Poem Analysis: Small Town With One Road By Gary Soto

As defined by Oxford Dictionary, wraith is a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death. As shown, Millay uses the idea of a wraith in her poem, incorporating the title throughout. Her poem shows the thoughts of a person when facing the end of their life. Initially, the readers are looking at the rain as a calm and welcoming figure, the subject welcomes the rain willingly into her home, not realizing that death is creeping upon her. The title “Wraith” brings attention to the thought of a ghostlike image being seen before death, with death being represented in this poem as “thin rain” (Millay, line 1).

The tornado figuratively represents immigrants and their culture, which the people are afraid of. The author especially focuses on the people’s reaction and interaction among themselves as the tornado is coming and passing by: they feel lonely, isolated, and segmented from each other. Amy Wright uses imagery, symbolism, and irony to give the readers a message that people should not fear the new change or the immigrants because they can be stimuli for further development and auspicious future with interactive and cooperative generations. The very first literary element Wright uses in the poem is

Meaning people are born, they grow up and then die, but the whole time they are careless individuals. “She laughed his joy she cried his grief” (Cummings Line 14)This piece of imagery reveals the love between “she” and “he” , they both are  supportive of each other through good and bad. Cummings included symbolism in the poem that contributes to the theme. For example, “with up so floating many bells down” (Cummings Line 24)the bells in the poem symbolized a sense of hope for all the carelessness between people. Maybe it could all diminish as people learn to care for others.

Selfish. These are all traits that would describe Walter Lee and his actions. Walter Lee is a character from the play A Raisin in the Sun in which a black family tries to get out of poverty and go against stereotypes by trying to start over with their Grandpa’s life insurance money. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry explores the concept that greed leads to being blinded by money and forgetting about one’s loved ones as shown by the climax of the play, the character of Walter Lee, and the effect that his actions have on the rest of his family. The Character of Walter Lee shows that greed blinding a person can cause him to forget about the ones he loves.

In the middle of the poem she recounts, “or the storm that drives us inside / for days, power lines down, food rotting” (Trethewey 4-5). Trethewey opens up a new stanza with describing the storm that forces her family into the house for days, then moves to describe all the damage the storm has done outside and to her family. The storm has knocked down power lines and created rotting food for her family. Moreover, Trethewey ends the poem in the same structure, “why on the back has someone made a list / of our names, the date, the event: nothing / of what’s inside – mother, stepfather’s fist?” (Trethewey 13-15). Through these last couple of lines, Trethewey reveals the severity of the abuse that occurred in her home during the ice storm.

With the new belief that people he loved and trusted had succumbed to evil, Goodman Brown’s faith was shaken. He returned home as a changed man, “Young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem Village, staring around him like a bewildered man” (Hawthorne 383). Faith burst into such joy at the sight of him and went to kiss her husband before the whole village, but “Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting” (Hawthorne 383). According to Hawthorne, it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from a night of that fearful dream” was the unfortunate outcome for Brown (Hawthorne

Vance identifies the reasons for lack of economic and social success amongst people living in Appalachia, and how he broke out of it. As a child growing up in this poverty stricken area, Vance is well aware of all of the issues keeping “Hillbillies” from moving up the social and economic ladder. Aside from bare lack of money and abusive drug use, he recognizes how “Hillbillies learn from a young age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them.” In his story, he talks about how people in economic hardship would not try to change their bad work ethic or lack of education, they would just continue to labor in their same low paying job. Ultimately, this caused many of his peers to sacrifice their dreams; Vance accounts, “Psychologists call it “learned helplessness,” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.” Basically, the people Vance speaks of are their own biggest enemies; by accepting their unfortunate lives, they never go on to do anything productive, and they lose sight of their hopes and dreams. This issue is further explored in the article, “Learned Helplessness” by Jeanette Nolen, which accredits “learned helplessness” as the reason “why individuals may accept and remain passive in negative situations despite their clear ability to change them” (Nolen).

Spit dribbled from his mouth, his clothes were streaked with brown (hopefully dirt), and the remnants of his last meal caked tellingly on the corners of his mouth. Flustered and uncomfortable, I mummered, “I have to go,” and walked out the door into the bright, Central American sunlight. Affection has never been hard for me. I hug my friends and obligingly kiss my grandmothers. But until my trip to the Agua Viva Children’s home in Guatemala, I did not realize how expressing love often requires self-sacrifice.

He lived on the streets in poverty; not a penny to his name. He would tell jokes and make people laugh for money, and because it made him feel better. The only thing he had for happiness were the memories of the jokes his dad told. The poor, starving boy thought that life was over, until one day, when he came upon another boy whose circumstance was vastly different than his. This boy had curly brown hair

Children are born into the world with no set guidelines or morals until they can get a basic understanding of the world around them. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is a man with incredible amounts of honor and morality. His two kids see a lot of the cruelty that exists in life throughout their childhood, from a racist trial to a truly bitter person. Atticus tries to instill several morals into his children so that they will lead successful lives in the future with a strong understanding of the world. Atticus has his children read to a bitter old lady named Mrs. Dubose, so that they can help her overcome her morphine addiction.