The light in the café is man-made or artificial and can be turned off; giving us the sense that it can only be a temporary and incomplete relief from the emptiness of the dark. The light that shone on the brass number that was on the collar of the passing soldier is perhaps an indication of how meaningful this soldiers’ life was, which can be further emphasized in that he had a companion next to him. The old man likes to go to the café late at night “because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference”. Daytime, with its busy streets, probably reminded him of his disconnection from the world, while the darkness of the night made him feel as if he was not missing out on much. In essence, being deaf can bring him darkness and a separation from the rest of the world which can be the symbolic reason why he chooses to sit in the shadow of the well-lighted café.
This winter, the city faced a nightmare situation, due to the delay in government response. On December 26th, a blizzard pummeled New York City. Approximately 20 inches of snow fell over the city. Cars and city buses were abandoned on the unplowed streets and highways. When the plows were slowly dispatched they did not clear the streets efficiently.
Perhaps one of the most superficial layers of irony used in the story would be of verbal irony. The first two paragraphs established the fact that the passenger was in fact very paranoid of his surroundings, fearing something untoward might happen to him. Yet as he sits in the taxi, he finds himself struggling to keep his mind off the issue. The line “No he mustn’t allow himself to think of
Porphyria’s Lover – Beginnings / Endings The poem opens up at night and with the first few lines sets up a sense of a cold, brooding almost wild discontent that mirrors the Lover’s mood in the beginning of the poem (weather mimics the mental state of the lover) through the use of pathetic fallacy (up to line 5) and personification (‘the sullen wind was soon awake’). Although there is a doubtable feeling of the ominous and that somehow, right from the beginning, the poem won’t have an exactly happy ending, there is an air of Melancholy and desperation about the lover (‘I listened with heart fit to break’) that seems to invite our sympathy. The whole setting is suddenly changed when Porphyria ‘glides’ in and brings in a warmth (‘made the cheerless grate blaze up’) and consequently this changes the whole mood as she ‘shuts out the storm’. The very beginning is more poetic (up to line 5) and when Porphyria walks in there is a large use of imperative verbs (e.g. ‘she shut out’, ‘she rose’).
This may be because Blake lives in London so he’ll know how bad it is and will walk all the back alleys, while Wordsworth only visited London therefore will only have a first impression and will be walking down the main streets, so he’ll only see the good bits. In this essay I will analyse both poems. In Blake’s poem he uses very dark words such as “blackening” and “blood”. These words give the reader the impression that London is a very bad place to be. This is because he is wandering the dark streets of London.
Susbsequently poems like Rhapsody remain relevant. Hopelessness as a Modernist idea evolved due to a lack of faith and the poor quality of 20th century urban life. Eliot depicts this idea throughout Rhapsody, writing "Every street lamp that I pass/ Beats like a fatalistic drum." The negative tone, created through the connotations of "fatalistic" create an atmosphere of foreboding for the reader. Moreover the simile
We can infer from this first stanza that even though we, humans use night to rest, and consider night a time of silence, a lot of things are going on from Mother Nature while we rest every day. For the second stanza, which is written in first person, the use of the term “we” reveals the author’s presence in the scene, and can be referring to either campers or humans as a whole. In this stanza she also explains how campers protect themselves from the night by lighting fire. It also reveals the scary moment they are going through. Since they can only sensor the noises produce by animals, because the darkness is preventing them from seeing what is going on around, the use of figurative language makes readers be part of the campers.
It also makes the reader think about where Pip's wealth is coming from. This makes the reader very curious, and also possibly provides a clue that something relating to the mystery about the wealth may soon be answered. Pip describes the absence of Herbert as leaving him "dispirited and anxious, and long disappointed", and "the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all." Nothing has happened, but there is the feeling that everything is not as it seems, which is then made clearer by Dickens' description of the atmosphere of London: "It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet: and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an eternity of cloud and wind."
As January is a very bleak time of the year it carries heavy connotations of stagnation, lifelessness and desolation which is also reflected in Wilcox's life. Finally the 13th is a historically an unlucky number which exemplifies Vic's feelings about his own life, he believes that nothing is ever his fault that is always down to someone else that things go wrong in his life. The use of this unlucky number and blaming Marjorie for losing the company
Compare how a characters voice is created in “My Last Duchess” and ONE other poem. The characters’ voices in “My Last Duchess” and “The River God” are created in very similar but also different ways. In both poems we can see that the characters are created as quite lonely in, “My Last Duchess” and “The River God”. The writer of “My last Duchess” uses euphemism to display his loneliness to the reader. “This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together.” This quote creates a sense of loneliness to the reader seeing as the speaker is saying that “all smiles stopped” implies that the person who smiled is no longer alive but now dead.