t may be said to be self-evident that the poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, LordTennyson is an extended expression of the poet's grief for the loss of his beloved friendArthur Hallam. What may not be as immediately obvious, and what I intend to show in thisessay, is that, over the course of the poem, the narrator (whom we may safely identify asTennyson, given the degree of correlation between the text and historical evidence) passesthrough each of the five stages of grief, as delineated by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her seminalwork
On Death and Dying
.
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I intend to accomplish this through a juxtaposition of keydefinitions of each stage with evidence from Tennyson's text and a brief accompanyingexegesis.The first stage we might discuss,
These sentiments are not immediately salient in the poem(with the exception of a rare explicit reference to anger in the final stanza of canto 82: "For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart"), but the question, of course,certainly is, most notably in l. 10-12 of the Preface: "Thou madest man, he knows not why, /He thinks he was not made to die; / And thou hast made him: thou art just." Faith, of course,deeply informs Tennyson's verse, but if we have a mind to it, we may certainly also discover anote of bitter sarcasm in these few lines: turning a rational creature such as man loose, in anear-infinitely complex and dangerous world (as Tennyson was, by degrees, discovering oursto be), without so much as a hint of purpose or direction, can hardly be called a just act. Canto21, additionally, reinforces this reading of an undercurrent of anger if we come to it with thesame perspective with which we approached canto 6: in penning imagined reactions to hislamenting Hallam's death (the acknowledgement of which, in l. 1's "rest" and l. 3's "grave",can be read as confirming that denial is no longer sustainable, as per Kübler-Ross'formulation), Tennyson might be said to be giving voices to parts of his own mind whichoppose, in whatever form, the expression of grief- note that the voices given the mostattention are those which speak "harshly" (l. 6-8) and are "wroth" (l. 13-20). Finally, variousreferences to suddenly-disturbed patterns (such as, among others, the first stanzas of cantos 7,8, and 13) and Tennyson's references, too frequent to enumerate, to Hallam's greatness, seemto echo Kübler-Ross and Kessler when they note that in the anger stage "assumptions comecrashing down around us when the good, the just, the loving, the healthy, the young, and eventhe needed and most wanted die on us" (14).The bargaining stage follows anger in the Kübler-Ross model; this stage ischaracterized by a general acknowledgement of
My initial response to the poem was a deep sense of empathy. This indicated to me the way the man’s body was treated after he had passed. I felt sorry for him as the poet created the strong feeling that he had a lonely life. It told us how his body became a part of the land and how he added something to the land around him after he died.
Proposing her thesis early in her article, Quindlen creates a basis for her position about the lasting effects of death and grief; due to her specific examples, and use of pathos, repetition, and ethos, she supports her position successfully.
together in sympathetic union, to share a common grief” (William Alden Smith). In the days
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed a theory based on what she perceived to be the stages of acceptance of death. Her theory has been taken further by psychologists and therapists to explain the stages of grief in general. Kubler-Ross identified five stages: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, as happening in that order. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet exhibits all five stages of grief, we can assume in relation to the recent death of his father, but not necessarily in this order, and in fact the five seem to overlap in many parts of the play.
Woolsen, Constance Fenimore. “Miss Grief.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym.
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”(Oscar Wilde) Just starting off in the world, this phrase can be a bit bemusing to the average student. Especially in the rigorous social norms of the Victorian age. But if this phrase was uttered at the end of his life, toward his downfall, the betrayal of his fans, the loss of a wife and a lover, his inevitable imprisonment; it would make much more sense for this troubled man. As an aesthetic to the core, Wilde used his unending wit to satirize the Victorian Era through his plays and novel. But he showed a softer, more morose side in his poetry. A prevalent theme in his verse was the death of others. Not necessarily people close to him, but just the idea of death in general. He explores the realm of the afterlife through “The Ballad Of Reading Gaol” and “Requiescat”, using personal experience and loss to fuel these rhymes. In this dissertation I intend to prove that Wilde was not only a genius playwright and the sharpest crayon in the box; but also a lonely poet at heart.
Loss. Grief. Mourning. Anger. Disbelief. Emotions are in abundance when a loved one passes away. People need to find a way to cope with the situations and often need to express themselves by writing their feelings down in order to get them out. This is exactly what Paul Monette does in his book of poetry title “Love Alone” in remembrance of his companion Rog. Through writing his poetry Monette describes his emotions and the events that occurred during Rog’s battle with AIDS. By Monette’s transitioning through different emotions, the reader begins to understand the pain the author is dealt. Touching upon Kubler-Ross’ five stages of death including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Monette transitions to Rog’s decline in health. Using different fonts and no punctuation, the lines are interpreted by the reader using instincts to know when to begin and end a sentence. Evident in the poems “The Very Same”, “The Half-life”, and “Current Status”, Monette gives a description of loss that makes the reader tingle.
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
"’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, / nor customary suits of solemn black / [ . . . ] but I have that within which passeth show; / these but the trappings and the suits of woe” (Shakespeare 1.2.76-73, 85-86) says Hamlet when confronted about his way of grieving over his father’s recent death. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a remarkable tale that is centered on the idea of death and grief. While death is a universal occurrence, meaning every person will deal with it, how we grieve after a loss is completely individual. To look at a formula of grief, most turn to the five stages of grief developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist, who studied the topic in her book On Death and Dying. This model consists of denial, anger, sadness, bargaining, and acceptance, although the duration and order of the stages are different for every person. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet the stages of grief are evident in his sadness, anger, and finally acceptance.
Grief can arise from loss, whether large-scale or small, and may not be easily removed once it takes hold. Because of grief’s obstinate nature, many approaches have been developed in order to handle the repressive, and often painful, effects it can have on people’s lives. One of those approaches is Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory, The Five Stages of Grief. In Sierra Skye Gemma’s essay, “The Wrong Way”, she juxtaposes her own personal experiences with grief against Kübler-Ross’s hypothesis. Gemma uses her confessional, combined with empirical evidence that contradicts the Five Stages of Grief, to demonstrate that feelings of grief are unique to the individual; therefore, there is no right way to mourn.
Everyone has or will experience a loss of a loved one sometime in their lives. It is all a part of the cycle of life and death. The ways each person copes with this loss may differ, but according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s novel On Death and Dying, a person experiences several stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance. There is no set time for a person to go through each stage because everyone experiences and copes with grief differently. However, everyone goes through the same general feelings of grief and loss. There are also sections in Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” that connect to the process of grieving: “On Pain,” “On Joy and Sorrow,” and “On Talking.” Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” reflects on Kübler-Ross’s model of the different stages of grief and loss.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
Katherine Philips is desperately trying to renew her faith in life, but she is struggling to do so because of the death of her son. She is attempting to justify the loss of her child as a form of consolation, while keeping somewhat emotionally detached to the later death of her stepson in “In Memory of F.P.” The differing phrases, words, and language contrast the two elegies and emphasize the loss and pain in “Epitaph” while diminishing the pain in “Memory of FP.”
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.
Emily Dickinson suffered from loss and grief in her life. In 1850, Leonard Humphrey whom she considered to be her “Master” passed away. In 1953, she suffered the loss of another friend of hers Ben Newton. In a...