Carl Sandburg, a novelist and poet, emphasizes ideas such as love, death, and many other themes in most of his works. He has complied many poems and novels throughout his career and many of his poems have been published in A Magazine of Verse (PBS). Overtime, the American people grew very fond of Sandburg, and he was commemorated as the “Poet of the People” in the United States. In “Cool Tombs”, Sandburg uses rousing diction and imagery to depict death as peaceful and restful, rather than frightening and terminal. Sandburg used stirring diction to convey death as peaceful. Death’s role in “Cool Tombs” is to show that “the ultimate peace is the silence of death” (Napierkowski, “Themes” 48). Sandburg portrays the peace in death through a variety …show more content…
Sandburg portrays the peace and restfulness in death through different words, such as “shoveled into the tombs”, “cash and collateral turned ashes”, and “streetful of people” (1, 2, 4). “Shoveled into the tombs” shows the importance of nothingness in which the body is just being “recycled to dust without sentiment and ceremony” (Napierkowski, “Themes” 46). This concept of nothingness stresses the silence of death in that peace is obtained. The “cash and collateral turned ashes” stresses the idea that earthly materials are not taken to the grave with you. In other words the “streetful of people” and the hero are no different because “all people…are finally united at the grave”, so “death remains unimpressed by wealth, power or even virtue” (Napierkowski and Evans, 48, 8). So when Sandburg addresses the “streetful of people”, he is implying that the common man is no different than “/the most famous…to the most noble [men]” because everyone will be finally together at the grave (Evans 5-6). The “streetful of people” throwing confetti also shows the death should be celebrated and not looked frowned upon. Carl Sandburg employs the diction and imagery in “Cool Tombs” to show how death is the ultimate equalizer and peacekeeper in order to gain the ultimate silence. “Cool Tombs” is an important piece of American literature in that death should be seen as enlightening and peaceful. Death doesn’t matter about your earthly accomplishments because everyone ends up at the grave. Everyone from the president of the United States, to the common man will all meet at the grave. This poem will forever serve as a reminder in American literature in that death is peaceful, rather than
Rain began to lightly drizzle onto my shoulders as I passed the endless headstones. It seemed like the cement markers continued for miles, and for miles they did indeed. With my fellow freshman, I ascended the hill of Arlington National Cemetery; the expanse of graves produced a feeling of sorrow within me almost impossible to illustrate. Tears began to well within me, and I had to choke them back. It was not yet time to cry.
When someone dies it is often assumed that the body is now useless and nothing but a decaying pile of bones. Yet author Mary Roach contradicts this assumption by arguing that the human body is perhaps the most useful dead rather than alive. Death may be brutal and difficult to cope with, but death is not at all in vain. Roach and other anatomists have objectified human cadavers by covering the body’s hands and face in order to bear with the natural emotional distresses of the human condition. As harsh as it seems, the death of one can potentially become the savior of the lives of millions.
Death is the ending of one's life and a beginning to another. Death is a common element in the novel “All The King's Men” by Robert Penn Warren. The novel is about an ordinary man who gets an insight on the political world and eventually works for it, Warren shows the risk one man has to take to survive in the political world and how it deeply impacts him. Stark unexpectedly dies and leaves an impact on the rest of the characters which creates a character development. The author uses metaphors, details and repetition which influences the theme “ you never know what you have until it's gone.”
Death plays a bigger role in life than life itself. When people die, people cry, and while people cry, a clear moment of lucidity occurs. Death is what makes every moment worth living and is told through stories of books and movies with symbols both subtle and blunt. Night, for example, is an autobiographical novel recalling Eliezer’s experience through concentration camps while The Book Thief is a historical fiction film where Liesel is a bystander who participates in activities symbolizing war. History is intertwined death.
No matter the actions an individual experiences in a lifetime, the outcome remains the same. Death consumes the soul and leaves not a trace, but a few carcasses. In Aldous Huxley’s 20th century novel Brave New World, Huxley uses imagery to reveal the somber end, which all humans come to; therefore people must appreciate their present ways of life before the end. Huxley describes the morbid scenery between civilization and the savages: “And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground…” (Huxley 105).
Bryant also explains how death is feared by many but he offers comfort to the people that do fear it. Bryant tells the readers about death in a way no poet has said before. Bryant gradually tells the reader more and more about death in each stanza. In “Thanatopsis,” Bryant uses diction to describe death, details to describe how death takes place, and organization to help show the different levels of how people feel about death.
In life people die. Usually at an old age after they have lived a long life. That's normal. But when people die at a young age, that's different. People who die early miss out on the rest of their lives and they didn't get to experience much of it.
In her 1967 essay Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain, Jessica Mitford utilizes the rhetorical devices of diction and verbal irony to illustrate the unthinkable, little-known truth behind the North American funeral industry and its manipulation of death. Through her choice of diction used when describing the process of an embalmment, Mitford shows us the horrifying and questionable truth behind it, prompting us to question the American funeral industry's ethicality. In the 9th paragraph, Mitford states during an embalmment, the blood of the deceased person "is drained out through the veins”. The word “drained” could’ve easily been replaced with “removed” or “extracted”, both of them being more suitable and correct terms, but the author chose it because it has a negative
In “Grass” Sandburg creatively describes the cyclic nature of human to forget past mistakes, and be doomed to repeat them. He does so by describing a scene in which bodies continuously pile up from wars in a chronological order, and each time the bodies pile up the grass “works” in order to cover them, effectively erasing them from our memories, and ensuring another pile of bodies to come. Stafford agrees with the sentiment that we are liable to make the same mistakes over and over if we forget our past, however Stafford relates this idea to monuments, as opposed to Sandburg who describes a lack thereof. “At the Un-National Monument” briefly mentions monuments in the same scope as the rest of the poem; representing them as non-existent in his unfortunately fictitious space of peace and harmony. Thanks to the context of the poem, it can be inferred that Stafford is acknowledging that monuments are a necessary evil, symbolizing suffering, loss of life, and humanity’s lowest points in the hopes that each monument will be the last one that must be erected.
The inevitability of an eventual death is the only thing that we share, that ties all all humans together. When analyzing the characteristics of a cemetery, one must take into consideration how cultural meaning and social constructs affect the landscape, because there is significance in the details. Cultural meaning and social constructs are displayed at both the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery (Pierce Brothers) cemetery and the Los Angeles National Veteran’s Cemetery (Veteran) through regulation of space, geometry, military landscape versus celebrity landscape, and absence. Even after death, Americans’ deepest values are depicted through the manner in which they are buried in these cemeteries.
Death can never be escaped no matter what. In “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe shows the theme of death, a suspenseful mood, and an ominous tone. Through Poe’s use of literary devices, the reader can discover tone, theme, and mood. Throughout Poe’s life he experienced death with two of his mother’s and his young wife. Death is shown how inevitable it is with Poe’s writing and experiences combined together.
Lee begins to capture death through imagery while the speaker talks about the lifeless garden: “The ground is old, / brown and old” (Lee 2-3). The description of the garden allows the reader to fully, and clearly picture the garden and feel the cool air. While picturing the garden one might even say they can picture the speaker 's father standing there. That is due to the sense the garden is a representation of the father himself. Once someone passes away their body becomes cold and they are usually old.
Death is scattered throughout all his works and many of them are saturated with the theme of being buried alive. My aim
Through personification the speaker depicts death as a gentlemen, and not someone who brutally takes our lives quickly, but in a courteous manner. The use of symbolism to describe three locations as three stages of life. These three stages are used to show our childhood,adulthood, and us as elderly soon about to meet death, The speaker also uses imagery to show that all death is a simple cold, then we go to a resting place which is the grave, and from there on we move on toward eternity. Death is a part of life that we all need to embrace, and learn that it is not meant to be
This quote is from Death’s point of view when he is telling us about the bodies he is picking up and taking to the next life. I liked how the protagonist’s family were genuinely nice people so I could feel better about how the protagonist and the hidden Jew is being brought up. I liked (not in a bad way) how the novel didn't quite have a happy ending to it, therefore it made