The Truth The Dead Know Figurative Language
Death is a subject that humans know frighteningly little about. Most only know of how it overcomes people with grief, how it consumes them, and they are unable to move past the losses. The confessional poem, “The Truth the Dead Know” by Anne Sexton speaks about Sexton’s loss as she conveys her emotions through the speaker, who is essentially her. As she goes on about the death of her parents, mourning and grieving, the speaker realizes that is not the correct way to live, since that is all you will ever do if you never are able to move past the losses in your life. Sexton uses many different figurative language and poetic devices along with different themes and other emotional connotations to convey her emotions to her audience.
Throughout
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In stanza two, she goes on to compare the waves of the sea to “an iron gate”, as both are strong, dependable, and always in constant motion. This is for her to better her mental, emotional, and even spiritual health in a better environment. Moving on, the poet mentions “My darling” in line nine, alluding to the fact that she has somebody to lean on, a significant other or close friend, whom she has plans to enjoy her life with. This is yet another drastic shift, as before, it was implied that the speaker was entirely alone, having to fake happiness around others, yet here it is said that the both of them are supposedly healing together mentally. In the fourth stanza, line thirteen, she questions the dead, and what happens to them: “And what of the dead?” As this is rhetorical, it results in the audience thinking about what truly happens to the dead, and what they might know, that we humans do not. She mentions in the final line “They refuse/ to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone” (Sexton 16). As they are dead, unable to move, breathe, eat, sleep, or behave as if they were alive, she compares them to stones, and says that if the oceans had stopped moving, even they would not be as still and stone-like as a dead human, since the oceans would still have life within them. Likewise, this means
Denial Of Death In Tim O Brian's The Lives Of The Dead
1131 Words | 5 PagesWhen a loved one dies, it can be difficult to cope with the loss. The loss can be overwhelmingly devastating which results in the desperate desire to connect with the person who has died. To compensate, people often insist on keeping the loved one’s spirit with them through memory. However, oftentimes the death is so unimaginable and the impact so great, it results in the denial of death and the subsequent altering of these memories. Denial of death undermines memory by fabricating understanding of events, and in Tim O’Brian’s “The Lives of The Dead,” Tim’s memories of a childhood crush Linda, demonstrate his denial through his altered visual, auditory, and emotional memories.
Rhetorical Analysis Of Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain
495 Words | 2 PagesBut nobody knows what’s going on inside the preparation room, all they see is their deceased relative, good as new, when they walk by the open casket during the funeral. Mitford depicts the American funeral industry’s manipulation of death throughout the essay with either blatant or thinly-veiled verbal irony. In the last paragraph, Mitford states that the funeral director has put on a “well-oiled performance" where "the concept of death played no part whatsoever”, unless providing it was “inconsiderately mentioned” by the funeral conductors. This is extremely ironic because a funeral is supposed to revolved around death, and this makes us think about funerals and the embalmment process in a way that we usually don’t. These processes takes away the cruelty and brutality of death and make it seem trivial while making our deceased relatives life-like, with pink toned skin and a smile on their face, and death is not like that at all.
The Theme Of Death In The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver
1393 Words | 6 PagesLife has been celebrated and death has been mourned since the begining of time. The certainty of life and death can be seen as tragic or necessary. There is no way to get used to either of these things occurring because the loss of every person important to us causes pain and allows us to reevaluate what our life looks like without them. In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the author portrays the emotional aftermath of death on those still living by introducing differing viewpionts to show the massive impact culture and age has on the acceptance of the inevitable. It is always tragic when a child outlives their parents, or even when an adult loses someone close to them.
My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet Elegy
1458 Words | 6 PagesThe poets usually addressed the problem of death in generalities: they reminded readers of the sovereignty of God and deaths regard for earthly rank, power and wealth”(page 152). In Anne Bradstreet’s elegy “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old the struggle with this notion is displayed clearly. The speaker knows that she should accept this notion of “deaths regard for earthly rank, power and wealth”(152), but when she experiences it first hand it becomes increasingly harder with every loss. Different from the first poem, which was in memory of Elizabeth, where the speaker question God, in the poem for Anne the focus is shifted towards the speaker. Throughout the poem, the speaker questions why it is still so hard to accept the death of her grandchildren.
The Last Night She Lived, By Emily Dickinson
437 Words | 2 Pages“The Last Night She Lived”, by Emily Dickinson, told more about the living people’s response, one that was more bitter than remorseful, to the death rather than the actual death of the female character. Strangely enough, the narrator makes no comment of the afterlife and goes as far as referring to the setting by saying, “it was a common night” which struck as peculiar because the night of a death is anything but a “common night”. This simple phrase showed the narrator’s nonchalant attitude towards the death of the woman. The narrator goes on to say, “As we went out and in between her final room and rooms were those to be alive tomorrow,” which showed the insensitivity the narrator and the others had for the upcoming death. By differentiating between those who will live tomorrow and those who will not, the narrator is alienating herself and the others from the dying woman.
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