Yesterday I explored AQA’s Anthology poem Quickdraw from Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapturecollection. I did express my disappointment with that poem and perhaps its rather self conscious contrivance.The row didn’t convince as it is usurped by the manipulations of cowboy mythology. This poem however is direct and bleak. You can feel the emotional chill, the spreading disease of antipathy and sterility. The words are the most sabotaged of all; diminished by dislike and discontent.
“You can see for yourself - the city is like a ship rolling dangerously; it has lost the power to right itself and raise its head up out of the waves of death. Thebes is dying. There is a blight on the crops of the land, on the ranging herds of cattle, on the stillborn labor of our women. The fever-god swoops down on us, hateful plague, he hounds the city and empties the houses of Thebes. The black god of death is made rich with wailing and funeral laments,” (The Priest; page 6).
The main characters of The Scarlet Letter are left to tourment by themselves, the worst punishment of them all. Hester’s punishemt for her sin is more mental then physical. Punishment for adultery during the time of the Purtians was usually death. Hesters is spared this punishment and is left to wear a scarlet letter A on her chest of the rest of her life. As a result of this punishment, Hester is isolated by society and left with no one but Pearl.
In The Great Gatsby, the tone of the “Valley of Ashes” scene can be best described as solemn. Fitzgerald uses imagery and symbolism in order to display the way that the Valley is full of empty hopes and dreams. Fitzgerald uses imagery to give a picture of the desolate wasteland that is the Valley of Ashes. He explains that the valley is a “fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens.” This tells us that everything in the valley is really nothing more than ashes, and it is all worthless. The people who are eternally bound to the valley are described as “moving dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” This gives us a picture that these people, who are essentially dirt poor, move
He gives us a picture of a “desolate are of land” that is so grim even “the motor road [hurriedly] joins the rail road, so as to shrink away” from it. The Valley of Ashes is the dumpsite for the lower class. The Ashes represent their once vivid hopes and dreams which have dies away, leaving their mind, represented by the Valley, in a state of desolation. It is also very ironic for Fitzgerald to depict the Valley as “a farm where ashes grow like wheat into…grotesque gardens” because you usually associate gardens and wheat with fertility and not with gray, sterile landscapes where it is impossible for something to be grown. Again, this proves that the Valley is desolate because there is no happiness sprouting from it.
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.
Perhaps, because she saved one life, the rest would have to fall. Her actions led to terrible suffering for Creon and his family; almost like a curse. Haemon, her fiancé, was so in love with her that he actually fought with his father, the King, for her rights. When he could not do anything about Antigone being buried alive, he stabbed himself out of grief for his love with Antigone and anger towards his father. Because of the son’s death, Creon’s wife, too, killed herself out of grief.
The women in the novel are too shallow for our sympathy or admiration A character that can be described as being wholly shallow is Myrtle. We learn that she ‘lay down and cried’ after finding out her husband Wilson ‘borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in.’ Myrtle is distraught after finding out her husband is not rich nor a ‘gentleman’, as he made little effort on their wedding day. In the broader scheme of things, this should not matter; however Myrtle seems fixated on this and concludes from this one situation that their marriage is doomed. The suit can be seen as being representative of Wilson – he will always be reliant on others to survive in his sorrowful world, as seen when Wilson is close to begging Tom not to sell the car elsewhere. Myrtle despises
“she should have died hereafter, there would have been a time for such a word.” was what Macbeth said in Act 5 scene 5, after the Lady Macbeth’s suicide. His bland reaction suggests that he has become numb to all emotions, and that he no longer feels attachment to Lady Macbeth. As Macbeth gradually grew distant from Lady Macbeth, who had taken charge of most parts of his life, such as when she had planned Duncan’s murder for him, he began to lose his source of control and therefore, lost control in his life due to ambition over-taking his love for Lady
There's racial discrimination toward them, Sanaubar leaving, Hassan's harelip, and the soldiers' taunting of Hassan. We soon learn, however, that Amir has anything but a charmed existence. Amir's mother died giving birth to him. It's clear he feels a great lack in his life, and he throws himself into poetry and writing, we think, partly as a tribute to her. In addition, Amir feels an enormous amount of responsibility for his mother's death – as if he not only caused it but, more sinisterly, was responsible for it.