Danny Cohen Mr. Ramlow 10 Honors English May 9 2015 “The Emperor Of Ice-Cream’’ While the subject of ice-cream in the esteemed poet Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Emperor of Ice-Cream’’ may invoke jovial, childhood memories of happy summers and family, explicating his poetry proves to be just the opposite, in its being an arduous task that baffled literary critics for decades after his poems were released. Also ironically, Stevens, who for most of his life was a lawyer in the dull,cold Hartford, Connecticut wrote primarily about “balmy climates and tropical fruit,” according to poetry critic Austin Allen. Stevens’ poems typically focus on abstract parts of life that prove difficult to understand at first, but after some effort usually have great …show more content…
By having “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream,” concluding both of the stanzas it depicts that this lesson is universal in life and death.Extreme doubts of the meaning of the line “let be be finale of seem,” caused poetry experts to struggle for years over the meaning. According to literary critic Milton Bates this line “[rejects] the myth surrounding death and afterlife.” This again proves to show that Stevens wanted the reader to come away with the feeling that life must be cherished because the only thing that is certain is what you have right now. When talking about the dead lady, Stevens utilizes the word “cold.” This word has a direct relationship with the ice cream that is in the kitchen representing the happiness of life. The critic, Austin Allen, believes that “by linking the chill of death with a frozen dessert, Stevens seems to imply that death and the sensuous pleasures of life have something in common: detachment or isolation, perhaps.” This implies that even in life you may be alone or cold, which is exactly how the dead lady is by herself in the bedroom while everybody else is almost having a party in the
Your father has just passed away and your best friend is off to college. To make matters worse your mother remarries extremely fast to your uncle. In the midst of all this, you find yourself lost and and confused. Just like Hamlet was in his soliloquy to be or not to be. Hamlet’s father's ghost appears and ask to avenge his death.
Tony Hoagland was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1953. Tony, his sister, and his twin brother, who died in high school on a drug overdose, also grew up on several army bases in Hawaii, Alabama, Ethiopia, and Texas. The different places and lifestyles he observed gave him a cultural perspective that reflects in his poetry. He found poetry as a young and troubled adolescent because it was deeply mysterious and puzzling, which he found pleasing because, to him, it seemed like trying to solve the problems of human nature and staying alive, which related to him at the time. As his adolescent problems faded, he could not keep a relationship, an education, or a job, so he dove further into the poetic world because it was the only thing to stay constant in his life.
In the novel, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner shapes the plot based on the looming presence of the absentee protagonist, Addie Bundren. The reader’s knowledge of Addie accumulates through the monologues of other characters, so the reader gains only bits and pieces of Addie’s character. However, after her death, the reader obtains a better understanding of Addie’s voice through her own monologue and as a result, is characterized as cold and selfish. Through the use of similes and interior monologue, Faulkner shows Addie’s tendency to detach herself from the people in her life, which relates to the novel’s overall theme of solitude as Addie adheres to her father’s philosophy that the reason for living is no more than “to get ready to stay dead a long time” (169).
Death seems to be the biggest mystery in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. From the start of the play with the Ghost of Hamlets father appearing to avenge his death, to Hamlet’s most popular “To be or Not to be” soliloquy, and to the plays bloody conclusion; the uncertainty of death seems to always be on our protagonist mind. Death has become a recurring theme throughout this whole play. His thoughts of death range from death in a spiritual matter, the truth and uncertainty in what death may bring, and the question of his own death.
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.
When applied correctly, soliloquies successfully allow the reader to experience characters in their most vulnerable state: within their own minds. Hamlet is no exception to this principle, as Shakespeare’s mastery of rhetoric in establishing the main character’s inner conflict provides depth and rawness to his complex character. In this well-known soliloquy, Shakespeare employs logos to acknowledge that death can be both a relief and nightmare due to natural human emotions; accordingly, Hamlet personifies a severe case of teenage depression by simultaneously wishing for an end to suffering yet remaining hesitant to act on his own thoughts due to his fear of the unknown. Throughout this passage, Hamlet attempts to rationalize ending his life over continuing to endure the painful reality of his existence. The parallelism in this particular soliloquy serves several rhetorical purposes, including the development of an implicit contrast between Hamlet’s mental state and the actual organization of his thoughts.
It is or is it not true that Hamlet was faking his insanity? I’m not saying Hamlet was faking the whole thing. The meaning for insanity on Dictionary.com is “a permanent disorder of the mind.” I don 't think Hamlet had a permanent disorder of the mind he knew what he was doing and even planned the majority of the events that happened. Most of the time anyway.
Topic: The complex relations between fathers and children in the poetry of Robert Hayden, Rhina Espillat, and Theodore Roethke Thesis: the historical backgrounds and family settings of Robert Hayden, Rhina Espillat, and Theodore Roethke have contributed to the expression of complex father and children relationships in some of their poems. Williams, Pontheolla T. Robert Hayden: A Critical Analysis of His Poetry. University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ soliloquy is an exceptionally prominent piece in William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. It is the basis for the play and contains strings of words familiar to numerous different people all over the globe. In the infamous ‘To Be or Not to Be’ soliloquy, Hamlet builds a universal conviction about life and death, though in the end constructs a conclusion that individuals who think too much can destroy themselves”by including, the diction, the syntax, and the imagery. The diction in this piece has truly shaped and added character to the meaning of the soliloquy.
Ted Hughes’s “To Paint a Water Lily” tells about an artist painting a scene of nature, and his choice to focus on a water lily. The poem also shows how the artist has two ways of thinking about nature. One way the artist thinks about nature is as a violent and scary thing. The artist also thinks of nature as a thing of beauty and grandeur. Though the artist acknowledges both of his views towards nature, he chooses to focus on the beauty.
Sandra Cisneros is a famous poet from the late twentieth century. Most of her work is popular due to her profound thinking. Her work was very unique and incorporated an extraordinary type of dreamy abstraction. Most observers of her work can agree on this. My Wicked Ways, proved her talent to be “extremely electrifying”, according to the The New York Times Book Review.
Ambiguity in John Keats poems Applied to the poems To Autumn and La Belle Dame Sans Merci The following essay treats the problem of ambiguity in John Keats poems To Autumn and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Ambiguity is treated by the structuralism school and is presented as an intrinsic, inalienable character of any self-focused message, briefly a corollary feature of poetry. Not only the message itself but also its addresser and addressee become ambiguous.
Fissured perception in Beachy Head Beachy Head, Charlotte Smith’s swan song of a poem, was published in 1807. Differing opinions on the poem’s seeming incompleteness betray an underlying fissured element- an element at once tangible and intangible, parting its way through the substratum of 19th century notions on gender, poetics, aesthetics, history and science. Smith intended Beachy Head to be the “local subject” (Fry 31) on which she would rivet her Fancy and her theme. However, like an unrestrained coil spiraling outwards, the poem is anything but fixed. There is liquidity, apropos to the setting by the Sussex shoreline, which creates a flux between temporal, spatial and factual elements, thereby strengthening the schismatic politics
The poet compared the graves like a shipwreck that is the death will take the human go down and drowning to the underground like the dead bodies in the graves. The last line “as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.” is like the rotting of the dead bodies. The second stanza there is one Simile in this
Edward Estlin Cummings is one of the most famous American poets of the 20th century. He uses words to “point[] to a reality outside themselves” and on the contrary claims “the only reality is language itself” . He is well known for his disregard of traditional poetic expression, and tendency to invent words. The poem Love is more thicker than forget has 16 lines, which are separated into 4 stanzas.