Conflicting Perspectives

Representations of events in the past are created through choice of historical evidence and personal memory. Factors utilised by a composer to demonstrate a purpose are consciously chosen to ensure the idolised meaning is constructed. Mark Bakers non-fiction text The Fiftieth Gate articulates the manifestations of the holocaust, contrasting historical facts with personal memory. Bakers deliberate utilisation of differing perspectives integrated throughout the text, challenges and questions the validity of both history and memory. Similarly Steve McQueen’s film 12 years a slave and Redgums song “I was only 19”, exhibit the composer’s choices of particular historical knowledge and memory, idolising the idea of selection defining perspective.

"They left my hands like a printer’s or thieves before a police blotter" (line1-2), which begins the poem with an unforeseen dull meaning. This makes an unmistakable picture of his hands recolored purple, in each niche and wrinkle on his hand. The words in this poem influences it to appear that the boy considers himself nothing superior to a criminal. The boy fending for himself denies him of that sweet youth purity. However, "almost needful as forgiveness"(line 12-13), gives the feeling that the boy is waiting for pardoning.

Compared to the father’s internal craziness, the description of the mother is far more reserved and composed – a contrast of movement and stillness. While the father has a mind vibrating “like a plucked string”, the mother “lies there in the dark” and “counts the minutes as they pass” (12). While he expresses his passion with a cycle of “exhilaration, exhaustion, frustration”, she tries to suppress her disappointment and sadness by “[pressing] her forehead to the glass” (16). While the mother sincerely and dearly desires the companionship at home, the father “finds himself listless, irritable” in the face of serenity and “absence of imminent disaster” (7). The whole tone of the description for the father is vibrant, accompanied by a lot of metaphors of him, the sky, or the balloon.

“Nineteen”, by Elizabeth Alexander uses language and tone to form a multi-sensory poem about remembering her youth and desire to connect to her past Vietnam vet lover. These aspects of language and tone are embedded in the outer form of the poem, as the author forms an imaginative recreation of her young adult life, which directly impacts the reader to allow for an enjoyable simple read. The elements of language and tone formation ensure the translation of Alexander’s emotions or feelings of her youth for the audience to relate and understand. In the first place, the language within “Nineteen” is casual and not really poetic.

Losing the first child takes away the proud and right to be a parent. The silent grief is widely presented in the Lucille Clinton’s “The Lost Baby Poem” and Ben Johnson’s “On My First Son” sharing a common theme of guilt over losing their baby; however, the poems differ in terms of how the child was lost, imagery, style, point of view and tone.

Alice walker uses diction to convey the loss of innocence in this short story. Using diction such as “She struck out at random at chickens she liked” to convey innocence at the beginning of the story. However she starts using different diction towards the end to convey the loss of that innocence. With lines like “The air was damp and silence was close” and “It was then she stepped smack into his eyes” and “It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of

In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” both Poets have characters that are telling of their relationship or some kind of interaction the character had with their father. These poems are similar in some ways, but different in some ways. Regardless they both tell of a child and their relationship with their father. However the major difference between the two poems is Daddy is about Plath’s mother not her father; however this has no impact on the differences between the father child relationships in the poem. Both poets view their fathers differently in each of their poems.

In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, both authors use their version of a parent-child relationship to convey feelings of disappointment, and romanization of their relationships, commonly through imagery and a large shift from a romanticized version of the parent-child relationship to the reality of a not so perfect parent-child relationship in both literary works that are contrary to the original thought of the stories. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”, the protagonist, Mama, shows definite favor for her eldest daughter, Dee, over her youngest daughter, Maggie. Mama romanticizes Dee, through a vivid use of imagery, describing her body as something that is be preferred over Maggie’s body: “Dee is lighter than Maggie with nicer hair and a fuller figure…” (Walker 319).

1. Introduction Published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, The Bell Jar has aroused the interest of scholars all over the world. One of the most often discussed characteristics of The Bell Jar is its use of similes, metaphors, and symbols. Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath employs rhetorical devices to paint a vivid picture of its protagonist Esther. This essay will discuss how Sylvia Plath uses figurative language to represent Esther’s feelings of insanity, anxiety, and freedom.

It’s almost as if the Father wrote the poem, their stories being so similar. Although they are different people, they share the same story. Both have been forced to make decisions they didn’t want to make. The Father was forced to make the decision to leave his daughter with her mother.

Throughout both “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” the author seems to have a very bitter tone towards men. A hatred that I feel as if started during a rough childhood and a bitterness towards her father that she has expanded to all men. The author seems to also be extremely depressed and suicidal. She talks about having nine lives in “Lady Lazarus” almost as if she is a cat and says that every 10 years she does this unmentionable thing, being an attempt at suicide. She never lets us know what has made her so depressed to the point of wanting to commit suicide, but I assume it all stems back to her childhood and a rough life since.

Sylvia Plath’s poetry has the capability to reflect her troubled, yet fascinating outlook on life. Paradoxically, despite brimming with overpowering emptiness and personal hardship, her poetry is effortlessly magnificent. Some occasional incandescent light shines through as she contemplates the redemptive power that her writing and inspiration has on her bleak, melancholic life. However, Plath’s immense suffering due to her total neutrality, her fragmented mind, and the feelings of inadequacy she experienced, ultimately led her to succumb to her inner demons.

In present literary criticism, there are no identified canons that determine a value for literary works. However, as discussed in Marjorie Garber’s book The Use and Abuse of Literature, she discusses how just as poems and novels do not have any one identified canon that determines a value, there is also no way to determine any right or wrong answers to understanding and interpreting literature. Rather than merely presenting facts, like textbooks or biographies, poems and novels evoke questions, thought, yielding ideas and sparking argument. And one of her most stressed aspect is that “poems and novels give rise to more poems and more novels (Garber 92)”. Tennessee Williams is able to elicit this response of questions and thought from his audience through a thematic

Compare and contrast the view of the motherhood described in the MORNING SONG BY SYLVIA PLATH AND LIGHT GATHERER CAROL-ANN DUFFY Introduction   The American novelist, Alice walker once said, “how simple a thing seems that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers name.” Walker simplicity yet complex use of words to describe a mother maternal. When she states the phrase “we must know our mother’s names” it shows(?). which creates the contrast that I see when I read the poems: MORNING SONG by Silvia Plath and LIGHT GATHERER by Carol-Ann Duffy one idealizing and one honest about every bit about motherhood. Despite the difference in the mothers’ opinions the were very similar by using figurative language to create big images about

Compare and contrast Piano and Poem at Thirty-Nine D.H Lawrence’s Piano and Alice Walker’s Poem at Thirty-Nine are both about nostalgic remembrance and childhood memories. Poem at Thirty-Nine focuses on the persona reflecting on her life and childhood, bringing in a sense of happiness and grief as she acknowledges how much her father has taught her about life whereas Piano highlights the persona’s poignancy when thinking of his mother and childhood. Both the poems take a different approach on theme of death and loss even though they are both about a parent. Piano is negative and emotional due to the fact that D.H Lawrence uses strong emotive language to convey nostalgia and sentimentality. This is shown through his choice of words such as ‘weep’ and ‘betray’.