Midterm Break Analysis
The use of language and structure to present the speaker’s eventual affirmation of his family role in Digging and Mid-Term Break
Through the poems ‘Digging’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’ of Seamus Heaney, he explores one’s eventual affirmation of his role in the family despite the initial disappointment and guilt. “Digging” reflects on the traditional peat extraction which was commonly used for fuels by farmers during Heaney’s time. This emphasises the legacy of his family in relation to farming. The title ‘Digging’ underlines the metonymy in the last line, substituting Heaney’s pen to his forefathers’ spades. ‘Mid-Term Break’ conveys a distressing family incident, although conversely mid-term breaks are normally associated with a joyful mood. Heaney expresses the moment of loss and the disorientation of the family members as a result of the tragic event.
The flashbacks in ‘Digging’ successfully highlights the heritage of the speaker’s family’s inveterate farming business as the poem presents both past and
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The first five stanzas of the poem revolve around the speaker’s emotional turmoil via various literary techniques throughout the poem. The onomatopoeia “knelling” is the sound of a bell ringing, especially in funerals, foreshadowing death and creating an ominous atmosphere. Elements of guilt appear as the speaker is described to be “embarrassed” as old men stood up to shake his hand and “whispers” secretly informed the visitors that the speaker was the eldest son and that he was “away at school” as if it was a secret. This implies that the speaker felt ashamed and guilty by the fact that he was absent his brother died. Just as disoriented he is, the speaker is shown to keep a cruel distance from “the corpse” as he fails to come to an acceptance of his death. This again reinforces Heaney’s intent that he was disheartened and bewildered from the initial shock from his brother’s tragic
My Papa's Waltz Syntax
690 Words | 3 PagesIn stanza 3 states “But I hung on like death,” uses simile. It benefits the cause of alcohol that soon becomes tragic for the son. He’s gotten used to it that being abused, death can affect him. Additionally it touches people's ideas to illuminate the true meaning of the poem and to create a negative picture in the reader's mind that is shown by the son of an abusive father. In stanza 13 through 14, “You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt.”
Analysis Of The Century Quilt By Marilyn Nelson Waniek
906 Words | 4 PagesThe word “silence” in the last line of the stanza is also a reference to death, but the speaker is not concerned because she has “fingers”, or memories to “caress her into silence”. The last stanza is the longest because the speaker has many hopes for future generations. She aspires for her future generations to adore the century quilt, just as she does. The speaker reminisces on past events from her childhood and grandmother to exemplify the memories she hopes her descendents will experience just as she did. The memories were told with great imagery and detail.
Mary Oliver And The Black Walnut Tree Comparison
1110 Words | 5 PagesThroughout the many poems we have read this term, many relate to each other in some similar thematic or stylistic way. Three specific poems that have thematic similarities are: At the Last Watch by Rabindranath Tagore, The Black Walnut Tree by Mary Oliver, and When We Two Parted by Lord Byron. All three of these poems were intriguing reads which all shared a central idea and dramatic situation. These three poems are connected by the centralized dramatic situation that people leave and those who are departed from a love one are left alone. I believe that all three of these pieces have described a similar theme through a thorough analysis of each writing.
Lee's Eating Alone By Daniel Moeser
394 Words | 2 PagesIn “Lee’s Eating Alone”, author Daniel Moeser argues that in the poem written by Li-Young Lee, the speaker has come to terms with his father passing away, and the end of the poem leaves the reader with a sense of fulfillment and hope. Moeser analyzes “Eating Alone” focusing on the tone, the pattern Lee creates, how the speaker talks about his father, and how the speaker has accepted the loss. The tone of the poem is overall “grief and loneliness” in stanza one and two (Moeser 118). In stanza one, the speaker is talking about how they pulled the last of the onions and how dead the ground looks (Lee 206). Stanza two continues with the grim feeling when the speaker begins remembering a time with his father out walking by the pears (Lee 206).
Poem Analysis Of Anthem, By Jim Daniels
1047 Words | 5 PagesThroughout the poem, the speaker uses his poetic style to reveal a friendly yet distanced relationship that the speaker and father share together. Beginning the poem with “Thirty-three years of coughing thick factory air,” the speaker introduces his father as a diligent factory worker (1-2, Daniels). The use of the alliteration “thirty-three” in this line, strategically draws the reader’s attention to just how long the dad subjects himself to such straining labor in order to provide for his family, showing a love from the father for his child (1). The speaker continues with “of drifting to sleep through the heavy ring of machinery, of twelve hour days” painting the image of the father working nonstop, and as a result, repeatedly falling asleep on the job (3-4). By saying, “In my sleep,
Analysis Of Drifters Poem By Bruce Dawe
1526 Words | 7 PagesAs the end of the poem approaches, Dawe justifies his positioning by informing the readers that the mother and children silently renounce their individual desires and accept the ‘drifter’ lifestyle in order to belong to the family in which they feel safe and loved. Dawe’s father was a farm labourer who moved from place to place to find employment. His mother longed for the stability in life that circumstances
Edward Hirsch's Execution Poem Analysis
566 Words | 3 PagesThe feeling of astonishment and awe are directed into the speaker’s impersonal tone. During the poem, the speaker leaves out emotional ties in
My Father's Lunch Poem
813 Words | 4 PagesFor different people, comparable situations do not always reproduce the same end results or leave the same impressions. Rather, the resulting conclusion is often highly variable. As is the case of two labors featured in the poems, My Father’s Lunch” and “The life of a Digger”. While Erica Funkhouser’s speaker, Henry, experiences injustice and lack of reward for his hard labor in “The Life of a Digger,” Margarita Engle’s speaker experiences prosperity and remuneration for their father’s hard work in “My Father’s Lunch.” Each author uses the setting of a laboring man’s lunch break to demonstrate the ramifications of a hard day’s work and the rewards or lack thereof for their efforts.
Examples Of Diction In Beowulf
762 Words | 4 PagesAlso, the poem uses an elevated diction with a formal tone throughout. “A powerful monster, living down in the darkness, growled in pain, impatient as day after day the music rang” (Raffel 1-3). There is an obvious tone that makes the reader read as if they are telling a scary story while still being quite
Analysis Of At Mornington By Gwen Harwood
722 Words | 3 Pagesas in her final moments the narrator recalls her earliest connection to the landscape. A key theme throughout the poem is the importance of embracing nature, emphasized by the metaphor of the “fine pumpkins grown on a trellis” which rise in towards the “fastness of light”, which symbolizes the narrators own growth, flourishing as a fruit of the earth. Through her metaphors and complex conflagration of shifting perspectives, Harwood illustrates the relationship that people can develop with landscapes, seeing both present and past in
Identity In Gretel Ehrlich's Looking For A Lost Dog
1036 Words | 5 PagesA family’s judgment has a big hold an individual, therefore self-expression is hard especially when that way of life is denied. Eventually one has to choose: fulfill family expectations or stray away to a new path. Breaking away from family can be hard, even hurtful. In “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, the narrator chooses a different lifestyle than those of his ancestors. He chooses to write instead of dig for he has “no spade to follow men like them.”
Figurative Language In Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven
920 Words | 4 PagesThrough the words reflecting melancholy and sorrow, we can sense the narrator's self destruction due to the death of the woman he loved. As one examines the figurative language of the poem, one finds that its form and
To One In Paradise Edgar Allan Poe Analysis
761 Words | 4 PagesThese components exhibit Poe’s unsettled emotions with the passing of his loved one, he expresses a tone of apprehension while pondering of a meaningless life without her. Desperately pining for her, he demonstrates a tone in which the reader can recognize he has become soulless and overwhelmed with grief. Poe releases this tone in the lines, “days are trances and all my nighty dreams,” revealing his days and nights have become replaced by meaningless thoughts and extreme anguish. Poe’s use of complex tones transmutes across all the stanzas. This allows the reader to acknowledge his sense of fulfillment from a fervent relationship, to utmost perturbation, until he at last becomes completely defeated mentally, emotionally and even physically.
Two Lorries By Seamus Heaney Analysis
1470 Words | 6 PagesOn the very first line one may notice the parallelism between the two lorries and how this convey the reader a conflictive situation where confusion is primordial as well as the creation of a state of uncertainty by the use of a rhetorical question; “…but which lorry was it now?”. Moving on, on that same stanza, on line 4, the author brings the image of her mother again, representing her death, along with the parallel folding of coal-bags and body-bags accentuate the role of death in Irish
Analysis Of Seamus Heaney
905 Words | 4 PagesIntroduction Colonial attitude of limitless progress at the expense of nature had redefined the cultural as well as the linguistic paradigms of Ireland for many centuries. The ecological attitudes of Ireland had undergone radical changes as a result of European invasion and settlement. Seamus Heaney tries to create an eco-space in his poetry firmly grounding his beliefs and attitude in the native ethnic culture Ireland. It seems that the cultural displacements as a result of the colonization have resulted in modifying his ecological sensibilities.
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