Annabel Lee is a work that expresses great loss and sadness. The speaker laments that he has lost the one true love of his life. The loneliness and sadness that permeate the lines of the poem result in an obsession of sorts over the love that the two shared. Every thought and all the dreams he has -- everything has to do with this love that was lost. In modern day thought, such an obsession that results in the speaker going to the grave to lay by her side could be viewed as a form of necrophilism, or morbidity.
Other than that, it was not easy for George to shoot Lennie but he had to do it because if he didn’t he knew that Curley would and in a more painful way. Therefore George had to make the sacrifice and be the one who shoots Lennie himself so that Lennie wouldn’t have to suffer. Without Lennie, George also faces other problems on his own such as loneliness with no one to care for and no one to care for himself. Steinbeck’s characterization plays an important role in showing how Lennie himself brought him to his own death. On page 2 of the novel, Steinbeck gives a description of Lennie: “Behind
The dog barking with a juicy bone is silenced as instinct no longer reigns. The piano and drum are relegated as the harmony and beat of life has ceased. The coffin has to be brought, and the mourner has to be given their time of agony and heartbreak to have the process of mourning. The poem begins with a series of imperatives in which the speaker demands that all mundane noises―ticking clocks, ringing telephones, and barking dogs be silenced. The use of a spondee makes the initial command even more passionate, reflecting the speaker’s determination that this otherwise ordinary day be a singularly solemn one.
Out of the supplementary of works Poe had written, I personally had found his poem “The Raven” uniquely interesting because it closely expresses the devastation that Poe went through throughout his life. In the poem, the narrator who we never are told a name, is obviously troubled. The narrator, sitting alone, is greeted by a raven that he sees not just as a measly bird, but more than that. He feels that he has just come in contact with a higher power, another entity trying to contact him. The narrator, who was suffering from the loss of Lenore, seemed to manifest this bird into a spiritual being.
While the conflict of individual vs. self is resolved in this story, the same conflict in “The Raven” is not so easily dismissed. In “The Raven”, the main character is stricken with grief and is beside himself with the loss of Lenore. Contrary to this poem, the short story “The Things They Carried” tells the story of Lieutenant Cross dealing with the guilt of being responsible for the loss of his comrade. Both these literary works share the common conflict of individual vs. self and use a variety of literary techniques to display the internal struggle. “The Raven” focuses more on symbolism and tone to provide the reader with a glimpse into the mindset of a man stricken with the memories of a lost love.
Wilfred Owen was significantly inspired and influenced by Keats’ poetry, reforming a vast amount of Owen’s work, and most importantly his style of writing. This analysis will attempt to illustrate some similarities and differences of their work. Owen begins his poem by speaking about a large proportion of the soldiers who have been both physically and mentally affected by the war. Owen masks these soldiers and generalises them to one single “disabled” person. This can be interpreted as Owen attempting to illustrate the voice of many soldiers, through a poem.
At that mental age, they would not have been able to handle reality. One may say that it is sinful to end a life in general, however what George did was a truly good action by sending Lennie to a better place instead of receiving torture from Curley, a very abusive and cruel man to Lennie. A good example that is similar to this is when Candy had to make the decision to end the life of his dog. Many workers disliked Candy’s dog because it was elderly and smelled horrendous, therefore wanted it dead. Like George, Candy only wanted his dog dead to prevent it from enduring the suffering that they both face from oppressors.
John Keats writes “What I have fears that I may have cease to be,” as a vehicle to express his concerns that encompass both time and death. Keats structures his poem as two major thoughts. He not only expresses his fear of dying before he can fulfill himself as a writer, but losing his love. Though Keats’ emphasizes his greatest fear of death, he offers his own resolution by asserting that love and fame lacks any importance. In the first four lines, Keats’ concern with the passing of time is indicated by the repetition of “when” at the beginning of each quatrain.
The Shepherd insists that the revelation of the truth will result in destruction, “I will be destroyed even more if I do talk” (line 1184). The Shepherd’s fear in this line embodies his rationality and foreshadows the inevitability of tragedy in this scene. The Shepherd continually stalls during his dialogue with Oedipus, but Oedipus’s overbearingness overpowers his resistance, and thus the Shepherd resorts to pleading to the King, “By the gods, master, do not inquire further!” (line 1190). The Shepherd’s futile resistance displays his determination to protect the kingdom and himself, and only when threatened with death did the Shepherd succumb to cowardly behavior and reveal the reality of Oedipus’s fate. Oedipus’s desire to continuously inquire despite the
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.