The Nature of Symbolism within Trethewey’s “Elegy” In this poem “Elegy,” Natasha Trethewey depicts the relationship between herself and her late father by means of a metaphor that carries throughout the entire poem. We see that an elegy is typically used to lament the dead, however the abstract language of this poem sends a more demining message. This connotative thought is exactly what Trethewey chooses to address through subliminal metaphors equipped with items typically used to destroy rather than build, along with symbolism that alludes to fighting adversity. The narrator immediately incorporates symbolism insinuating the emphasis on struggle in the first stanza. Symbolizing adversity, she tells the reader “I think by now the river must be thick with salmon. Late August, …show more content…
Trethewey immediately uses imagery to set the scene inviting your senses to help illustrate the image she has already relayed. This helped depict a more in-depth image of her poem “elegy”. After reading this poem several times, to build understanding, and break down literary elements; I came to the conclusion that Trethewey emphasizes the struggle to find balance. The balance between metaphor and symbolism, increasing throughout the entire poem showing battle between connotation and detonation. The struggle in which she used to connotation to portray the bigger picture, but also balanced out by denotation to show the subliminal messages of the relationship shared between the narrator’s father and herself. The balance between her reminiscing the past or holding on to so much aggression that she is forced to let go. These balances of struggle hold true throughout the entire poem to highlight the subliminal metaphors equipped with items typically used to destroy rather than build, along with symbolism that alludes to fighting
The overall theme of the poem is sacrifice, more specifically, for the people that you love. Throughout the poem color and personification are used to paint a picture in the reader's head. “Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees.” (46) This description is used to create a monochromatic, gloomy, and dismal environment where the poem takes
• Identify any literary devices (symbolism, allusions, or metaphors/similes). - In the poem E.E. Cummings uses a lot of symbolism, throughout the entire poem the speaker is figuratively carrying around his lover’s heart, it shows unity between the two lovers, and Cummings starts and ends the Poem with almost the same line, showing from the begging to the end, the speakers love for his lover. - E.E. Cummings also refers in the last stanza to a tree of life, from a root grows larger than a soul or a mind. Roots and buds are symbolic to the start of life, and since the tree is higher than our souls and mind, it is referring back to the speakers love for his lover something not contained in this world, that branches out.
From here, a uniform mood and tone is set throughout the poem and can be seen heavily in not only the choice of words but, also the plot and structure of the poem. The theme of sympathy is really conveyed through Erdrich’s melancholic tone. Throughout the poem, we see a very gloomy and melancholic tone set by the events happening. “Until I could no longer bear / the thought of how I was” (51-52), these two lines portray her battle after she is rescued and how instead of her relief she is feeling a longing to be back with her captors. Lines similar to these two lead embody why the tone is so gloomy and sad especially when readers see the battle she is experiencing because she is safe now, away from her captors but, she doesn 't really want to be.
The speaker is going through his life as if he was going with the current of the river. Stafford uses diction and imagery to convey that the river represents the speaker’s “go with the flow” attitude about life. Stafford uses compelling diction in order to convey that the river symbolizes the speaker’s nonchalant attitude towards life’s uncertainties. In the beginning of the poem the river has a literal meaning, “Some time when the river is ice. ”(Line
Can people be fully mature? Many teeangers and adults think they are mature and can control many things. Here are two literary works that show how people are not fully mature as they thought. A short story “Crystal Stars Have Begun to Shine” by Martha Brooks and a poem “12 years old” by Kim Stockwood deal with the maturity of people.
Through the poem’s tone, metaphors used, and symbols expressed the poem portrays that fear can make life seem charred or obsolete, but in reality life propels through all seasons and obstacles it faces. The poem begins with a tone of conversation, but as it progresses the tone changes to a form of fear and secretiveness. The beginning and ending line “we tell
It’s said that Thomas was an alcoholic and it was deemed that the cause of his death was because of the obsession and also it was accentuated with the grief he felt for his father approaching death. The form of the poem is elegy whereby Thomas used the poem by expressing his grief for his father’s impending death. It is vital to know the poet state of mind in order to relate or understand the poem. Therefore, descriptive language used by the poet should be focused to further know the poet’s is trying to impose.
The conflicting interests of the mother and the father result in a situation where one must make a sacrifice in order to preserve the connection in the family. The flat depressed tone of the poem reflects the mother’s unhappiness and frustration about having to constantly
In the book “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward, symbolism is used to portray unresolved trauma to emphasize how it influences the characters. Leonie has faced traumatic
The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.
It uses this effect to accentuate the “Homecoming” of the dead. Repetition is harnessed to utilise the irony and accentuate the ones who are coming back are dead, not the glorified ending that society was promised. The inditer, Dawe, utilises his perspective to present his view on the matter. His perspective is rather raw, and often the plain truth, as optically discerned in “Homecoming”, and in some stanzas in “On the Death of Ronald Ryan”. Readers may interpret his works in ways of tyranny toward the regime, society in some fashions.
In the poem by Sax, he uses anaphoras in the end of the poem by using “this is … this is…” (l. 9-11) in the beginning of each sentence to describe the likeliness of each object to his emotion. The setting of his poem is more ambiguous than Levine’s poem but it could be inferred that it’s at night during winter it could also be in the character’s house during that time as the character remembers the memories that cause him to grieve. Levine’s poem uses symbolism to describe the character’s time of revelations during his process of grieving which is mentioned as a dance but is really the time spent walking in the woods (l. 19). The setting of Levine’s poem is in the woods which can be inferred from the imagery of pinecones and mountain
In the poem, "When You Are Old", by William Butler Yeats, the speaker 's attitude towards the woman is conveyed through several elements. It is clear that the speaker has a loving attitude toward the woman. The poem 's form-the way it is put together-makes the attitude clear. However, the diction, imagery, and tone assist the form to make the attitude apparent. The poem is set up in three stanzas.
The Real Victims Sharon Olds’s narrative-driven poem “The Victims” expresses the dysfunctional family dynamic between the speaker’s father and mother. Although the poem alludes to the father committing appalling actions against his family, the speaker does not reflect well on either the mother or the father. According to the narrator’s point of view, both have negatively affected the children’s lives.
There are seven stanzas in this poem and the techniques appeared in the poem are Imagery, Simile, Metaphor, and Alliteration. The imagery is the techniques used all over the seven stanzas in this poem to describe the image of the Death the movement, and the sound which included Auditory, Visual, and Kinetic. The First stanza described the environment in the cemeteries, the heart refers to the dead bodies in the graves and a tunnel could be coffins. The dead bodies sleeping in a tunnel which give the image of the coffin and in this stanza the poet also used a Simile in the last three lines by using word “like” and “as though.”