Bishop’s In the Waiting Room forces the reader to view the world through the eyes of young Elizabeth. “The moment is a coming of age, but without any of the social ballasts required for a seven-year-old child, however precocious” (Lensing, 1992). A brilliant piece of literature, the cultural awakening that Elizabeth experiences, through the exposure of the photos in National Geographic and through her surroundings, is captivating. Like Bishop’s visual artistry, her poetic artistry captivates the reader. Her words through In the Waiting Room paint a picture of human-kind and subtly coax the reader into thinking about one’s place in the world.
Written in prose, In the Waiting Room is a story of self-discovery and a journey to understand humankind.
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Bishop’s early years were quite difficult. Her mother suffered from serious mental illness. After her father’s death and her mother’s inability to care for her, she went to live with her Grandparents in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her father’s parents in Massachusetts believed that Elizabeth would fare better with them due to their financial standing and the educational resources available. “Under their guardianship, Bishop was sent to the elite Walnut Hills School for Girls and to Vassar College (Poetry Foundation, n.d). The experiences of Bishop’s youth are reflected in her poetry through themes of “...struggl[ing] to find a sense of belonging, and the human experiences of grief and longing. (Poetry Foundation, …show more content…
Why should you be one, too? (Bishop, 1979). This is a significant message. Understanding humankind is important for personal and professional growth. Ms. Bishop makes it clear through Elizabeth that we are all a part of humankind but where is our place? As a professional understanding the nuances of what makes people driven to succeed is imperative. Each human is different. It is recognizing those differences that help today’s professional to know where they will “fit” in their career goals. It also allows one to be aware of what it takes to succeed in their respected field. Through an understanding of both humankind and human nature, one is more apt to be
The publication history of all of John Clare’s work is, in the end, a history about editorial control and influence. Even An Invite to Eternity, written within the confines of a mental institution seemingly distant from the literary world, is not an exception to this rule, for it and Clare’s other asylum poems do not escape the power and problem of the editor. And, further, this problem of the editor is not one confined to the past, to the actions of Clare’s original publisher John Taylor or to W.F. Knight, the asylum house steward who transcribed the poetry Clare wrote during his 20 odd years of confinement. In fact, debates continue and rankle over the role of the editor in re-presenting Clare’s work to a modern audience: should the modern editor present the unadulterated, raw Clare manuscript or a cleaned up, standardized version as Taylor did? Only exacerbating and exaggerating this problem o...
Erdich , Louise “The Red Convertible” 1984.Schalfel and Ridl 126 – 133. Schakel, Pete, and Jack Ridl. Eds. Approaching Literature Reading + Thinking + Writing. 3rd Ed. Boston: Bedford/ St Martin, 2011. Sprint.
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.”
Photographs capture the essence of a moment because the truth shown in an image cannot be questioned. In her novel, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold uses the language of rhetoric to liberate Abigail from the façade of being a mother and spouse in a picture taken by her daughter, Susie. On the morning of her eleventh birthday, Susie, awake before the rest of the family, discovers her unwrapped birthday present, an instamatic camera, and finds her mother alone in the backyard. The significance of this scene is that it starts the author’s challenge of the false utopia of suburbia in the novel, particularly, the role of women in it.
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Elizabeth Bishop’s Sestina is a short poem composed in 1965 centered on a grandmother and her young grandchild. Bishop’s poem relates to feelings of fate, detriment, and faith that linger around each scene in this poem. There are three views in which we are being narrated in this story; outside of the house, inside of the house, and within the picture the grandchild draws. The progression of the grandmother’s emotions of sadness and despair seen in stanza one to a new sense of hope in stanza six are what brings this complex poem to life. Bishop’s strong use of personification, use of tone, and choice of poetic writing all are crucial in relaying the overall message. When poetry is named after its form, it emphasizes what the reader should recognize
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Norris, P. (2014). Literary Review - Pamela Norris on Anne Enright's Taking Pictures. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/norris_03_08.html [Accessed: 14 Apr 2014].