly important in life. The speaker in the poem personalizes his hatred toward desire by expressing that he himself has been caught in desire’s “cradle of causeless care.” Furthermore, he claims that desire has “too long asleep thou hast me brought” which symbolizes that he was metaphorically sleepwalking toward what he thought he needed, but when he “woke up,” he realized what he was chasing after was not worth the pain and destruction it caused therefore throwing him into a cycle of never-ending desire that he cannot escape. Sidney’s echoing repetition of certain words and phrases indicate that human desire is a natural reflex on a never-ending cycle that has no hope of being stopped despite a person’s best efforts to subdue their deepest desires. Proving that desire is a “self-chosen snare” that humans are incapable of freeing themselves from was the purpose behind Sidney’s creative utilization of
It can cause one to become hopeless and think that it might not ever happen. One can be lead to thought that since Hughes is an African American he can not achieve his dreams due to the society that holds him back. One can see all throughout the poem Hughes uses words that perfectly describe a deferred or delayed dream. Hughes uses words like “fester”, “explode”, “sugar over”, “dry up” and “stink”. One can see that all the words describe a dream deferred in a negative and violent manner.
...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?
In society, most people have an obsession to some extent, these may include such things as a hobby – collecting antiques; or even as simple as having to have things a certain way. For others though, obsession has a different meaning, they might become obsessed with one special object, or possibly attaining a certain goal. They might go about achieving this goal no matter what the consequences to others might be. Mordecai Richler’s book the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, illustrates one such case of obsession, the title character, Duddy Kravitz becomes obsessed with his grandfather’s saying, “ ‘ A man without land, is nothing.’”, thus starting Duddy on his quest to attain a piece of land. Throughout his quest, Duddy has no regard for the feelings or the relationships he destroys in the process, weather it in his family relations, business relations, or even his personal relations to those that are closest to him.
The speaker states that those who desire could be “raised high” or even “dragged…down.” It is desire that can ruin your life or help it in many different ways. Even in “A&P” when Sammy quit his job to get the attention of the three young girls. Sammy was living in the moment because he was blinded by the girls and ended making a bad decision. In the poem it describes “The desire of thought-power” could dragged a person down and kill “his inner silence.” When Lengel tries to tell the girls to leave that causes Sammy “inner silence” to die and him to speak out loud and tell him it was not okay to embarrass them like that. However, to Lengel Sammy’s action seemed foolish. The speaker in the poem knows what desire can do to a person, and how it can affect their
To achieve this overall sense of regret he once again utilizes the poetic device of apostrophe. He addresses desire and personifies it as a devil figure whom he struck a deal with and ultimately paid the “price of [a] mangled mind.” This not only ties into the vilification present in the first quatrain, but it also creates the atmosphere of guilt and regret. He feels guilty for falling victim to desire and regrets it because the price was too high. Sir Sidney also employs a metaphor, which ties into the apostrophe used in this stanza, once more. He compares he mental pain and anguish he feels for his actions to the purchase of something that was not worth it at the cost of something valuable to him, in this case
In the first stanza we are captivated by hope, because it “dangles on a string” before us, not quite in our grasp, because even though we are aware of it, we do not fully have a handle on what it means to be hopeful (1). This is then said to be like “slow-spinning redemption” (2). Again, this is because we do not fully appreciate redemption. We can see it before us, in many different lights, hence spinning, but we do not really understand what makes redemption what it is. Because we do not comprehend the concepts of hope and redemption they “rope us in” and “mesmerize” us (5, 6). We spend a lot of time in our youth...
The first six lines of the poem highlight the incompetence of love when compared to the basic supplies for life. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; It is quite obvious that the narrator highlights everything that requires living in line 1 through 6. Line 1 depicts the deficiency of love as a thing that is not able to provide food as compared to “meat” (1): love cannot hydrate a man as signified by “drink” (1): love cannot refresh a man as signified by “slumber” (2): it does not offer shelter as signified by “a roof against the rain” (2): love cannot give a preserving “floating spar” to a man who is in peril (3): nor will love give air to a “thickened lung” (5): love cannot “set the fractured bone” (6). The narrator describes love as a worthless element in the first 6 lines, but line 7 and line 8 express a tremendous level of violence that people are willing to commit because of the lack of love: “ Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (7-8). Line 7 and line 8 is an evidence to prove that no matter what the poet says about love, people are willing to die for it because it is important.
He illustrates the agony of thinking and the burden it places on him. Through his self-reflection, Douglass explains the pain and discomfort his expanding knowledge bears upon him, a young boy exploring his present world to discover that maybe ignorance really is bliss. Through the use of several literary devices such as specified diction, irony, and parallelism, the speaker relays a desperate tone throughout this section of his narrative elaborating on the torment
In the second and last stanza of the poem we are reminded that he was but a child. The thought of losing the berries “always made him feel like crying” the thought of all that beauty gone so sour in the aftermath of lust. The lack of wisdom in younger years is emphasized by the common childish retort of “It wasn’t fair.” He kept up the childish hope that this time would be different, that this time the berries would keep and that the lust, work, and pain might not have been in vain, that others would not “glut” upon what he desired.
reflect not only his but also the views generally shared by society (720). The uneasiness experienced by the narrator at the prospect of? [a] blind man in [his] house? is a representation of the prejudices and fears that we often face when exposed and forced to deal with strange and foreign things (720). Blindness seems especially abnormal to us because vision plays such a heavy role in our everyday?normal? lives.
desires can be engaged without reason. Their thoughts are consumed by their desires for the
In Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” the narrator and Robert, the blind man, have no connections at all in the beginning. The narrator even thinks that he is better than Robert because Robert is blind, the narrator is also jealous of Robert’s relationship with the narrator’s wife. Although we can gather these things from the short story the actual message that I am going to discuss in this paper is the importance of not physical seeing but emotionally and mentally seeing. Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” explains the importance of transcendence, looking beyond what you can physically see and opening yourself up for greatness and opportunity in life.
Metaphors are used by Chesterfield, whereby he uses them to portray his son’s values. Chesterfield builds his son up, and provides all the obstacles that could come into his life in the near future. He takes his time to warn his son about the problems, and struggles that he is to face in the future through a metaphor where he says, “thorns and briars which scratched and disfigured me in the course of my youth” (Stanhope 91). He refers to these problems as thorns and briars. He was frightened that his son was going to make the same mistakes he made while he was a youth and so, he had to warn him in advance of what awaits him. He uses metaphors in his warnings just to emphasize his points. Later on, in his warnings to his son; Chesterfield also uses anastrophe in contradicting his points. He uses anastrophe as an understa...
It is imperative for us, especially all poets and writers of prose that use language to express figurative meaning, to critique this theory because it only decreases creativity and denies that artist say anything beyond the literal with their words and metaphors. Davidson's ideas violently affront to the purpose of our craft. If we become completely dependent upon objective, literal meaning and learn to reject subjective, figurative meaning in words, we will consequently become less human and more detached from the world, from our natural surroundings, from our fellow human beings, and from the spontaneous, creative voices deep in our guts that often speak of truths literal expression cannot capture.
Throughout literature, subject matters of desire and destruction often go hand in hand. From desire of destruction to the destruction of desire, there are many ways the subject matter of desire and destruction are constructed into themes. Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire and William Shakespeare in Macbeth take similar stances in this discussion throughout the ages, focusing their views on the destruction of desire. They claim that absolute desire, desire with complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, or at least without through consideration, leads to absolute destruction, whether it be destruction of their life, their self, or hope of obtaining their goal.