Important Comprehension of the Studied Poems
(analysis of three messages in To a Mouse and To a Louse by Robert Burns)
It is easy to tell people’s social or economic class by the clothes that they wear or the location at which they live. You can get a pretty clear idea of how much money they make and how they are ranked in class system by looking at them. However, could you tell all that about somebody with your eyes closed? That’s where Robert Burns, the author of To a Mouse and To a Louse, puts an edge on his poetry. He uses dialect that the common folk could understand, making his writings more accessible to a larger crowd. This also brings some authenticity to his work, which he infuses in his poems. Robert Burns expresses three philosophical
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The mouse had built a house to live in for the winter. Before the plow hit his house, he was content with his life and thought nothing could go wrong. However, stated by Burns, “Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’! An’ naething, now, to big a new ane, o’ foggage green! (lines 19-22) The mouse’s whole plans and preparations were destroyed. All creatures plans have the opportunity to turn and change. Its nature, things don’t always go as planned. In fact, things almost never go as planned. Although, Burns suggests that all of God’s creators have aspirations that worthy of …show more content…
In this poem, a wealthy lady walks into church late and sits in front of the speaker. Her name is Jenny and she is wearing extravagant clothes that pull people attentions. While sitting behind her, the speaker notices a louse sitting upon her bonnet. This little creature makes the speaker realize that even the wealthy have faults, and if Jenny were to know about the louse she would throw a fit! He then begins to wonder what it would be like to look at yourself from somebody else’s eyes. He says, “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us! (lines 43-44) What would Jenny think if she could see the bug on her? She would be mortified and realize what a fool she is making of herself with such a bold entrance, when really she isn’t any better than the rest of the congregation. She is not aware of these faults that she possess, but if she could see herself from another's perspective, this would change her outlook on herself and life.
In perspective, both of Robert Burns's poems, To a Mouse and To a Louse, have interesting messages, however these three are the ones that stood out to me. The dialect used by Burns adds a certain type of freshness to the readings and helps the reader have a fuller understanding of the text’s meanings. Comprehending these poems can give the readers a better idea of the messages trying to be conveyed by Robert Burns. Although these poems were
Life is not always easy, at some point, people struggle in their life. People who are in the lower class have to struggle for a job every day and people who are in upper class also have their own problems to deal with. These ideas are very clear in Mary Oliver’s “Singapore”, Philip Schultz’s “Greed” and Philip Levine “What Work Is”. In "Singapore" a woman is likely lower class because she works at the airport and her job is to clean the bathroom. In both “Greed” and “What Work Is”, the speakers make the same conclusion about the struggle in the lower class. “Greed” furthermore discusses how Hispanics get a job first before whites and blacks because they take lower wages. All three poems deal with class in term of the society. The shared idea
Burns, Robert. “Coming Through the Rye.” Passions in Poetry. N.p. n.d. Web. 28 January 2010.
Both “To a Mouse” and Of Mice and Men are very interesting and intriguing well-developed works by two distinctly different authors. The authors have different writing styles, as well as different ways of formatting their works. However, they share the same message. This message is that no matter what one does to prepare, they should always have a Plan B. Things can and often do go awry. By comparing both subjects, the reader can gain a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the two. They also learn precisely why the inquisitive author Steinbeck found inspiration in Burns’ detailed and symbolic poem.
Burns, Robert. “To A Mouse.” Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, Inc., n.d. Web. 14
Every poem constructs a perception for every reader and most readers will have a different outcome from one another. In How To Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes, the author adds many hidden messages and symbols in the poems for the readers to uncover, and in many times it tends to be difficult. It takes a lot of examination to reveal what the speaker or author is trying to assert. Hayes’ uses many social and historical references such as racism into his poems to depict the anger within the speaker. One of the many themes that prevail in many of his poems is a sense of being trapped such as the poem, “Like Mercy”. The message that Haye’s is trying to portray in the poem is, of a priest serving God, but not agreeing with God at times causing him to
the name for his novel from a poem by Robert Burns called "To a mouse,
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
The purpose of the poem was to express my interests of nature and how I felt and what I experienced when I was in the woods at that time. There’s also that life and death aspect in this poem, in which the bird has the lizard in his mouth and also by the word “fire”.
Lawrence uses figurative language in order to present his ideas of societies expectations of a man. Lawrence changes the structure and style of “Snake” in order to highlight the struggles of the narrator. Specifically, when writing about the snake he uses repetitive and flowing words. He also uses traditional devices like alliteration, for example “and flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips.” The use of these technics gives the snake an almost human like feel that the reader can connect to. At the same time, Lawrence writes about the log used to hurt the snake in a different style creating such a contrast between the snake’s description and the log. The words describing the log are much different, “and threw it at the water trough with a clatter.” The changing styles helps emphasize the internal struggle the narrator is experiencing as he tries to figure out if he should do as society dictates and kill the snake like a man or do as he wishes and leave the snake in peace as his guest at the water
In the second half of the poem, a new facet of the speaker's attitude is displayed. In line 17, she wants to improve the ugliness of her "child" by giving him new clothes; however, she is too poor to do so, having "nought save homespun cloth" with which to dress her child. In the final stanza, the speaker reveals poverty as her motive for allowing her book to be sent to a publisher (sending her "child" out into the world) in the first place. This makes her attitude seem to contradict her actions.
With fewer than fifty published poems Elizabeth Bishop is not one of the most prominent poets of our time. She is however well known for her use of imagery and her ability to convey the narrator?s emotions to the reader. In her vividly visual poem 'The Fish', the reader is exposed to a story wherein the use of language not only draws the reader into the story but causes the images to transcend the written work. In the poem, Bishop makes use of numerous literary devices such as similes, adjectives, and descriptive language. All of these devices culminate in the reader experiencing a precise and detailed mental image of the poem's setting and happenings.
In this poem about seeing from the shadows, the speaker?s revelations are invariably ironic. What could be a more unpromising object of poetic eloquence than mayflies, those leggy, flimsy, short-lived bugs that one often finds floating in the hulls of rowboats? Yet for Wilbur...
In John Donne’s poem, “The Flea”, Donne uses the conceit of the flea to contrast the insignificant size of the flea and the incredibly significant metaphor attached to the flea. The speaker of the poem is talking to a woman, trying to convince her into having sex with him outside of marriage. This poem can be broken into three stanzas, of nine lines each, utilizes the image of the flea to convey three main ideas: the first as a vessel where their essence mingles, second as the institution of marriage, and finally as an insignificant representation of honor which would have no effect on them. Donne’s hyperbolic use of the flea extends through the poem as a metaphysical conceit to convey a logical argument out of something seemingly unrelated to the situation at hand.
... Nature, including human beings, is `red in tooth and claw'; we are all `killers' in one way or another. Also, the fear which inhabits both human and snake (allowing us, generally, to avoid each other), and which acts as the catalyst for this poem, also precipitates retaliation. Instinct, it seems, won't be gainsaid by morality; as in war, our confrontation with Nature has its origins in some irrational `logic' of the soul. The intangibility of fear, as expressed in the imagery of the poem, is seen by the poet to spring from the same source as the snake, namely the earth - or, rather, what the earth symbolizes, our primitive past embedded in our subconsciouness. By revealing the kinship of feelings that permeates all Nature, Judith Wright universalises the experience of this poem.
It is relatively easy to see the repression of blacks by whites in the way in which the little black boy speaks and conveys his thoughts. These racial thoughts almost immediately begin the poem, with the little black boy expressing that he is black as if bereaved of light, and the little English child is as white as an angel. The wonderful part of these verses is the fact that the little black boy knows that his soul is white, illustrating that he knows about God and His love.