Analyzing the Themes of Poems by Edgar Lee Masters Edgar Lee Masters is well known for his great collection “Spoon River Anthology”, a series of over one hundred inscriptions on tombstones, a discussion over the residents of the fictional small town of Spoon River. One of the reasons for these poems is for others to understand the life of small town areas and those of rural areas. Each of the poems contains a short text that honors a deceased person; they speak about things much expected by others, some repeat their past, others talk about their view of life from the outside, and some complain about their graves treatment, while few talk about their death. “The Hill” by Masters is one of his famous poems, and is the first poem, it is unique …show more content…
They are trying a man named Dr. Duval, for committing the murder of Zora Clemens a pregnant woman mentioned in the poem who was found in a ditch later told. Barry is the father of eight children and another on the way and can be told that he too is having problems of his own. When he arrives home that night after hearing the story of Dr. Duval killing the pregnant woman, Barry might have had the urge to do it as well. The first thing he sees when he enters was a hatchet as said in the following …show more content…
The poem does not once include her, and this could have either happened before or after, but if had occurred after his horrific crime, he seemed to have no regret because he does not bother mentioning it. He begins saying that he is a religious man and has a job in canning works by telling what he does at work where each morning he had to fill the tank in front of the works with gasoline. One day he was on a ladder doing his job when a gasoline-filled tank exploded and sent him flying. Butch say he landed on the ground with both legs broken and his eyes
Going through hardships and challenges in one’s life is very important for growing. Mary T. Martin Sloop demonstrates how she got through certain obstacles, in her book, Miracle in the Hills. Mary and her Husband, Eustace, overcame the obstacles of having no doctors, few teachers, and no electricity. The Sloops moved to the mountains of North Carolina in 1909.
Chapter nine commences by telling its readers about how Lee Harding was diagnosed with E coli 0157:H7. After eating some tacos at a Mexican restaurant, he started to have excruciating stomach pains and diarrhea. Harding’s stomach was hurting because of some frozen hamburgers he ate a couple of days ago. Those same hamburgers provided by Hudson Foods were infected with E. coli 0157:H7. Millions of those same frozen hamburgers had already been sold and most likely eaten.
Beginning with one of the most recurring symbols in the text, the Valley of Ashes shows a stark contrast of poverty and dull lifestyles compared to the lavish and posh lives in East and West Egg. The Valley of Ashes is like the ghost to a failed American Dream. Instead of a beautiful landscape, the setting is made up of dark and depressing figures: “ashes take the forms of houses. . . men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. . .
The poem was composed by the author as a response to the poverty in which the Noong-ah tribe lived following the white peoples rise to power and the denial of the rights and justice held by the culture. The text challenges the audience to reconsider their own perceiving of the Aboriginal cultures values and experiences. Davis’s uses a mixture of enjambment, rhyming and imagery to describe the old man in the poem who is removed from his culture, the first stanza introduces him “Fast asleep on the wooden bench, arms bent and weary head, there in the dusk and the back street stench. He lay with the look of the dead” A quote from the poem provides a contrast to the one previously mentioned, Davis uses highly emotive language, imagery, enjambment and rhyming to paint the picture of the man in another form, ‘With a leap he sprang to a run. He met the doe on top of the hill and he looked like a king in the sun.”
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice Cream” all successfully comment on the nature of death, while differing in their discussion of character development, language, and motifs. The first text, As I Lay Dying, deals with how the Bundren family reacts to the death of the female family head, Addie Bundren. The second text, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, focuses on how the protagonist of the play, Hamlet, deals with the death of his father and his uncle’s usurpation of the throne. Finally, the poem, “The Emperor of Ice Cream”, describes a wake and what is going on surrounding the casket, including people’s reactions to the event. These similar focuses of death help to unveil the profounder meaning of each text, which are revealed by the discussion of action vs. inaction, the role of women, and the process of moving on after a death.
‘Surrender? Don’t be bloody silly, we’re Australian’. This quote is the opposite view proposed within John Schumann’s article ‘Aussie image now a myth’. Schumann’s portrayal on Australian culture reflects the idea that Australian’s lack national pride and identity, based on the fact that we no longer possess the moral qualities of mateship. Australian mateship is defined as ‘companionship or friendship between men’, which is clearly not associated within Schumann’s article, which argues that we have lost our morals, motivation and mateship. This statement is clearly wrong.
He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.
Anne Sexton’s The Truth the Dead Know conveys the speaker’s overwhelming feelings following the death of her parents within three months of each other. The story begins in June at the Cape, which would normally provide pleasant images of the sea and fresh air, but in the speaker’s grief, the wind is stony, the water is closing in as a gate, and the sunshine is as rain pouring down on her. She is intimately touched by death and realizes that all of mankind suffers this tragedy, even driving some to consider suicide. Yet, in the end, she realizes that her concerns are in vain because not even the dead have a care for how she is feeling; they are just like stones swallowed by the vast ocean. The poem is Sexton’s way of examining her feelings regarding
The interaction that she gets is from a man butch who that "captures" her, that words implies that he raped her. In the text it say, "Captured me after a brutal hunt. " This quote tells you that one of the townsfolk raped her, a tragic memory that no one cared for the fact that she was raped. The people thought the worst of her without knowing the situation or what really happened to her. After her death it only affected those who loved her like her
The poem is about a child living in the hills of vermont doing wood working when he suddenly chops one of his hand off. At the end he dies a brutal death. These two poems both have an abundance of tragedy. In both poems, they use sibilance.
The novel “The Haunting of Hill House,” written by Shirley Jackson, closely follows the traditional tropes of an American Gothic. The main character of the novel, Eleanor, begins her journey to self growth after accepting an offer to live in a suspected haunted house for the summer. Moreover, Eleanor meets three other people that have an important effect on her development as a person. These characters slowly begin to question their own sanity due to the house’s destructive nature. Jackson appeals to fans of the American gothic through her particular description of the house and how the characters interact with it in order to show the environments foil of an absolute reality.
This poem has an apparent rhyme scheme. The last word in each line rhymes with the last word in the line directly under it. This lets the reader almost sing through the poem. There is a very nonchalant tone and feel to the poem. The lack of detail in the poem lets the readers imagination create the situation in which the person dies.
This way of taking somebodies life occurred often in the South. Being in the Deep South was extremely dangerous and frightening for anyone with black colored skin, whites had such hatred and aggression. McKay’s poem reflects on American culture during the time by showing how people had
The poem is narrated by the voice of the dead. The text is related in a very personal manner, the poem being
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.