Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The literary theme of loss
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The concept of loss is a notable theme in poetry, whether its about love, beauty or even life, many poets tend to render it. Such a theme is illuminated upon by Elizabeth Bishop, a distinguished 20th century American poet, who, unlike other poets of her time, usually did not write about personal details of her life in her poems. However the poem One Art can arguably be a contradiction to this fact; for Bishop expressed emotions of losing her dear friend in the voice of the speaker through out the poem. One Art is a poem about inevitable loss and the incognizant of the difficulty in acceptance. In the first few stanzas the poet creates the impression that she accepts losing objects as something so trivial and exceedingly small that it does not flip her life upside down but as the poem continues her emotions are leaked and the readers are able to witness her true feelings as the thing she loses becomes greater in value to her. The poem is about the speaker's notion, that losing things in life is an art and that it is not hard to master such an art because everything “is filled with the intent to be lost.”(1:2) This short quote can have two meanings; on the surface it can mean that the objects she talks about are so small that they are inevitable to lose, like keys and minutes spent doing frivolous activities. However as shown in the final stanza this poem is truly about the lost of someone dear to her and the poet is trying to portray the fragility of a life, as it is created with the intent to be lost (death is unavoidable and everyone must succumb to it.) The speaker articulates tension between ones' own need to control specific life events and the difficulty in the reality of act... ... middle of paper ... ...y ties together the notion of inevitability and disaster. Imminent or impending loss represent the focus of the poem, as the speaker explained, it is in the nature of most things to be lost whether it be something unimportant to us or something we deeply love. No matter the feelings one may have for something, impending loss is always right around the corner. Even something as intangible as our memory and hours spent in a day are subjected to being lost. We forget names, places and time spend doing trivial activities that most often do not impact our lives enough for us to remember them. Whether we choose to accept the pain of losing something or dismiss it as something trivial, the important fact that should be taken away from this poem is that loss is inevitable and most often always tend to correlate with the feeling that is disaster.
situation is not to surrender to fear and the author shows this idea throughout the poem that we
The theme of this poem is death and what factors play into what is lost when a person dies. The setting of the poem is philosophical in thinking about qualities that someone special carries in retrospect to life. I found no similes in the poem. Perfection Wasted is a metaphorical in the idea that is parallel to the idea that life is a stage and we are the players.
I will discuss the similarities by which these poems explore themes of death and violence through the language, structure and imagery used. In some of the poems I will explore the characters’ motivation for targeting their anger and need to kill towards individuals they know personally whereas others take out their frustration on innocent strangers. On the other hand, the remaining poems I will consider view death in a completely different way by exploring the raw emotions that come with losing a loved one.
Notably, sorrow and regret is the tone of this poem, demonstrated in the very first stanza:
Additionally, the repetition of the word “master” (1-3) creates a feeling of the woman having to constantly remind herself of what she believes. Allowing the audience to infer that in reality the woman is not too sure of her thoughts. The author further tries to backs up the claim of the woman believing herself when she states “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster” (15). When the woman made the statement it creates a very clear image of a person who has lost many things in life but tries to forget and pass on like nothing has really happened, hoping that this way in her mind the terrible event has actually never occurred. As the poem draws to an end the woman reveals the truth with “ I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master…” (17-18). Once the truth was given at the end, it shows the woman’s real pain in life and creates the vivid image of her sufferings with loss. Although she tries to pass off as nothing bad has happened, deep down she was always suffering from every single
The poem becomes personal on line 10 when she uses the first person and says “I lost my mother’s watch”. She is letting the reader know what she has lost in reality. Then she gets sidetracked to mention other things she has lost; she then mentions other things she has lost of much more importance such as houses, continents, realms, and cities, but then again mentions it was not so hard to lose those things. But in the end, mention the loss that really matters. She remembers the qualities of the lover she lost.
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
The loss of a significant other has to be one of the most traumatic experiences of a lifetime. As time passes, the loss may appear to the outside world to be minimized in the mind of the surviving spouse but often the appearance is misleading. The feeling of loss, never leaves, as there The use of free verse allows the speaker to express deep emotions and feelings, without restriction of form. There is no strict meter in this short poem of ten lines. The poem does not contain any rhyme. The poem has 4 syllables in the first line of the poem and 23 syllables in the second line followed by 8 syllables in the third line.
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
Death is a reality that can be interpreted in many ways. Some people fear the possibility of no longer living and others welcome the opportunity for a new life in the afterlife. Many poets have been inspired by death, be it by the approaching death of loved ones or a battle for immortality. Just as each poet is inspired differently, each poem casts a different hue of light on the topic of death giving readers a unique way to look at death.
There is also a sense of sadness to the poem, as she recounts of her
I found that throughout this poem there was much symbolism within it. Identifying that it was written in first person form showed that this poem relates to the author on a personal basis, and that it was probably written to symbolize his life. But when talking about people’s lives, you can conclude that people’s lives are generally and individually very diffe...
This poem tells about a great emotional hurt, about great tragedy that let to the heartache. Imagery is used by Emily Dickinson for this purpose. The first line of the poem hides the subject of the poem and is the only line with an abstract statement (Kennedy
... they didn’t go. And lastly, she hears more noises until a hole is dug and it’s her old dog. She is happy to see her dog, but even the dog has forgotten her because he merely digs the whole to bury his bone as a hiding place. So, the main themes of loss interpreted in this poem are loss of love, loss of hope, loss of memory, loss of remembrance, and loss of importance.
In the analysis of poetry one is always looking for the universal truth and how it relates to life. In the case of a child losing a parent, it strengthens the concept of the child’s own mortality. When your father’s generation gradually disappears it reminds you that your generation is the next in line.