ipl-logo

Theodore Roethke The Waking Poem

1093 Words5 Pages

Paradox, Figurative Language and Sounds in Theodore Roethke’s
“The Waking”
Written in form of a villanelle - five tercets and a quatrain with rhyme scheme for tercets ABA and ABAA for quatrain, the poem begins with “I wake to sleep and take my waking slow” which is seemingly contradictory process of life – the cycle of a living (waking) which leads to dying (sleeping). There exist two main lines as the key point containing the theme of the poem that are repeated interchangeably at the end of each stanza and ended by being restated together in the last two lines of final stanza. The tittle itself “the waking” as the central idea of the poem depicts the poet’s vision towards the idea of living (waking) that eventually will lead merely to dying (sleeping). As an extra circumstance, the poem applies the pronoun “I” as the point of view which is probably intended to show the poet’s eagerness in communicating his own experience to readers. The poet apparently expresses a kind of paradoxes and ambiguities through his poem. These paradoxes accompanied by some …show more content…

It apparently expresses the presence of a state of consciousness that changes during sleep and the speaker determines to make the most of the journey in a limited time of life. The word “sleep” in some religions becomes a metaphor for death. However, death is not the end which means that life can continue either in form of reincarnation or resurrection. The following line containing alliteration points out another paradox “I feel my fate in what I cannot fear”. This line leads someone to question how he/she can fear of what is unknown by him/her. By feeling fate instead of fearing it, it means that someone takes in instead of turning down. The last line means to solely move and receive “where I have to go” which is the fate without having a distinctive

Show More
Related

  • Survival Theme In Night By Elie Wiesel

    475 Words  | 2 Pages

    Family is always there to help us and to get us through rough times. Night by Elie Wiesel took place in 1944 and is an autobiography telling us about Elie 's time in the concentration camps. In the novel, they went to four different camps. Those camps were, Birkenau, which is the reception center for Auschwitz, then to Buna, Gleiwitz, and finally to Buchenwald where they were saved by American troops. By examining the novel Night, we can see that family is the key to survival, which is important because those who do not have family often aren 't able to survive because they don 't have someone pushing them forward and helping them in life.

    Read More

  • The Changeling By Judith Ortiz Cofer Summary

    794 Words  | 4 Pages

    It’s detailed like a memory and provides the audience of just one incidence the narrator was able to recollect. The poem’s main focus is to take a little look into the disparity between traditional feminine

    Read More

  • Journal Entries On Night By Elie Wiesel

    2257 Words  | 10 Pages

    Entry 1 The worst news I’ve ever received was when my mom told me that my aunt had cancer. Fortunately, the cancer was only at stage 1. At first, I couldn’t believe it since she has always been healthy and I’ve never heard anything about her being sick. Eventually, I came to accept the fact that my aunt had cancer even if I didn’t want to.

    Read More

  • Themes Of Night By Elie Wiesel

    360 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elie Wiesel from Night demonstrates that everyone has bravery, faith, hope, and courage, how it is used will make an impact. Elie does this through the events that happened in Auschwitz. With pain everyone sometimes forgets to use these important traits. Wiesel first develops this theme through the travel from their homes to the small ghetto. He explained the loneliness of their homes they’ll never see again.

    Read More

  • Heraclitus Of Ephesus Analysis

    734 Words  | 3 Pages

    It begins on an optimistic note, with the first line signifying the end of the night and the darkness that accompanies it. The extract is a Tagore’s request to the reader to give up their own selfish pursuits for enlightenment, and to instead let the light guide everybody on the same path. Knowledge means nothing if it cannot be shared or experienced with other people. Those who inhabit their “own narrow dark corner” are also the same people “who devote themselves to the knowledge alone”, who condemn themselves into a greater darkness than even the ignorant. The Upanishad also echoes this sentiment in Fragment 6, which says that a man will only be truly wise once other around him can see his soul, and he can see the souls of others around him.

    Read More

  • Life On A Mobius Strip: An Analysis

    882 Words  | 4 Pages

    Each and every author create a unique way of describing their own encounters that they have had in their life by bringing literary aspects and enriching the experiences from their lives and adding it to the story to place emphasis on the events that have had an impact on their lives. The author creates an emphasis on critical aspects of the story through the tone, where hearing the poet describing their own story gives light to what each poet puts emphasis on their own story and the influences that other people or have had on their lives. Not only does each poet have a unique way of telling a story but also their tone can describe many aspects of their life like what they are, passionate about, the connections that they have had which affects

    Read More

  • Charge Of The Light Brigade Poem

    1445 Words  | 6 Pages

    The poem is narrated by the voice of the dead. The text is related in a very personal manner, the poem being full of personal pronouns in first person such as “I” and “me”. Also to attract the attention of the reader, Simon Armitage uses many pronouns in second person such as “you”. This is to show the emotional implication of the narrator in the poem but also to attract the reader so he becomes involved in the text.

    Read More

  • The Poem The Sloth Theodore Roethke

    699 Words  | 3 Pages

    The sloth The poem the sloth by Theodore Roethke. Theodore Roethke was born and raised in Saginaw Huebner. The green house that his father owned “Was my symbol for the whole life, the womb.” Roethke was the first one in his family to attened collage. In 1963, Roethke suffered from a heart attack in his friends swimming pool.

    Read More

  • The Poet By Tom Wayman Analysis

    940 Words  | 4 Pages

    Another portion of the text that is worth analyzing is whether or not the poet is a real person or a generalization about all or most poets. All of the lines in the poem use general text and never label a specific person. What’s interesting about the text is that without the title it would be nearly impossible to distinguish whether or not the person the poem is about is a poet or not. The way the text allows the reader to find a figurative meaning to the poem is by being vague enough and

    Read More

  • Novel By Wallace Fowlie: Poem Analysis

    1094 Words  | 5 Pages

    So if we were to take this title in its literal sense we will think that the poem is fictitious and most of us would think that it is fictitious. But if one were to go into greater detail regarding the poet’s life one would realise that this poem somewhat reflects his own life. The poet was almost seventeen years old when he wrote this poem and I feel that he is talking about a girl but he had a relationship with Paul Verlaine at this time

    Read More

  • On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan's The Blue Estuaries By Julia Alvarez

    709 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout stanzas 1 and 2 the speaker uses “you” and “your” to show she is reading the poetry book and the author’s work is appealing to her. In the third stanza after she has opened the book and read she uses words such as “breaking” and “shattering and old silence” followed by the use of “I” and no more “you”. This diction shows us how the poetry book has opened up the speaker to the idea of becoming a poet and writing their own poetry despite men usually being poets and not women. The change from “you” to “I” shows that the speaker is going to become a poet and write poetry as well stating “my own” when talking about her writing poems as she read. When the speaker is reading the book she uses words such as “question” and “thinking” to show confusion on what to do with this new idea of becoming a poet in her and whether or not she should steal the book.

    Read More

  • Kenneth Patchen's Be Music, Night

    1053 Words  | 5 Pages

    I have interpreted these lines in one way, yet there are a million different possibilities. The author puts the words onto the paper, but the reader’s job is to interpret their own emotion, memory or belief and actually apply it to the poet’s words in order to create an

    Read More

  • Abject In Patience Agbabi's About Face

    1329 Words  | 6 Pages

    5,6) the issues that have been mentioned above are expressed. Since, especially black women, are considered to be living in the shadow this passage exposes the feelings and representation of black women in society. Their existence in the world which is not considered and respected. Considering especially the fact that the lyrical I is a black maiden, she seeks for recognition and acceptance among the other figures of the poem. Referring to contemporary issues, the lyrical I would be classified as a lower ranked person since she is black and being occupied as a maid, which clearly makes her powerless and voiceless in society.

    Read More

  • June Jordan Poem About My Rights Analysis

    1028 Words  | 5 Pages

    The poem was written in a time where black people and women were dehumanized where those in power abused the power to gain more and those without power were continuously affected by it. Reading the poem and had an impact on me with the dictation of lexis, however all of these feelings were heightened when I listened to the oral performance. The poem starts of in the present tense “Even tonight and I need to take a walk” (Jordan 1) which gives a setting to the scene, in the opening few lines Jordan uses the repetition of “I” and “my” which made the poem for me more personal, the use of repetition in the opening part of the poem produced a deeper connection to the poem, repetition of the words placed emphasis and clarity of the words which came after “my body posture my gender identity my age…” (Jordan

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Louise Erdrich's I Was Sleeping Where The Black Oaks Move

    796 Words  | 4 Pages

    “I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.

    Read More

More about Theodore Roethke The Waking Poem

Open Document