Bad Apples
"A Poison Tree" by William Blake is a short poem about life in general. The poem teaches its readers a valuable lesson about anger. Anger has power over ones’ mind and actions.
If a person holds in their feelings, especially anger, it can pull that person down emotionally as evident in the poem "A Poison Tree". This poem written by William Blake describes the darker emotions such as anger, hatred and Schadenfreude. The poem refers to "apple bright" in the garden which may lead readers to infer a Biblical reference to the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man, inflicting death upon his foe, is more cruel than the God of Genesis who banished the sinners from paradise.
Paradise is a place that God created for Adam and Eve at the beginning of time. The fruit mentioned in the Bible is that of a forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe.
The poem mainly deals with anger. The beginning of the poem begins by depicting a scenario in which a man told his friend he was angry with him, yet they were able to work out their differences and resolve the issue. His anger dissipated shortly afterwards, and the friendship continued to grow like a seedling soon becomes a tree with strong roots. Blake was also angry at his enemy, but Blake could not do the same as he did with his friend. He keeps his anger secret from his enemy. Blake made a mistake by not allowing his anger to escape. His anger grew both day and night. H...
The Unlikely Disciple is about a Brown University journalist student, Kevin Roose, who decides to spend one semester at Liberty University. He chooses to take this semester in order to order to get better insight on the evangelical community. Although originally Roose only wanted to shallowly integrate into the Christian community to gain a better perspective, by the end of the novel he realizes that you cannot pretend to be something you are not without being a little affected by it. One of the struggles Roose faces is dating Ana who is a female student at Liberty University. Even though there is clearly chemistry between the two, Roose opts out of dating Ana as he does not want to start a relationship based on the false pretenses he has created to fit in at the university. The students at Liberty University are subjected to a great deal of rules that most college students would vehemently disregard. These rules are reinforced by students who are RAs. The author describes being an RA at Liberty as “one of the most grueling jobs on the planet” (174). The college students are forbidden to smoke, drink, and curse. There is great variation in the rules as the students are also prohibited from watching R-rated movies, dancing, hugging more than three seconds, or having any sexual interaction with the opposite sex. For example, the guys on Roose’s dorm hall were caught watching the gory R-rated movie 300 and their punishment was to get “twelve [reprimands] to each person present,” “fined a combined $350,” and “the DVD was confiscated” (172). Some of the rules are implemented to stop activities that will lead the students into further sinful behavior, such as the movie and hugging restrictions. As any ...
During a time when black people were thought to be lower than white people, Atticus defended a black man in court. He said to his children, "I'm simply defending a Negrohis name's Tom Robinson," (pg. 75). It required a lot of confidence and caring for Atticus to defend Tom, and the black community knew that Tom did not stand a chance without Atticus' help. They respected him and looked to him as a hero. They showed this when they stood up for him in the courtroom. Reverend Sykes said to Scout in the courtroom, "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin," (pg. 211). The entire group of black people who were there stood up for him. Also, the parishioners at Calpurnia's church made Jem and Scout feel welcome when they visited their church. This showed that the black people also respected Atticus' family. If Atticus were just trying his best in a difficult circumstance, then he would not be as respected as he was by the black community. The black people greatly acknowledged the qualities that Atticus displayed by defending Tom and looked to him as a hero because of these qualities.
William Blake's "A Poison Tree" (1794) stands as one of his most intriguing poems, memorable for its vengeful feel and sinister act of deceit. This poem appears in his famous work Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1794), placed significantly in the "Songs of Experience" section. As with many of his poems, Blake wants to impart a moral lesson here, pointing of course to the experience we gain in our human existence at the cost of our innocence. With this poem, he suggests that holding a grudge (suppressed anger left unchecked) can be fatal to the self as well as the object of wrath. Through images, punctuation, and word choice, Blake warns that remaining silent about our anger only hinders personal and spiritual growth, making us bitter, and that a grudge left unchecked becomes dangerous, even murderous.
Most importantly, the final line of the second stanza of the poem displays Marxist views as it portrays the imprisonment of the proletariat in the suffocating capitalist system and it also supports the famous quote of Karl Marx that states that “No mind is free, they only perceived to be”. This is evident when the narrator of the poem says “the mind forg’d manacles I hear”. It can be suggested that Blake compares the working class to prisoners in Newgate prison suffering from the conditions of their environment, but, significantly, Blake uses the potent image of “mind forg’d manacles” to indicate the mental chains instilled in the minds of the proletariat through physical force by the bourgeoisie who want to maintain the status quo. Perhaps, it could be suggested the use of the irregular stressed words “mind forg’d manacles” which portrays Blake...
The structure of the first stanza helps us understand the relationships between the four aspects of human nature presented, cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy. The first and third lines start with the main word, while in the second and fourth ones the words come preceded by the word "And". This makes the reader connect cruelty with terror and jealousy with secrecy automatically. We can notice that the stress of the lines in this first stanza falls onto the main word, giving an emphasizing effect. Unlike many other Blake poems, such as "The Tyger" or "The Lamb" we cannot find rhyming couplets in this stanza, but the rhyming and stressing effect is enough for the reader to tie the ideas together. This effect is strengthened by the repetition of the word "human" in every line and the repetition of the "y" ending sounds in lines one, two and four.
Blake was an idealist who strongly upheld his political and religious views in criticizing the conditions of London at that time. His poem reflected his perspective of London from his firsthand experience of the horrific conditions in which people live and worked.
Even though the odds go against him, Atticus Finch bravely stands up to his beliefs and morals. Furthermore, he
"London" by William Blake is a short poem packed with meaning. The poem has two related themes. The first explores the spiritual decay and slavery of the people of London. The second examines the oppression of certain disadvantaged groups and the implied apathy of the oppressors. Blake crafts a skillful poem with masterful use of layered word meaning, irony, repetition, and visual and audible images.
The poem, drenched in wistfulness, tells the tale of a sunflower very near to the speaker’s heart (demonstrated with the use of “my” in the eighth line) that he observes as being “weary of time,” (Blake 1) and following “the steps of the sun,” (Blake 2) as all sunflowers do to stay alive. However, this particular plant goes one step farther than natural instincts as Blake personifies the flower early on in the poem. He creates an ancient traveller nearing the end of a great journey, “seeking
This poem shows that all people feel empathy for other people, and we receive this emotion from God, who shares in the suffering of every single living creature, no matter how small. God does not give preference to the sorrow one person, but rather in there say and night through every struggle of every creature. Blake uses rhetorical questions to call into light questions people know the answer too, but are sometime to blind to see.
In 1983, Howard Gardner came up with the theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardner, intelligence is: the ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life; the ability to generate new problems to solve; and the ability to make something or offer a service that is valued with one’s culture (Hine). Initially, he came up with seven different intelligences that children develop, and they are verbal linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, visual/spatial, body/kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Today, education focuses mainly on reading and writing, the verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences. While both of these are indubitably important to the curriculum, they should not be considered any more important than the other intelligences. Gardner’s theory says that everyone is smart in each intelligence; the difference from one individual to another is what intelligence(s) they are strongest in and which one(s) could be developed more. Gardner believes that by teaching to all intelligences, students are exp...
When one looks at the title, “ A Poison Tree” one can assume the poem is going to be about some sort of fauna. When the reader goes on to read the poem in its entirety, one sees “ A Poison Tree” is simply a symbolic title. The poem begins with someone telling of his wrath for a friend. He had once told a friend why he was mad at or angry with him. When he spoke to the friend, the irritation went away. In another instance, he was also angry with his enemy. He had never told his enemy basically that he held him with the title of “enemy” and his angst or hate for him grew. The poem takes on an “AA, BB” end rhyme scheme in that a sentence (in a group of two) will rhyme with the next.
Howard Gardner introduced the theory of multiple intelligences in 1983, in his book Frames of Mind (Giles, Pitre, & Womack, 2003). This book became the centerpiece to understand and teach human intelligence and the different types of learning styles. During this discovery he found seven unique intelligences. A decade later Gardner discovered two additional intelligences which were published in Gardner’s Intelligence Reframed. Gardner states that all intelligences can be measured by an IQ test. He defines intelligence as the “human ability to solve problems or to make something that is valued in one or more cultures” (Checkley, 1997, p. 8). There are eight criteria’s that each intelligence needs to meet in order to be identified as an intelligence they (Armstrong, 2009, p. 8) are: potential of isolation by brain damage; existence of savants, prodigies, and other exceptional individuals; an identifiable core operation or set of operations; support from experimental psychological tasks; support from psychometric findings; a distinctive developmental history with a definable set of expert “end-state” performances; evolutionary plausibility; susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system.
Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard, introduced his theory of multiple intelligences in 1983. Multiple intelligence’s is a theory about the brain that says human beings are born with single intelligence that cannot be changed, and is measurable by a psychologist. Gardner believes that there are eight different intelligences in humans. The eight are verbal linguistic, visual spatial, bodily kinesthetic, mathematical logic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist. Understanding these intelligence’s will help us to design our classroom and curriculum in a way that will appeal to all of our students. We might also be able to curve discipline problems by reaching a student in a different way. One that will make more sense to them and more enjoyable. We can include all of the intelligences in lessons to accommodate all of the students’ different learning styles at once. By reaching each students intelligence we can assume that a student will perform better which, could mean students retaining more important information. A students learning style can also help lead them into a more appropriate career direction. As a teacher you can also learn your own personal learning style or intelligence to help improve the way you learn and teach.
“The Garden of Love” is, quite obviously, a poem about life and the pursuit of happiness. It is also about the effects that negativity can have on love. Blake uses religion to convey the idea that negativity “…pervades and corrupts all life”(51 n.9), further supporting it with his use of rhyme scheme and imagery. In searching for love people often times emerge scarred and hostile from their fruitless efforts. Some continue to have faith in the idea of love and its possibilities, others do not. These folk sometimes seek refuge from their pain in a variety of houses. It is just as often that these refugees project their negative attitudes onto others that search for love and happiness. People who fear love can prevent others from finding it, because they change the positive surroundings to suit their negative world.