Rhetorical Analysis On Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, an American poet, discusses her observations about the natural world in her book titled House of Light (1984). Her poems primarily embed a spiritual takeaway through the establishment of several speakers with varying personas. For example, in her poems “The Buddha’s Last Instruction,” “Some Questions You Might Ask,” and “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field,” Oliver introduces three speakers which similarly examine the ideas of death and nature. There are plenty of rhetorical tools used by Oliver, which create the attitudes of the poems. She mainly demonstrates the speaker’s massive respect towards the natural world and how poems revolve their ideas around nature. Furthermore, they create a spiritual sensation that highlight the beauty in death or the soul, while integrating religious beliefs. Ultimately, the speakers also display a shift in their attitude as they discuss the various topics. The speaker in WOFIAOOTF, for example, demonstrates much respect towards nature as conveyed through diction with words such as “beautiful,” “accurate,” and “gracefully.” The speaker also glorifies
She is spiritually analytical as she describes the beautiful owl, and metaphorically connects it to something that may not be viewed with admiration, such as the death of one’s life. This therefore leads to her assertion, that death is a spiritual cleansing. The narrator of SQYMA very similarly, acquires a spiritual takeaway through the comparison of two ideas: the soul and nature. Her views however, suggest that she is Christian because she does not rely on human logic. Correspondingly, the persona in TBLI includes a spiritual motif as well when she correlates the delightful sunrise, to the Buddha’s death and last instruction. This can also illustrate how she believes in the importance of the Buddha’s