Preview

Miss Rosie By Lucille Clifton Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
408 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Miss Rosie By Lucille Clifton Analysis
Have you ever been walking and come across a person who appears to have fallen on hard times and as you watched the person about their life, wondered to yourself how others would respond if it were you in their situation? Or have you ever encountered hardships that made others look at you differently? During those hardships, were you determined to endure to the end with the hopes of encouraging the people who watched your situation unfold? Well, in the poem “Miss Rosie” by Lucille Clifton, it would seem that the character had encountered hardships and was now being looked upon by others. The use of imagery and figurative language, as the author shares a piece of Miss Rosie’s life story, helps the reader to experience the character from her

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Writer, Alice Walker, in her narrative essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” recounts a tragic event that occurred at the age of 8 years old. Walker’s objective is to tell her readers about an event that changed not only her physical appearance, but how she considers herself, forever. While speaking about her life after the accident, she uses many rhetorical devices to speak to her readers. Plot development, metaphors, repetition, flashback, and Aristotelian appeals are only some of the devices used. However, those few certainly deliver the message that she is trying to point out to her audience.…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The poem "homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton is meant to convey the author's embrace of her femininity and her body. She uses metaphors throughout the poem to convey her acceptance of her own body and to urge other women to do the same. The poem also challenges social norms that apply to women and the beauty ideal. Additionally, Clifton alludes to the need for empowering women. In the opening lines of "Homage to My Hips," Clifton describes how her hips are big and how "they don't fit into little petty places." This line explains how the size and shape of her hips do not fit into the socially accepted beauty ideal of thinness. She then talks about her hips being free and how "these hips have never been enslaved." This line is meant to be…

    • 245 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nellie Clark Poem

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Nancy Knapp, Dora Williams, and Nellie Clark all had a rough life, and experiences that not everyone would understand. You have the choice to make your life better or worse, you have to be able to pick yourself up and move on. Many people have things happen to them that they can’t tell anyone and many people now go days without ever telling anyone. These three people had one life to live and didn’t get the best chance at living it and they all had a negative…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Writers of modern stories are interested in portraying life. Often, in their stories, we get ideas and find the chance to see, examine, and question ourselves. For example, in James Joyce’s “Eveline,” we observe how fear of the unknown affects a young woman’s future; In Richard Wright’s “The Man Who was Almost a Man,” we see how a young boy’s inability to accept moral responsibilities impacts his life, too. “How would we handle their challenges?” Who is the stronger individual? The answer lies within.…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Therefore, I can kind of understand the hardship Sister Hope faced when she was doing all the work, while the men just messed around in Louisa May Alcott's short story, “Transcendental Wild Oats”.1 Especially, with all the work that needs to be done before winter or a big storm hits, and that fact it's mainly her trying to keep the family together, along with she's the only one supporting for her family. Also, when Sister Hope is trying to complete as many tasks she can before the storm hits, she's…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Eng 125 Final

    • 2722 Words
    • 11 Pages

    A short story and poem, no matter how structurally different, are two literary pieces where a rich story is embedded. Readers are drawn towards these scripts by means of rhythm (poem), characterization, or a fictional setting in their respective narratives. However, the mere script would not make it entertaining enough to hold the reader’s attention. It would depend on the imagination of the readers as they are reading the story as to what they take from it. Every reader has their own way of visualizing the descriptions and symbolism used by the author. It is through imagination that the readers are able to interpret what the author is trying to depict within the symbolism and other descriptive languages. The beauty of stories and poems is that they are generated and created through the readers own imagination which consequently allows each individual reader to build their own personal connection with the literary piece. The two literary pieces “The Road Not Taken” (poem) and the short story “A Worn Path” are different in terms of actual writing styles, however they both share the same theme which is every person’s journey is greatly governed by their decisions and no matter how many paths there may be, it is still the choices that the person makes that determine the ending of his or her journey. Each one conveys a theme of life journeys and the challenges and struggles that go along with those journeys. In “The Road Not Taken” it is the journey one must make while trying to choose the right path in life. One path seemingly offers a more familiar road and perhaps the easier of the two. The other path is clearly been less traveled upon, yet yearns to be. In “A Worn Path” the journey that one woman takes on in order to care for her sick grandchild is unfolded. It is…

    • 2722 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Gwen Harwood poems such as The Glass Jar and Prize-Giving illuminate concerns fundamental to human experience including life, death, spirituality and human fall from innocence explored abstractly through the prism of childhood experience. The use of binary opposites, metaphors, similes, musical motifs and biblical allusions allow for a multiplicity of responses and readings highlighting mythological, psychological, Freudian and feminist interpretation.…

    • 1158 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout life there will be many instances where a persons perspective is forced to change, whether it be brought about by maturity of time, the people we meet or the experiences in our life- good or bad. This is evident in Hannah Roberts’ story ‘Sky High’ which explores the transition from the innocence and imagination of childhood to an adult with less freedom and more responsibility and Eleanor Farjeon’s poem ‘It was long ago’, which captures an incident that occurred when the protagonist was around three years old. Roberts employs a range of language devices including 1st person narrative, colloquial language, metaphors, similes, hyperbole, low modality language and accumulation of imagery to illuminate this concept while Farjeon relies on the forms of poetry such as enjambment, onomatopoeia and the structure of the rhythm scheme to elucidate her protagonist’s change in perspective.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout this excerpt from “My Garden” by Mary Abigail Dodge, the author uses extensive amounts of imagery to envelope the reader in her writing in order to convey her message. Through the use of imagery Dodge enables the audience to understand that women can be accomplished writers just like men…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem written from a mothers perspective giving loving advice to her son about the challenges life will throw, yet the importance of never giving up, subverts the usual stereotype that African Americans live a bad life, abusing drugs and being criminals. The audience feels the warmth and care from her southern dialect, “Don’t you fall now – for I’se still goin’ honey, I’se still climbin’’ and “life for me aint been no crystal stair”. The informal language also portrays a truthful motherly figure. The poem includes an extended metaphor, the person compares her life to a stair case, “life aint been no crystal stair, it’s had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor- Bare.” This is a metaphor for the lack of comfort and poverty she lives in. Symbols like ‘tacks’ also symbolise the discomfort of life’s obstacles. By the smart use of informal language, symbolism, extended metaphor and repetition supports the idea that African Americans can make the right choices and are not necessarily limited to the life people see them as living all the time. Just because of the harsh circumstances they are going through. As the persona puts it. ‘Don’t you fall now, for I’se still going,…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Distinctively Visual

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The poem, ‘Lady feeding the cats’ by Douglas Stewart is distinctively visual as it challenges the reader to move beyond first impressions. The responder is led to reassess how we view people and places and the assumptions made about them. The poet does this by firstly confirming the preconceptions of the woman, the cats and her physical environment. This is evident in stanza one through Stewart’s use of visual imagery; ‘’broken shoes, slums weather stains’’ explaining to the reader the economic standing of the woman in the world and her physical being as she moves forward to feeding the cats. This is reinforced by the sibilance providing a striking visual image of the physical and economic hardship. However, in stanza 3 the woman is portrayed to be acquainted with respect by the cats as they get their feeding.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When an individual is bound by any type of constraints of conventions or circumstances, their initial natural reaction is resistance. Nonetheless, it is their ability to rise above those restrictions that defines who they really are. In the poem “Diary of a Piano Turner’s Wife”, by Wilmer Mills, the wife chooses to respond to the adverse circumstances by choosing her independence and not giving in to the conventions. The novel Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom shows Morrie Schwartz’s ability to stay positive, after going through and facing a lot of difficulties in life. In a similar manner, I can also relate to both these texts as I have been subjected to these restrictions time and again.…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Giovanni observed that even though African American families were in the middle of segregation, her family was “quite happy” (24). Giovanni mentions “How good the water felt when you got a bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in” (7-8). Her poem reflects all of the good times she has had with her family during the Civil Rights Era. Her word choice of “Happy birthdays and very good Christmases” (20) shows people how her family was happy through rougher times.…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “A worn path” an elderly african-american woman, named Pheonix Jones, is up against the world on her way to town. Armed with nothing but her cane, she maneuvers through obstactle after obstacle, showing perseverence in the highest fashion through every disincentive that inhibits her journey. As such, her story depicts the Depression in the United States from the vantage point of a victim insufficiently represented in art—though a victim who, like the mythological phoenix her name evokes, resists annihilation, Phoenix transcends the abuse she experiences.…

    • 1400 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “No one’s life is a smooth sail; we all come into stormy weather.” This statement has more truth to it than one may think. In life, everybody reaches a rough point, a point where the light at the end of the tunnel seems dim, or even nonexistent. But overcoming this adversity is what builds character. Accepting and prevailing over life’s obstacles are what separate strong, independent-minded and forward-thinking people from those who give up and avoid their problems. Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, lived a life of great struggle in which she overcame adversity with great efforts and a dedicated heart and mind.…

    • 1138 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays