The Owls In Bless Me, Ultima

In the poems “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, both poets portray how different explanations to children pan out. Both poems describe the speaker being dishonest to one or multiple students, however, one is more of a little white lie while the other is a lie on a much bigger scale. The first poem utilizes personification and humor to coax a child back to sleep by easing her fears. The second poem applies homonyms and hyperbole to maintain the innocence of a room full of students. Through the use of these different literary techniques, the poets are able to express how the adults provide an explanation for children.

Magical realism is when magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or normal setting. In Bless Me, Ultima there are many elements of magical realism which occur in the sacred town Tony Marez spends his childhood in. Tony is the character Rudolfo Anaya uses to share personal experience he had as a child. From start to finish, the story consistently portrays imagery and personification to give the land of New Mexico a life of its own.

This essential message and theme of Owl CIty’s song “Fireflies” is revealed through literary devices such as metaphors, imagery, repetition, and rhyme scheme. It is however very important to recognize the emphasis on the strength these lyrics bare to listeners. Although many people are blind to the message behind the lyrics Owl City portrayals of nostalgia of the past or childhood. Some key lyrics that include metaphor is the chorus of the lyrical masterpiece, “I’d like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly/ It’s hard to say I’d rather stay awake when i'm asleep/ ‘Cause everything is never as it seems/ ‘When I fall asleep.” When it states, “I’d like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly”, it is describing how

Thought out a persons ever changing life, the one thing that is always consistent is their name. However, sometimes a persons identity will change so much that their own name seems foreign when speaking it out loud. This creates the need for a new name to match a new identity. Kingsolvers The Bean Trees and Lena Coakley’s Mirror Image both apply characterization, conflict, and symbolism to show how identity changes with names and labels.

The two poems, “The Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher”, display different ways of soothing child fears and attempting to protect the children's innocence with their tone, rhyme scheme, and humor. Wilbur specifically uses personification with a different point of view than Collins. Collins comes from a more ironic tone in his poem and portrays the history teacher as a protector of the children’s innocence, when in reality, they have already lost it.

“Good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that Antonio” (Anaya 102). These are words that heavily apply in the book Bless Me, Ultima and they summarize a common theme of good and evil in the novel. In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, juxtaposition is used to convey a sense of good and evil in various characters and it portrays that the goodness in each and every person is determined through their actions.

One of the many themes in the novel, Bless me, Ultima is Antonio’s “loss of innocence” throughout the months upon the arrival of Ultima, the curandera. At the beginning of the novel, Antonio is an innocent boy, protected from reality thanks to his age and parents. As the novel progresses, Antonio becomes aware of the bad and the good in life. Antonio’s transition from innocence to experience is shown through particular events.

As he came out of the darkness of the pond and the sun caught his shiny scales and the light reflected orange and yellow and red. He swam very close to our feet. His body was round and smooth in the clear water. We watched in silence at the beauty and grandeur of the great fish" (120). When Antonio sees the Golden Carp the first time, he could not believe his eyes that he had saw a pagan god. He is so astonished upon seeing the Golden Carp that he felt like he had witnessed a miraculous thing. All the thoughts that were going on in his mind about how the power of God failed where Ultima's magic worked and that if the God of the church had saw him observing the Golden Carp, Antonio thought that he had sinned and he went to pray to the god of the Church. Because he was confused about between the two different god's, the same night, he had another dream about the contradictory cultures in his life. In his dream, his mother says to him that the water of the Church runs through his body and it is the water of his baptism. On the other hand, his dad says that the salt water of the ocean runs through his body, which means the seawater connects him to the pagan god, the Golden Carp. Due to this uncertainty, the torture of pain was more than he could

In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses many motifs and symbols to help develop the theme. The most effective symbols and motifs that Shakespeare uses are the birds, blood, and sleep.

In literature, birds often represent beauty, freedom, and grace. Shown soaring through the sky, these creatures remind us of freedom and life. However, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, birds represent chaos, the moral and physical destruction of Shakespeare’s characters. As the play progresses and the kingdom crumbles, Shakespeare presents birds alongside the destruction, thus transforming such elegant creatures into symbols of doom. Even though birds do occasionally display order, that order is ultimately crushed as more birds appear, suggesting that all order ultimately breaks down.

The play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is seen as one of Shakespeare 's greatest tragedies. It deals with a man named Macbeth, who is introduced as a brave, strong war hero. He has the respect of the king and his peers. The predictions of three witches that Macbeth will become king begin Macbeth 's descent into his own downfall. The play is set in Scotland, written for King James I. The Queen of Denmark was visiting her brother King James. Shakespeare researched and found that Banquo is an ancestor of King James I. In the tragedy Macbeth, Shakespeare examines the symbol of animals in order to foreshadow the death of others.

Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening opens with a scene of two birds, emphasizing that the motif of birds later within the novel will play an important part with setting the constant metaphor they bring. Throughout the whole novel the motif of birds is a metaphor for the Victorian women during that period -- caged birds serve as reminders of Edna’s entrapment and the entrapment of Victorian women in general. Edna makes many attempts to escape her cage (husband, children, and society), but her efforts only take her into other cages, such as the pigeon house. Edna views this new home as a sign of her independence, but the pigeon house represents her inability to remove herself from her former life, due to the move being just “two steps away” (122).

The poem makes some allusions, for example when referring to the bust of shovels, refers to the bust of atene or atena or "shovels athena" ie the crow perches on the Greek goddess of wisdom, civilization, war, art and strategy . "That bird or demon" rests on wisdom, according to the author of the poem, the time of year in which the poem is located is December, a month of much magic, but the most important allegory is the raven itself, "bird of the demon "" that comes from the plutonic riviera of the night "also refers to the crow as a messenger from beyond, in a few words it refers to the Roman god Pluto of the underworld, its equivalent for the Greeks was hades as a curious fact the Romans instituted exclusive priests to plutón called "victimarios" of all the Roman gods plutón was the most ruthless and feared, then the crow was a messenger of the beyond, perhaps invoked by that "old book, rare and of forgotten science", during the poem was speaks of seraphim that perfumed the room, with censers, according to the Christian angelology the seraphim have the highest ranks in the celestial hierarchy, since they are not made in image and Likeness of God, rather they are part or essence

Lady Macbeth has many faces and the given extract shows the truest of them all. Shakespeare makes Act1 Scene 5 a striking introduction to Lady Macbeth as her words fit with the theme of witchcraft-and supernatural- as well as deceit. Macbeth is a tragedy that was thought to be performed in 1606- an era when witchcraft was prevalent. Lady Macbeth is a dynamic character and Shakespeare makes this extract so striking by using elements of language, structure and mood.

2. Toby 's Epilepsy and Daphne 's Life in the Asylum in Owls Do Cry