Emily Dickinson Metaphors

“Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we are proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we choose to be.” -Graham Brown. Two poems, “Choices” by Nikki Giovanni and “Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, is about facing decisions they must overcome.

The main idea of the poem is that the speaker is confronted with this fork in the road and must choose which road to encounter, which is similar to when people choose a certain path in life. “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”- Frost People feel pressured to be popular, consequently, they follow the path instead of making their own path. Accordingly, Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” from the experiences he has had throughout his lifetime. Hesitant he chooses to have a master 's degree in teaching in, even though people told him to master in poetry, due to, he had a knack for writing. Nevertheless, he became a teacher due to, he loves to help people find their way in life.

At the beginning of the poem, “You do not have to be good” is used to not only speak to the narrator but set the course for which readers will follow. “You do not have to walk on your knees… repenting.” is another example of the mesmerizing words Oliver uses to aid in the reader’s emotional connection to the narrator. The poem begins with these lines to represent how a person dealing with limitations may feel and respond to these. Still, these thoughts are quickly disregarded by the narrator and readers become informed that such feelings of self-blame are petty and unnecessary. The accountability that a person may feel as a result of limitations becoming deciding factors for the future are not valid reasons to have self-blame.

The last line of her poem says, “I’ve found the place where I belong,” (Page 66). Then, in Keisha’s poem she seems slightly agitated, I’m guessing at Andy. She sees that he clearly has something wrong, but won’t talk to anyone about it. He can’t hold in his feelings forever, and eventually they will come out. She writes, “What’s your problem, little man,” (Page 67).

“My son says I am average, an average mother, but if I put my mind to it I could improve” (Pastan 706). No mother would like to be called an average mother, likewise, this was Pastan’s ultimate goal. She wanted the reader to see the struggles that this mother/wife had to go through. By using the extended metaphor to emphasize the disapprovals that the narrator received, the reader can now relate, as people constantly judge/critique what you do. The final line of this poem is very striking for the reader.

This is similar to how Odysseus is kept from his happiness. The speaker of the poem begins by describing something that she has to do, but how others keep her from doing this. “One day you finally knew, what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice” (Oliver 1-5). These voices that she talks about are the people trying to keep her away from her goal and she chooses to look past these and accept her own opinions. On her journey she has to learn to ignore all the negativity.

She definitely feels that words are very important and sometimes they can have different meanings. Howe-ever , the poems it self, makes readers think the author is trying to say something more than what he is writing. For example the phrase, “other words are stapled wagers in a perforated book” here she is giving words the character of stapled wagers. In this phrase she is referring to words that are wrote on a poem just for publicity, because they don't really means anything for the author. Also when she said “the stub remains an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge” this is another type of reference to the inadequacy of words and the meaning people give to them.

In Robert Frost’s 1916 poem, The Road Not Taken, he uses metaphors, imagery and strong punctuation and line breaks to explore a theme focused on making proper decisions and discovering new experiences. His skillful use of figurative language has made this poem incredibly famous worldwide. The writing truly captures the dilemma people go through when choosing which path to take in each aspect of their lives. In the first stanza, Frost starts off by using a metaphor in the first line: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The two roads here are a metaphor for the difficult choices people are faced with every day. When it comes down to more delicate matters, we are faced with a choice to do one thing or the other.

This experience is attached to Wright’s common themes of loneliness and separation. At the end of the poem, the speaker says “if I stepped out of my body I would break.” This means that the speaker doesn’t want to challenge or is afraid of coming out of their comfort

We’re here to figure out that not everything is going to be rainbows and flowers, we will fail them get back up and succeed. We are here to contribute positively with grace and humbleness. We’re here to follow our own set of rules we make, not here to listen to negative vibes or opinions. In the poem, “Mother to Son,” by Langston Hughes, he writes, “ Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, and splinters…,” which means life wasn’t perfect for the speaker in this poem and that life will never be perfect, or easy.