Capitalist imagery is a key symbol used by John Cooper Clarke to describe his love for the recipient of this poem whilst also satirising the modern age of Britain: “I wanna be your vacuum cleaner Breathing in your dust” The poet, by saying that he wishes to be the recipients “vacuum cleaner” automatically brings a homely and domestic image to the readers mind, perhaps suggesting that he is longing for a life and a home together with the addressee. This makes it a very useful symbol for Cooper Clarke as he uses it to express the profundity of his love. This is supported by the alliteration of the soft ‘c’ sound in the line, insinuating a feeling of comfort and security for the couple. As a modern audience, this is the image that is brought to mind for us but in terms of the context of production and Cooper Clarke’s punk audience in the 1970’s, this line would have brought a different feeling to light. A “vacuum cleaner” would be seen as symbol for capitalist society and the ideal of normality that Cooper Clarke’s audience would be fighting by dressing as they did or listening to the music and poetry that they did.
The poem “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake is about a young child who is thrust into the occupation of scrubbing soot from chimneys after his mother died and father sold him. During London’s Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century, this was an accepted practice for many poor and orphaned children. They were exploited and stripped of their childhood simply because they could fit inside chimneys. Blake’s theme is to depict the harsh life of child chimney sweepers, showing disdain for this profession. The innocent speaker tells of Tom Dacre, a child chimney sweeper.
However, readers do not notice this unoriginal style. Instead, readers notice his ability to put his own mark on the old Elizabethan style, and with a quietness to his style with versatility and insight, with humor and spontaneity. Certainly, there are many points in which Lamb imitates the Elizabethan writers. However, he employs a unique way of telling his stories so they conjure fond memories of a happier time. For example, Bridget remembers the great joy of the day when Ilia bought the Folio Edition of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher and presented it to her after many days of eying the book displayed in the stall and after many thoughts about how the money spent on the book could be managed by curtailing some of the provisions of their life.
Azuba Afzal Azuba 1 M.phil English.Literature Term Paper Modern usage of Mechanicals tends to make life easy but unfortunate humans cannot escape from suffering. Seamus Heaney is recognized Irish poet of modern poetry .Heaney’s world is surrounded by past and present, thoughts and emotions, concerning the Irish troubles and human experiences. He tends to be influenced by use of mechanics and aggravates its use excessively in his poems. The themes of Machinery can clearly be identified in the poems making him a true representer of 20th century. One can observe the pastoral favor of Irish landscape with his mastery skills to use machine as his tools to describe the intensity of his feelings.
Blake employs the use of diction, tone, and figurative language to depict the unique theme of each poem. While each poem shows the suffering of the sweepers, the first poem theme is of optimism, while the second poem is more cynical and depressing. Blake portrays the suffering of chimney sweeps in both of the poems through the strong use of comparable diction. Connotations of the words black and white are used throughout both poems. White is associated with innocence, while black is a reference to misery.
The use of diction in “The Chimney Sweeper” helps in understanding the poem. Blake expresses his poem as a young chimney sweeper. This gives his poetic voice creditability because the subject of the poem is chimney sweepers. Using first person creates a deeper sense of sympathy in the reader. The young boy, the poetic voice, lost his mother while he was very young.
Fantine a factory worker is fired because she has a bastard child due to her now being jobless a prostitute and became sick. Valjean realised what happened to her and takes care of her. Inspect Javert finally manage to reveal Valjean for who he was. Fantine dies and give Valjean the authority to take care of her child, Cosette. Valjean escapes and finds the child and lived in a church for 10 years.
November 30th, 2009 Symbolism in the Glass Menagerie “I have a poet’s weakness for symbols,” says Tom Wingfield, the narrator and a major character in the play “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. In Tom’s opening speech he says,” I give you the truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” Through the eyes of Tom, the reader gets a glance into the life of his family; his mother who clings to the past, his sister, Laura, who is too fragile to function in society, and himself, a struggling man who works in a warehouse to pay the bills for his family. Symbols are a major part of this play. One of the major symbols is the fire escape, which has a different meaning for everyone in the family. For Tom, it is a way for him to leave his daily life of paying bills and working behind him.
When he returns from the movies he mentions the magician’s trick “We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail. “ The magicians trick juxtaposes with Tom’s inability to escape from his family. Juxtaposition is used here to show the freedom of the magician and Tom feeling trapped. The coffin represents Tom’s life to which he is confined and the nails symbolize the emotional constraints and an obligation Tom has towards his crippled sister Laura. Laura herself “lives in a world of her own—a world of—little glass ornaments” and the breaking of the animals by Tom foreshadows his abandonment of fraternal duties towards her.
The poem is divided into six quatrains, each following an AABB rhyme scheme (Todd, Bella). In the first stanza, the author introduces the teller of the poem, a young boy whose mother had perished and was consequently sold by his father into working as a chimney sweeper (Kennedy, Gioia 441).With this introduction, William Blake gives rise to a dark and sad scenario in an attempt to capture the reader’s emotions. This is further supported when the young child recalls on how he couldn’t even pronounce the word “sweep” when he was introduced into the chimney sweeping business. This would constitute a direct allegation of his young age. In addition to this, he tells us with a childish and innocent tone of some of the harsh conditions which child chimney sweepers like him had to endure, “So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep,” (Kennedy, Gioia 441).