Macy Scharpf Chin Honors English 9, Period 4 23 January 2023 Past events can often define the actions someone takes and who they are in the present. If society takes the time to analyze these actions, individuals can figure out the feelings of one another in a certain moment. “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson delineates the thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl, Melinda, as she navigates the highs and lows of high school, while carrying the weight of a past traumatic event. In the passage from the book, “Speak”, author Laurie Halse Anderson uses different types of figurative language such as similes and metaphors, as well as repetition to reveal Melinda’s negative thoughts on her past and current feelings about high school.
To strengthen resilience, we need to exercise it like a muscle. But to what extent should we exercise resilience and what happens to human emotional wellbeing when the fatigued muscle is overworked? In Anne Petry’s novel, The Street, and Joan Didian’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook”, the authors both use literary devices to show how adversity can affect people; however, Petry uses imagery of debris, diction that evokes a sense of frustration, and personification that shows the resilience of humans in times of intense, short-term adversity, while Didian uses Imagery that incites an ominous mood, Pathetic fallacy, and syntax that shows how drastically repeated, prolonged adversity can affect people. Petry shows, through the use of imagery, that garbage and debris can symbolize the hardship that each person encounters.
This is an important role of poetry because everyone loses something precious to them at some point in their life. Her next example talks of a person who can receive
There are two types of people in this world, those who hold onto the memories of the past and those who want to focus on the future. These two poems, “Deer Hit” by Jon Loomis and “ The Rose that grew from the Concrete” by Tupac Shakur, highlight the two different views many people have when dealing with hardships. While both poems illustrate growing up and how to deal with life’s difficulties, each poem focusses their themes on different aspects that come with human suffering. The imagery a story provides can really set the tone for the entire poem and help with the delivery of the main theme.
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
The poem has actually expressed the casual behavior of society towards abuse victims. People only use words as an expression but do not come for actual help. Nobody claims to be there for the victim instead they keep on carrying meaningless conversations which are not aimed in actually bettering off the conditions of the abuse victims. The word ‘Poem’ expresses the same notion of just using words but offering no help for the injured bodies.
The essence of great poetry lies with the author’s ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Most poets use universal themes to connect their audience through emotion and experience, making the written theme relatable. But it is only when combined with the use of carefully placed literary techniques that this connection is enhanced and the work transforms from simple words on paper to an art form. Gwen Harwood uses a number of her poems to connect us with the universal journey from childhood innocence to experience and adulthood. Harwood also weaves the idea of memory into her writing, as a way to trigger emotion through a connection to the past, a connection to feelings that transcend through time.
One example of figurative language in Laurie Hale Anderson’s book “Speak” is when Melinda decides to rid her garden of all weeds, and does some spring cleaning after it finally stops raining during May. Around the same time, Melinda is realizing that she wants to make some new changes in her life and in this figurative language example, Melinda’s life is her garden. She decides first to rake the leaves “suffocating the bushes” ; Melinda is ridding the demons from herself on the first layer of her skin. She says that she has to “fight the bushes (her problems)” and the bushes don’t like getting cleaned out but it is something one has to do if one makes
Night contains a significant amount of figurative language. Select 3 examples from the text to analyze. In analyzing each example, be sure to explain how the specific example impacts the text. (How does it affect the reader? How does it affect the reading experience?
Poetry is an effective means used to convey a variety of emotions, from grief, to love, to empathy. This form of text relies heavily on imagery and comparison to inflict the reader with the associated feelings. As such, is displayed within Stephen Dunn 's, aptly named poem, Empathy. Quite ironically, Dunn implores strong diction to string along his cohesive plot of a man seeing the world in an emphatic light. The text starts off by establishing the military background of the main protagonist, as he awaits a call from his lover in a hotel room.
The Significance of Shoulders In Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Shoulders”, the author uses symbolism, consonance and alliteration, and end-stopped lines to convey the kindness that is needed in our world. Nye uses symbolism when she describes “a man [crossing] the street in rain,/[...] his soon [asleep] on his shoulder”. The man is very careful to ensure that “no car [splashes] him” or “[drives] too near”. In this poem, the man carrying his sleeping and unaware son across the rainy street represents the kindness that we need in society to help the innocent through the rain, or hardships in life.
There is such a bigger meaning to these poems on overcoming hardships in life that everyone has to go through. To not give up and to fight for what is
“Kindness” is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that provides a solution for our society to become more flexible and receptive to other viewpoints through taking the time to empathize with the hardships that we may not be able to understand. According to literary scholar Anna Maria Hong, “Nye proposes that rather than being a random and discrete act, kindness is a mode of being arrived at through a series of basic human experiences.” Kindness is not just a random act, but is rather a kind of mindset and active force that is to be achieved and used through human experiences like loss, empathy, and recognition of death (Hong). In the first stanza, Nye communicates that loss is a prerequisite to kindness when she says, “Before you know what kindness
The literary elements in this poem add to the effect the poem has on the reader, which can be different for everyone, but it makes the reader reflect on their own life and how kindness has changed
This poem helped provide comfort to the people during the
