Under the Waterfall by Thomas Hardy
Some people say that history finds a way of repeating itself. The same thing happened to poetry in the Twentieth Century era. Poetry returned to a metaphysical style, which concentrates on nature and the belief in the supernatural power of different things. You ask how is history repeating itself this way? It is like this because this is the style that Romantic Poets wrote. The main difference between the two completely separate eras is the poets in the Twentieth Century use more common events and common relationships. This made poetry even easier to understand because more people could relate to it. To me, their poetry is often easier to understand because it addresses everyday life. I also think that much of this is due to the fact that more people were reading then there ever was before. Now the poets were writing so that everyone could read and understand what they were trying to express and have them relate it to everyday life. This can be easily seen through different works by different authors of that period. Poems such as "Under the Waterfall" By Thomas Hardy and "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" by T. S. Eliot. Both works express their feelings about an ordinary event, adult relationships.
Thomas Hardy's poem "Under the Waterfall" can be interpreted many different ways. One cannot deny the power and influence nature has over the two lovers. The poem talks about two lovers going on a picnic in August to a waterfall. Hardy discusses the purity and serenity and permanence of the waterfall: "The purl of a runlet that never ceases / In stir of kingdoms, in war, in peaces; /…"(13-14). This shows the power of nature and its lasting presence. He then goes on to describe the picnic, "My lover and I / Walked under a sky / of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green" (27-29). Once again this shows the beauty and romantic power that nature has. He proceeds to describe an event that took place. He and his lover drank out the same glass. When he went to wash the "chalice of ours"(48) and it fell into the pool at the bottom of the falls. They both try and get it back out but they are unable to reach it.
reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp
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
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, humanity is a theme seen throughout. Humanity can be defined in many ways. It can be the disposition to do good, or it can be the human race. In the Night, the theme of humanity is the disposition to do good. In the book, Elie loses and finds his humanity. At the end, he holds on to his humanity, but loses some of it after events like his father’s death. Elie succeeds in retaining his humanity because he holds on to his father, he feels sympathy for people at the camps, and he keeps faith. Elie retains his humanity in the end even though he loses it in the middle of the book.
In looking back upon his experience in Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote in 1988: ?It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism (Nazism) sanctifies its victims. On the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.? (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 40). The victims of National Socialism in Levi?s book are clearly the Jewish Haftlings. Survival in Auschwitz, a book written by Levi after he was liberated from the camp, clearly makes a case that the majority of the Jews in the lager were stripped of their human dignity. The Jewish prisoners not only went through a physical hell, but they were psychologically driven under as well. Levi writes, ??the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts? We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death?? (Levi, 41). One would be hard pressed to find passages in Survival in Auschwitz that portray victims of the camp as being martyrs. The treatment of the Jews in the book explicitly spells out the dehumanization to which they were subjected. It is important to look at how the Jews were degraded in the camp, and then examine whether or not they came to embody National Socialism after this.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a distressing tale of human struggle as it relates to women. The story commences with a hardworking black washwoman named Delia contently and peacefully folds laundry in her quiet home. Her placidity doesn’t last long when her abusive husband, Sykes, emerges just in time to put her back in her ill-treated place. Delia has been taken by this abuse for some fifteen years. She has lived with relentless beatings, adultery, even six-foot long venomous snakes put in places she requires to get to. Her husband’s vindictive acts of torment and the way he has selfishly utilized her can only be defined as malignant. In the end of this leaves the hardworking woman no choice but to make the most arduous decision of her life. That is, to either stand up for herself and let her husband expire or to continue to serve as a victim. "Sweat,” reflects the plight of women during the 1920s through 30s, as the African American culture was undergoing a shift in domestic dynamics. In times of slavery, women generally led African American families and assumed the role as the adherent of the family, taking up domestic responsibilities. On the other hand, the males, slaves at the time, were emasculated by their obligations and treatment by white masters. Emancipation and Reconstruction brought change to these dynamics as African American men commenced working at paying jobs and women were abandoned at home. African American women were assimilated only on the most superficial of calibers into a subcategory of human existence defined by gender-predicated discrimination. (Chambliss) In accordance to this story, Delia was the bread victor fortifying herself and Sykes. Zora Neale Hurston’s 1926 “Sweat” demonstrates the vigor as wel...
‘Hills Like White Elephants’ is a short story authored by Ernest Hemingway about an American and a girl named Jig. In the story, the two are sitting in a train station waiting for the train to Madrid. While they wait, they have an intense ongoing debate on whether or not to abort Jig. At the end of the story, the train is about to arrive and the man carries luggage on the tracks as they prepare to leave. The end of the story does not clearly define the outcome of its decision. She said I feel good at the end of the story - happiness is a central theme of the story, but we wonder if she went through with the operation. The paper discusses the manner in which symbolism has been employed in the story to communicate about an abortion, the couple is considering to go through.
How could one dieny that the mass murder of six million jews never happened? These revisionist, or deniers, like to believe that it never did. Even with the witnesses, photos, buildings and other artifacts left behind, they still believe that the Holocaust is a hoax. The Holocaust deniers are wrong because there are people who have survived that wrote books, there is proof that Jews were being killed, and other evidence and artifacts have been found.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, took the time to inform the world about his experiences as a prisoner of Auschwitz during the Holocaust in order for it to never happen again. Wiesel uses a language so unbearably painful yet so powerful to depict his on memories of the Holocaust in order to convey the horrors he managed to survive through. When the memoir begins, Elie Wiesel, a jewish teenager living in the town of Sighet, Transylvania is forced out of his home. Despite warnings from Moshe the Beadle about German prosecutions of Jews, Wiesel’s family and the other townspeople fail to flee the country before the German’s invade. As a result, the entire Jewish population is sent to concentration camps. There, in the Auschwitz death camp, Wiesel is separated from his mother and younger sister but remains with his father. As he struggles to survive against starvation, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse he also looses faith in God. As weeks and months pass, Wiesel battles a conflict between fighting to live for his father or letting him die, giving himself the best chance of survival. Over the course of the memoir, Wiesel’s father dies and he is left with a guilty conscience but a relieved heart because now he can just fend for himself and only himself. A few months later, the Allied soldiers free the lucky prisoners that are left. Although Wiesel survives the concentration camps, he leaves behind his own innocence and is forever haunted by the death and violence he had witnessed. Wiesel and the rest of the prisoners lived in fear every minute of every hour of every day and had to live in a place where there was not one single place that there was no danger of death. After reading Night and Wiesel’s acceptance speech of the Nobe...
In the Spring of 1944, it was hard to imagine the horrendous acts of terror that would be bestowed on innocent people and the depth of Nazi evil. To Jews in a devout community with Orthodox beliefs and spiritual lifestyles, faith in God and faith in humanity would be shaken to the core as horrific, inhumane acts of torture and suffering were experienced by those in the concentration camps. Since the creation of the world, Jews have often associated darkness (or night) with the absence of God. Consequentially, Elie Wiesel struggled with this as the unimaginable atrocities took place in his life. Although a survivor, he has been haunted with guilt, questioned his faith and developed a lack of trust in humanity as a result of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel entitled his book about the Holocaust, “Night”, because darkness symbolized the evil death camps, and a permanent darkness on the souls of those who survived.
Hills like White Elephants is a unique story filled with simple yet meaningful dialogue between two lovers in Spain. The entire story can leave the audience with more questions rather than answers when they reach the conclusion. Those who are familiar with Hemmingway and have studied his works have attempted to gain insight and logical conclusions to many of his stories by examining his life. A life that was full of married affairs, alcohol, and hardship. Many of these experiences Hemmingway has faced, have set the foundation for some of his greatest works. This paper will examine the impact that Hemmingway’s first born child, his alcohol addiction and his separation from Pauline had on the popular short story of Hills like White Elephants.
Hemingway was known for writing very little with a lot of underlying meaning. Most of his work is based more or less on dialogue. In “Hills Like White Elephants” we have a brief introduction of the scenery and then dialogue between Jig and the American. This short story does not give you any hints as to what is really being said by the main characters but the tone, scenery, and symbolism do play a big part in explaining the situation at hand and what Hemingway was trying to convey in this short piece.
Nine patriarchs found a town. Four women flee a life. Only one paradise is attained. Toni Morrison's novel Paradise revolves around the concept of "paradise," and those who believe they have it and those who actually do. Morrison uses a town and a former convent, each with its own religious center, to tell her tale about finding solace in an oppressive world. Whether fleeing inter- and intra-racial conflict or emotional hurt, the characters travel a path of self-isolation and eventual redemption. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison uses the town of Ruby and four broken women to demonstrate how "paradise" can not be achieved through isolation, but rather only through understanding and acceptance.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
Falling Water’s plans all came about when the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright was born, Jun 8, 1867. Frank was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin. Wright designed Fallingwater in 1935. At his death in 1959, he had built more than 400 buildings. Wright’s most famous house was designed and built for the Pittsburgh Kaufman family, for a weekend retreat.