Maria Portillo January 14, 2013 A.P English Literature – Period 4 Modern Love by George Meredith In the poem, Modern Love by George Meredith, it defines the feelings about a husband and a wife, who both had suffered in a loveless marriage. Meredith uses literary devices to convey the view of “modern love”; he uses alliteration, metaphor, and imagery throughout the poem. Meredith uses alliteration in the first line of the poem, “she wept with walking eyes (line1).” Since the beginning of the poem the readers could notice that the wife was already unhappy, since she had cried, probably for unhappy marriage. He also writes, “were called into her with a sharp surprised (line 4)”, meaning that she wanted to escape the marriage but couldn’t, and that the time that is poem was written it referred to the marriage in the 19th century. Which both the wives and husbands were forced to marry, without loving each other.
The phrase ‘no sleep’ is a euphemism for death and suggests that she will pay for what she has done. This is similar to Farmers Bride as he is frustrated that she will not interact with him. This is shown when he says ‘three summers since I chose a maid’; this suggests that she has been avoiding him for the past three years, which is frustrating for him. The word ‘maid’ implies that she is still a virgin, suggesting that his frustration could also be sexual In Sister Maude italics are used to emphasise her hatred for her sister Maude. This is used in the last line of the poem ‘Bide you with death and sin’; this symbolised her outrage at her sister and her hope that she will pay by going to hell after death.
The Dual Effect of Granny’s Jiltings Throughout the story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” the protagonist, Granny, was jilted several times. The jiltings that Granny, or Ellen, experienced through her life had the dual effect of improving while worsening it. Granny feels jilted several times in her life: she was left at the altar; her husband died young, leaving her to shoulder the burden of being head of household; an incident that the story hints at is the death of her daughter Hapsy while she was giving birth; as well as Granny not getting a sign from God on her deathbed. All these incidents compounded to harden her. Yet, they simultaneously lent her the ability to soldier on through a difficult life.
Mrs. Mallard went through a range of emotions such as grief, a feeling of comfort, and despair. The first range of emotion is grief. Mrs. Mallard had been abruptly hit with the news of her husband, Mr. Mallards’, death by her sister Josephine. She had been totally grief struck by the news. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,
Her bitterness towards her deceased husband is apparent. In the scene she casts him away and reminisces on all the times her marriage brought her pain and sorrow.
In the poem ‘Poppies’, the mother feels very sad; “Three days before Armistice Sunday and poppies had already been placed on individual war graves” this is a reminder that war kills people which makes her sad as her son might be killed in war. She also feels very scared; “I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer” this suggests that she might be thinking of her son which wounds her emotionally as he might be wounded in war. Similarly, the mother in ‘At the Border, 1979’ also feels very emotional as they are going back to their homeland; “We are going home”, this suggests that the mother is very happy that they are back, however, the narrator doesn’t seem to understand why the adults become very emotional when the two countries looked identical. In “At the Border, 1979”, Choman Hardi uses a child perspective to view the absurdities of both adult behaviour and borders that were caused by conflicts. In this poem, the narrator doesn’t understand why crossing the border was very important to the adults when it’s physically easy to cross.
She calls him a bastard because he walked out on her however Duffy uses beloved sweetheart to symbolise her unconditional love for him. Havisham exhibits violent imagery with powerful words, strangle, stabbed and death which all associate her bitterness with her wanting her ex fiancé dead. `Not a day since then I haven’t wished him dead`, proves that Havisham still remembers her wedding day very vividly and feels humiliated having been jilted so is trying to get revenge. Havisham is feeling emotionally detached from life and because of that, envisaging her ex fiancé dead or hurt. The poem infuses images of death to show the extent of her bitterness, along with enjambment.
“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. Being alone in a household after someone has died makes you lonely. Even though the speaker doesn’t say this the reader can tell this is what he is feeling because of the fact that he is now looking for a new wife to give him company. We can see this by the quote: “Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed”. When lonely you look for company; searching for a new wife/partner is the same as searching for company to fill in the loneliness.
Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’ is one of the constituent poems of her final anthology ‘Ariel’ written before she committed suicide. The collection was composed in a seemingly manic surge coinciding with a period of anguish and rage concerning her traumatic impending divorce with her British husband and poet Ted Hughes. He left for another woman, leaving Sylvia with their two children. In her rather short poem ‘Morning Song’ Plath employs many poignant images to convey a disconcerted ambience of disillusionment concerning her maternal experience. The poem may be referred to as a confessional poem in the sense that it emphasises visceral and intimate emotions and personal details of Sylvia Plath’s life in a seemingly unflattering manner.
Paper Summary: In W. H. Auden's poem, "Funeral Blues," the speaker uses well-constructed poetic language and form to convey her attitude toward the subject of death. It explains how Auden manifests an extremely bitter interpretation of hopelessness and eternal sadness on the part of the speaker as a result of losing a loved one. The speaker in the poem is deeply saddened about the loss of her loved one and the fact that it was a force beyond her control. This person has been taken from her life in haste at a most inopportune time, and she feels as though her life has become pointless. It shows how, through Auden's use of tone, language, and structure, he portrays a very well-defined image of death and its effects on the individual, which is by no means desirable.