This essay will explore the use of imagery in “Kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks to communicate hopelessness. Throughout this poem we are able to almost see food cooking, garbage rotting in the hall, and large amounts of people sharing a space. Gwendolyn Brooks is communicating hopelessness to us through her beautiful examples of imagery. She describes preferring the smell of onion fumes (an unsatisfactory smell for most) over the ripening of yesterday’s garbage. The fact that the smell of food cooking is the thing most comforting to somebody who probably doesn’t eat as well as others makes an understanding to the poem. Clearly we get the “color” of the poem through this struggle. “ Grayed in, and gray”(2) , gives off a depressed and sad feeling at this point and only hoping for “white and violet”(5) to dream about having sufficient sustenance. The Kitchenette building is what is seemed to be a building with bedrooms that were divided to fit more people inside. Many poor African- American families lived in a difficult place like this. Simply with just a bed and a kitchen connected together and just one bathroom down the hall, this placed served as their house. A crowded compacting area with not enough space for everyone explains the lifestyle they had. …show more content…
“Since number Five is out ...” People weren’t going by names but possibly the order of who is next in line. With the different situations the speaker of the poem has to handle such as “rent”, “feeding a wife”, or “satisfying a man”, this understanding of the poem seemed as a never ending cycle. There was no time to “dream” or wonder of anything else. With so many struggles throughout the poem, there’s not time to wonder so much about desire. Because in reality, at the end all that comes to mind is the thought of lukewarm water. And the “hope to get in
In the second stanza Brooks states, “And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, flutter or sing an aria down these rooms.” Here, Brooks is using metaphors to express that the garbage ripening in the hall can be toxic just like bad dreams. However, dreams can also be pleasant and enchanting like an aria that is sung. In this stanza, the reader can imagine what the revolting trash looks like and is able to associate it to a dream that did not get prioritized, was forgotten, and left to putrefy. Nevertheless, if it is like an aria, the dream will be able to flourish. Additionally, in line one and two, Brooks describes strong, intense smells using imagery. She states, “But could a dream send up through onion fumes, its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes.” The narrator is describing some of their daily tasks, like them having to cook. Yet, would a dream be able to conquer over social duties like having to prepare a meal? Could it send up through onion fumes? We are able to tell more closely towards the end of the
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
conduct themselves distinctly. Evil and wicked people tends to hurt and harm others with no
Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a tragic piece about a woman fleeing with her child, the husband ditched in isolation. The mood of the poem is dark and lonesome, by imagining the painting the writer was describing I felt grim because of what the family went through. As reported in the text, ”Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.” This demonstrates the understanding of why they deserted the farmhouse. The author also composes, “And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.” This proves that the residence was unaccompanied. When placing the final touches, the reader begins feeling dark and lonesome, asking about the families disappearance.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
cold, harsh, wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house. More rundown than any of our classmates’ houses. In winter my mother’s riotous flowers would be absent, and the shack stood revealed for what it was. A gray, decaying...
The poem that will be discussed in this essay is “Whats That Smell in The Kitchen”, written by Marge Piercy. This poem was really tense and a bit comical; but it was also sad at the same time. Some emotions received often while reading this poem is seriousness, sadness, and comedy.
The figurative language that she uses in this poem is assonance and alliteration. In line 10 “shanty-fied shotgun is an example of alliteration (two words with the same constant sound). “ In the first stanza where it talks about her skin tone, “light bright…white” (3-4) is an example of assonance because there’s a rhyme scheme in those
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
“She grieved over the shabbiness of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the worn-out appearance of the chairs, the ugliness of the draperies. All these things, which another woman of her class would not even have noticed, gnawed at her and made her furious.”
Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby & nbsp; Colors can symbolize many different things. Artists use colors in their paintings when they want you to see what they are trying to express. Like if an artist is trying to express sorrow or death. he often uses blacks, blues, and. grays. Basically he uses dreary colors. You automatically feel what the artist is trying to express. When the artist uses bright colors you feel warm and you feel happiness. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald is like an artist. He uses colors to symbolize the many different intangible ideas in the book. He uses the color yellow to symbolize moral decay, decadence, and death. Then he uses the color white to symbolize innocence. He also uses the color green to express hope. Fitzgerald's use of the color green the strongest.
Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is a controversial play focusing on the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer. The play is filled with symbols that represent abstract ideas and concepts. These symbols effectively illustrate the inner conflicts that are going on between the characters. Henrik Ibsen’s use of symbolism such as the Christmas tree, the locked mailbox, the Tarantella, Dr. Rank’s calling cards, and the letters allows him to give a powerful portrayal to symbolize aspects of characters and their relationship to each other.
As the play progresses, the reader come to know that for Helmer’s sickness in the past, Nora was forced to borrow money from Helmer’s scoundrel college mate and bank colleague Nils Krogstad to save her husband’s life. She got the loan without informing her husband as she knows it would be painful and humiliating for him to know about her favour. She first used diplomacy to convince him for going abroad. She also “hinted that he could borrow the money” (Act I, p.46). He got almost angry and did not want “to yield to her whims and fancies” (ibid) as he was unable to suspect how ill he was. As a result, she was compelled to save his life by taking money from Krogstad secretly. In the legal process of obtaining the money, she was forced to forge
...r supper...He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in the windows, saw the place was empty.”(257) Needy’s journey ended at a dark, lonely place; it was then he realized that he had no one left. Needy’s empty house was symbolic of the emptiness he now had in his heart.
Also the symbolism in this poem is largely effective. Gray doesn't simply describe things like green eyes. He goes into detail by using descriptive adjectives like emerald eyes, ears of jet, tortoise vies, snowy beard, and pensive Selima. The usage of these words adds to the ornamentation of the poem.