In the play Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses images of sleep to show the guilt of Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's conscious. They no longer have the natural healthy, normal sleep. Their sleep is made up of nightmares and other disturbances. Macbeth obsesses over whether or not he will be able to sleep even before he kills King Duncan, because sleep is something that he knows he will need in order to feel peaceful and well-rested. "Nature seems dead and wicked dreams abuse/ The curtained sleep."
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.
This, coupled with the next line (which describes how he shivers in his suit), suggests that the man in question is alone and isolated from everybody else. Similarly to “Disabled”, “Mental Cases” also describes war's personal after-effects, but in this case it is dealing with mental anguish. Using his own experiences, Wilson describes the mental effects that the war had had on other soldiers. The opening line, where Wilson asks “who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?”, suggests that the subject of the poem has no idea who anyone else around him is.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Raven because his wife, Virginia, was dying of tuberculosis. To me I think the poem is about self torture and about being consumed by the past. The raven symbolizes the protagonist’s subconscious, trying to send him a message that pain and misery in which he has deluded himself into will never go away. It isn’t until nearly at the end of the poem that the
2008 AP LIT FREE RESPONSE: Section II, Question One In both poems “When I Have Fears” by John Keats, and “Mezzo Cammin” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both narrators expose their unfulfilled aspirations with the underlying fear that death will soon approach. Keats explains how his career as a famous, credited author has not yet been fulfilled, and fears that he will not live long enough to do so. Conversely, Longfellow looks back on his past slightly disappointed, but assured that he has the latter half of his life to accomplish his objectives and goals. Longfellow is dismal and terrified of death, while Keats comes to realize that his dreams are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, and any life lived is a gift that will eventually succumb to death. Keats’ poem is one extensive run-on sentence that truly “runs” across the page.
Poetry Explication of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe “The Raven” is a poem written about a man who is grieving about his lost lover. He has great difficulty with dealing with her death and the object in the poem that is used continually to remind him of the lack of her presence is that of the raven. Starting with the first stanza, there is indication of in climate weather and it also tells us that the setting is at night. There is an air of uncertainness and a definite dark side to the poem with the uncovering of some great tragedy that has befallen the narrator and he also has a fear of something coming to disturb him at rest. We find more out about what this tragedy that befell him is and we discover that the supposed date of this unfortunate happening occurred in the month of December.
In fact it is in the title, which is also repeated multiple times throughout the poem. The phrase "Good Night" is the author’s term for death. Death is in fact not perceived as good to most people however it is an everlasting sleep, which explained why he uses the phrase good night as if people are falling asleep and never waking up. This poem, like "A Prayer from the Living, also describes the change in a persons view on death as they are dying from how you would expect them to view it. The poem centers on the author advising old men to fight the act of dying.
3. The simile the narrator uses is, “I sank, little by little, into a half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation.” The narrator suggests that one is nearly conscious of the world around him or completely unaware of his surroundings. 4. Fear is an extremely strong emotion; the narrator uses those thoughts and feelings on how he found himself in the tenant of the grave. 5.
She is also represented as the active one in the relationship which shows how he is not able to take her for himself or say that he wants her, ‘when no voice replied, she put my arm about her waist.’ This represents him as very passive and quite pathetic which is reinforced through the narrator’s first line of speech, ‘I listened heart fit to break.’ This suggests that he is waiting for someone, maybe even longing. Browning structured this poem as a dramatic monologue and has included structural features such as enjambment which makes the poem sound less like a crafted speech and more like a casual conversation, which may be seen as eerie considering what he does later on in the poem. This starts to present the theme of madness in the poem as it is all a justification for the later events of the poem. The end of the poem juxtaposes the beginning as the lines ‘in one long yellow string I wound, her tiny little throat around, and strangled her.’ The explicit nature in which the narrator says this indicates that he is not a mentally stable being and so reinforces the themes of madness within the poem. This continues through to the very end of
Now on his gravestone rest these words wanting of wisdom in suicide. Sonnet to Sleep O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting with careful fingers and benign Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me or passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes: Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul. John Keats Apr.