Preview

Night Owls

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1096 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Night Owls
Did you know that, out of every ten people, one is a lark, one is an owl and the rest follow a normal circadian cycle? The Normal cycle is when people wake up in the morning naturally, and the owl, you should guess, is a loner night person. “These settings are genetically encoded and cannot be erased. Once an owl, always an owl.” (Anne Fadiman, “Night Owl”, 62). So how can the night and day difference be so big? When reading the story “Night Owl’ by Anne Fadiman, she describes a contrast between morning people and the night people, and what type she is and how it affects her life. Reading this story, I see similarities that with my own life about her life, that were like mine, which felt like I was collecting evidence for my own case on the subject. Your eyes open to the bright sun peeking through the blinds, its early morning. You get out of bed and think of the things you must do that day. Who are the people getting up this early, farmers, bakers, doctors, teachers, all those nine to fivers? Well one of those morning people or larkers is not me. I could not tell you the last time I willingly got up in the morning. I have never been a morning person, and most likely will never be. Fadiman says of her husband George, that he is an early bird who believes in seizing the day. He is awake and full of energy. (62) I have a husband just like that, who wakes up naturally in the morning and is ready to go as soon as his eyes open. While he is getting ready to go to work, I have most likely just went to sleep and have not started my first rem cycle yet. Like Fadiman says, “ Dawns are all very well (though I generally see them after staying up all night, when I may be too sleepy to appreciate them), but they can’t hold a candle to a full moon, an aurora borealis, a meteor shower, or a comet.” (64). I can relate to this, as I know the sun is rising as I am writing this right now. I do know that mornings are not that bad; many things are accomplished

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    At first the purpose of the passage “Owls” by Mary Oliver is difficult to pinpoint. This is because Oliver begins with describing the penetrating fear of a “terrible” (33) great horned owl, and suddenly develops into a section discussing a desultory and trivial field of flowers. The mystifying comparison between the daunting fear of nature and its impeccable beauty is in fact Oliver’s purpose.…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    St. Peter had always laughed at people who talked about ‘day-dreams,' just as he laughed at people who naively confessed that they had ‘an imagination.' All his life his mind had behaved in a positive fashion. When he was not at work, or being actively amused, he went to sleep. He had no twilight stage. But now he enjoyed this half-awake loafing with his brain as if it were a new sense, arriving late, like wisdom teeth. He found…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The second part of the poem ‘Nightfall’ continues the story of the child forty years from ‘Barn owl’, where she had lost her innocence by shooting an owl and this had resulted in a heavy hearted guilt which was caused by her unknowing and stubborn actions. The poem represents death closing in on the father, and the limitations of time on their relationship that was never experienced before in her younger years. The father, who in the first poem is depicted as an “old no-sayer”, is now held in high esteem, he is admired and respected as an “old king”. The extended metaphor “Since there is no more to taste ripeness is plainly all. Father we pick our last fruits of the temporal.” Appeals to our senses and is now an aural metaphor, it illustrates the father’s life becoming fulfilled or ripe, it has come near to its end and the father and child will now spend or pick the last moments of the father’s life together. Over time her appreciation of her father has changed, this is shown through “Who can be what you were?” and “Old King, your marvellous journey’s done.” She has realised the valuable life her father has led and the great loss that will be felt after he is gone. The child, now a grown woman learns another lesson about death, it can be quiet and peaceful, and “Your night and day…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Thesis: In Night, cognitive dissonance correlates with the theme, a loss of faith, by using words written by Elie Wiesel.…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frank O’Hara’s poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island” is a fun account of the speaker’s encounter with the actual sun. This poem is not only fun, but a great comic pat on the back for both the speaker and even the reader. It’s nice to think that the Sun took time out of its busy schedule of waking up the earth’s inhabitants to give the speaker some words of encouragement and to let him know that his work is appreciated. The opening line, “The sun woke me up this morning loud / and clear,” (1) which was amusing because the sun usually signals the beginning of the day already, but this sun took it a step further and vocally woke the speaker. However the speaker reacted much more calmly that I would have. The sun would have been met with maniacal screams and running away faster than humanly possible.…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the wee hours of the morning my life is the embodiment of a living, breathing dichotomy. Awakening with a wry little smile on my face, I knew I had dreamed of the river, big brown trout, and sweet 3wt bamboo rods. My body screams – “Where’s the coffee”, while my brain questions the sanity of getting up this early on a Saturday. Oblivious to the cacophony, the hairs on the back of my neck tingle. Betraying logic, they forewarn that this pre-dawn moment was the premonition of a great day ahead.…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This seasonal change clearly excites Mrs. Millard since her life is previously obstructed by her marriage and now she can see herself is about to revive by taking control of her own life. Although one may normally associate sparrow as small or little, however, this may not be the case when sparrow clusters together. The “countless sparrow” are more powerful in making themselves loud enough to be heard when they are “twittering in the eaves”, which may signify Mrs. Millard self-assertion and her desire to withdrawn from living under her husband’s shadow. Similarly, Summer uses season to symbolizes different stages of human life: childhood, youth, maturity and death. The seasonal progress from summer to autumn. representing…

    • 1928 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Owls and Mary Oliver

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Mary Oliver shows both the beautiful and terrifying aspects of nature in “Owls”. She uses a variety of rhetorical questions to show her style throughout the entire passage; which gives us a better look at the complexity of nature.…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Circadian Rhythms

    • 3608 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Failure to adapt to environmental and societal time cues leads to misalignment of internal biological clocks. This ´dysentrainment´ comes with enhanced risk of errors and accidents, loss of productivity, and health risks such as increased propensity for cancer, depression, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal, metabolic and cardiovascular disorders, decreased immune…

    • 3608 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Owls

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Nature captivates any human by its sheer beauty, however others may not see its beauty, rather its unnerving side. In "Owls," Mary Oliver conveys the complexity of her response to nature through the use of imagery, juxtaposition, and highly complex syntax. She is torn between her fear and her admiration and awe for the beauty of it.…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Within the poem “In The Secular Night”, Margaret Atwood invokes a morose, and careless, and ultimately bitter character through a life of loneliness and isolation. Throughout the poem, the protagonist, seemingly a woman, seems to have a cloud of misery revolving around her, she feels “deserted” and - at “two-thirty” in the morning - feels herself start to relive a specific night of her adolescence in which she first felt lonely. The night she “lit a cigarette”, “cried for a while” and ultimately ended by “dancing, by [her]self.”…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The diction in this poem is very interesting. Anne Sexton uses a lot of adjectives to describe the night and the objects that have to do with it. She uses the word “silent” to…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Jane chooses to sleep in the daytime so she can stay up all night and study the different patterns on the wallpaper that are revealed by the moonlight. Her illness allows Jane to see developing and changing patterns in the paper. “I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime” (12). As Jane’s obsession with…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Myths

    • 1543 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Owl was a very quiet, but lazy bird. He was very different from other birds though, and he was always treated unfairly just because of his appearance. He had a beak that curved in towards the bottom, a very wide body shape, big eyes, and a large rounded head. The only thing that made owl and the other birds alike was the way they lived. He ate just like them, bathed just like them, and slept just like them, but one day something strange happened. Millions of years ago, there was no darkness, only daylight. The birds still slept, but they slept in nothing but daylight. One day, Owl wasn't feeling himself anymore, he asked all the other birds if they noticed anything different about him and they all said no. Many hours later, all of the birds knew that it was midnight, and that it was time to go to sleep, so they did. All but Owl, he did not feel like he needed any sleep. He stayed up for a few hours and all of a sudden the sky above him turned into pure darkness. Owl was confused but scared at the same time, so he told all of the other birds to wake up, and they did. They thought and thought, but could not find out what had made the sky so dark. Soon after the darkness went away and daylight came, they found out that Owl had not slept from 12am-7am. Every night after that, Owl would not sleep, so the sky would remain dark throughout the whole night. Owl's lack of sleep is the reason why it's dark at night, and will forever remain that way until Owl decides to sleep at night again.…

    • 1543 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Let there be dark” is an article published by the Los Angeles TImes by Paul Bogard that speaks about the hazards of lighting up night skies. Bogard worries “we are rapidly losing nights natural darkness” and argues that not only does lack of natural darkness affects our worlds pollution but also our country’s economy as we waste “energy” and “dollar”. We are also slowly losing the capability of producing melatonin a key hormone in providing a healthy body. WIth the use of the three rhetorical figures, pathos, logos and ethos; Bogard was able to state to regular home owners and dwellers that we read to change our habits towards the nightś darkness and learn to embrace the beauty and uniqueness of it.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics