* The poem is an extended personification addressing her book as a child. What are similarities does the speaker find between a child and a book of poem? What does she plan to do now that her child has ben put on public display?…
In the essay “The Motive for Metaphor,” Northrop Frye describes levels of the human mind. The first level of the human mind is consciousness and awareness. In this level of the mind you identify the differences objects from yourself. You name objects with nouns. Also on this level you qualify these objects to differentiate them. You describe the nouns with adjectives. The second level of the human mind is social participation. The language of this level are verbs and actions. This level describes your degree of participation in a community or society. The third level of the human mind is imagination. The language of this level is the desire of language. Examples of the desire of language are literacy language, language of math, music, poems…
The word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement the author {Kimberly Brubaker Bradley} uses, makes the text journalistic or informal like. When the characters talk, they don't speak formally or with really bad grammar. They talk like normal people would do. Kimberly writes with little figurative language. When she does though, it is relatable to the text, and easy for younger readers to understand.…
1. Identify and explain an emotion that Bradstreet expresses in her poem that any mother might have.…
It is impossible to deny that human imperfection exists. Today’s society has a tendency to be obsessed with the idea of physical perfection. Nowadays if our appearance isn't how we'd like it to be, there's plastic surgery. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Birthmark” in 1843 about more than a century ago. In this short narrative the author is trying to show us it is wrong to attempt changing nature with science. The message is that being imperfect is being human. Georgiana and Alymer demonstrated their obsession with physical perfection much like we would today. In the story the wife, Georgiana, was perfect in every way except one; she had a mark on her left cheek. Georgiana was born with a crimson birthmark in the shape of a hand. The birthmark…
The literary device that the author uses to compare the book and himself to was a metaphor. When the narrator said, “it was cold consolation to think that I, who looked upon it with my eye and fondled it with my ten flesh-and-bone fingers, was no less monstrous than the book”, this proved that he was comparing himself to the monstrous book. The meaning and significance of this metaphor states that he was no different from the book. His mind was now as dense and endless. The book carried infinite secrets and toyed with its readers. As it stated in the short story, “I felt it was a nightmare thing, an obscene thing, and that it defiled and corrupted reality”. The narrator felt that the deadly secrets that emanated from the book were all getting to his head. His fear of infinite evil caused him to hide the demonic book and run away from the eternal thoughts.…
Explain the metaphor Bradstreet uses in the poem for her children. Give at least two specific examples from the poem. An example of a metaphor in Bradstreet’s poem would be that she compares her children as to baby birds that live in a nest. Another example is that she compares them growing up to a bird leaving the nest to take flight.…
In James Hurst’s masterpiece “The Scarlet Ibis”, there is a multitude of figurative language used to underline the theme that is repeated in Naomi Long Madgett’s poem “Woman with Flower”, ultimately enlightening the reader with a true moral of don’t be exceedingly prideful and work something before it is ready. “Woman with Flower” introduces readers to a woman who is trying to shelter her flower and make it perfect, rather than letting it take its own path and literally letting it grow into a beautiful flower. The poem reflects the short prose “The Scarlet Ibis” via figurative language. An example would be, “Much growth is stunted by too careful prodding.” This personifies the flower with human like attributes of being sheltered and protected, like many youth are in present time. “The Scarlet Ibis” can also relate to that because of the narrator’s need for Doodle’s success, not so much for Doodle, but for the narrator’s own pride. “The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.” demonstrates the underlying thought of the prose’, when do we leave someone to figure life on their own terms, and when do we intervene and help out? The narrator in “The Scarlet Ibis” struggles to find the answer to this query as he teaches Doodle to walk and become what society views as a normal little boy. In the end of the prose, he makes an irrational decision due to his dwindling patience. Once Doodle wasn’t of any use to him anymore, he simply gave up on him and left him there. The narrator still has to deal with the guilt of that incident, and will for the rest of his…
In this poem, the influence of Puritan beliefs can be seen and detected clearly. Anne Bradstreet presents the idea of the Dual self which indicates the never-ending conflict between the good and the bad sides in the human being. She personifies the two sides as two sisters. The two sisters that the speaker overhears represent the two opponent aspects of the Puritan self. The first is called Flesh, and the second Spirit. The first represents the sinful, wicked side and the second stands for the redeemed side. This dichotomy always exists within every human being. There is also a continuous discussion in religion in order to subjugate and subdue the flesh and to make the…
The ultimate purpose of this chapter is to discern the experience of motherhood, the leap from domesticity to creativity and writing the body parts in poems such as “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward”, “The Double Image”, “Her Kind”, “the Division of Parts”, “the Exorcists”, and “the Farmer’s Wife”. The maternal experience, along with the exaltation of the female body, is at the heart of the analysis of a number of poems. Sexton’s poems reveal the quest for the female identity through motherhood and writing the body parts which do converge with the construction of the body of words. They are produced to mark the female awakening: women are no longer submissive. A woman is able to transcend the atrocities of the male dominance by moving from a housewife to a poet and transcending the confinement…
She continues to compare language, using metaphors, to other aspects of nature such as when she says ‘it was like grains of sand on the shore, the leaves on the great ash outside my bedroom window, immeasurable and unconquerable’. The use of the similies gives us an image of how vast and large language is as the decription depicts how timeless and endless words are. She also makes use of the strong adjectives, ‘immeasurable’ and ‘unconquerable’ and how much power language holds to her and maybe how she feels when she uses it. She depicts people as ‘walking lexicons’, objectifying them. This…
In Jon Stallworthy’s poem “Two Hands,” the narrator expresses a son’s idolization of his father. This idolization is not based upon an intimate emotional relationship, but rather, on the son comparing himself to his father. His vocation, a writer, falls short when held against his father’s, a surgeon. In “Two Hands,” a son narrates, through metaphors and mood, his frigid and distant relationship with his father.…
Fashioning his children on the principle of logic, he wants to make model beings out of them, which he may portray to society as examples of a practical nature. But he fails to understand the power of human emotions, or rather their weakness. Ignoring all possibilities of what hope and imagination could bring, into the lives of both himself and others around him, he creates a wall of facts beyond which it becomes very hard for his daughter Louisa and his son Tom to see, which they very much come to want. They get sick of their father’s ‘eminently practical’ ways and long to break free from the environment they are made to live in. Their desires and wishes are so subdued that they are forced to turn to whatever respite, no matter how little they can get from any source whatsoever.…
It was the truth, its birth could not be avoided, but even as she acknowledged the truth her heart ached at the thought of what it would be born into. She had been born into this miserable life of slavery, often she was forced to share the master’s bed other times she became the object of the mistress’ frustration; the men were mere studs and the women were bred like horses; this was not the life she wanted for her child.…
Pregnancy is supposed to be a time of joy and excitement for the mother to be. However, contrary to popular belief, pregnancy doesn’t protect a woman from becoming depressed. About 20 % of women experience some type of depressive symptoms during pregnancy, and 10% develop major depression (Kahn, Moline, Ross, Cohen, Altshuler par. 3). Depression in America is an area of mental illness that is sometimes undetected and people who are feeling symptoms are unaware that the moods they are experiencing are actually normal signs that can be dealt with by medical experts. According to The American Pregnancy Association, depression that is not treated can have potential dangerous risks to the mother and baby. Untreated depression can lead to poor nutrition, drinking, smoking, and suicidal behavior, which can then cause premature birth, low birth weight, and developmental problems. A woman who is depressed often does not have the strength or desire to adequately care for herself or her developing baby. Babies born to mothers who are depressed may also be less active, show less attention and are more irritable and agitated than babies born to moms who are not depressed (“American Pregnancy Association”). In the poem “Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath, her choice of words for the poem seem to express her feelings of depression toward the issue of her pregnancy.…