In Norman MacCaig’s poem; Hotel Room, 12th Floor there is a sustained mood of fear of which has been created through the poets view of New York. The poet’s comments on the violence in the city uncover a frightful image of downtown New York. In this response, I will discuss how MacCaig creates this mood of fear through close examination of his poetic techniques such as: imagery, structure and sound devices. Through the use of unusual lexical choice, MacCaig successfully creates a mood of fear. Fear is created from the beginning of the poem when we read that: “a helicopter skirting like a damaged insect The Empire State Building” The word “skirting” is used to create a mood of caution and unease from the start.
The narrator is at first weary and cautious of his unknown visitor, as he hears the tapping at his door and window. Once he opens his window and in flies the Raven, he is struck with a sort of odd happiness and respect for the bird, as he says, “then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling” and even calls the Raven “lordly”. As the narrator hears the Raven speak, he is slightly shocked, but takes it in stride and simply accepts the fact that the bird can talk. In stanza twelve we begin to see the transformation of the Raven from friend to foe in the main character’s mind. While the Raven is described as still making the narrator smile in the first line of the stanza, but later in the stanza is being described as “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous”.
“My subject is War, and the pity of War. Poetry is in the pity”. This particular quote from Wilfred Owen himself uses repetition of the words ‘War’ and ‘Pity’ to give an indirect emphasis and imagery to the futility of war. This is one of many techniques in which he efficiently uses to present his perception through the reflection and writing of his poems. ‘Mental Cases’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ are two outstanding pieces created by Owen, each using techniques such as hyperboles, personification and imagery that associate the two poems, giving us, the readers, a bigger picture of what is happening in the poets eyes.
Discuss ways in which Edward Thomas presents a sense of dissatisfaction in ‘The Glory’. In The Glory Edward Thomas reflects his feelings of emptiness in comparison to the perfect beauty and glory of nature. It reflects his inability to feel happiness and displays his feelings of failure and dissatisfaction which contrast his blissful surroundings. At the start of the poem, the rhyme scheme begins in a structured and regular way, rhyming words such as “dove” and “love” which creates a positive tone. However this soon breaks up as we see the form of the poem reflect its meaning.
The Simpsons paradox is free to decode the poem as they desire, and they often kept exactly loyal to Poe’s original text creating a different meaning using only visual effects and erratic voices. At the beginning of the segment, Lisa’s voice merges into the voice of James Earl Jones (the Narrator) and the first lines of “The Raven:” are heard. One way The Simpsons used to satirize Poe’s poem was to interpret the original poem in a comically literal method. The Simpsons made fun of the rich, rhythmic language that “The Raven” is known for. The Simpsons pointed out how comical some of Poe’s supposedly deep, gloomy lines are if they were read individually of the rhythm.
‘It was a dreary night of November.’ Where Shelley describes it as a dreary night the reader gains an understanding of the setting of the scene and it is always in the back of the mind. The description of the weather undermines Frankenstein’s excitement as he is about to create the monster, this is effective as we can already conjugate an understanding of Frankenstein’s attitude towards the monster which becomes more evident further on in the passage. ‘How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch.’ Frankenstein describes his creation as a wretch, this description by Shelley is important as it conveys her own trauma of child birth. The description is very negative and horrific; the horrific nature of the description again highlights the gothic feature. There are many
Perhaps Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous piece of poetry would be “The Raven”. Poe exercised a new technique of “symbolism”. This was new for Poe because he was such a literal writer and rarely used metaphors. He would say what he wanted the reader to know and not have a concealed messaged. This poem depicts a man who feels desolate and lonely, longing for his love Lenore.
An affair that is dark in its sinister nature, and warm building up to the heat of passion that will arise. Next, as Monsieur Alcèe rides up to the house, “big rain drops began to fall.” The falling of the rain drops signifies the true beginning of the storm. Chopin significantly lets this occur at the same moment that Alcèe is first introduced in the story. Then the “water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets” showing the intensity of the storm outside, as well as the “driving” emotions building up as Monsieur Alcèe and Calixta move inside the house. Chopin further describes the rain as a “force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there.” When read closely the word “deluge” means more than a literal flood.
Hill uses sibilance in this description to show how all Kipps can see is the open sky blending into the landscape; he truly feels as though he has entered another world which is important as a setting for a ghost story. Hill uses the setting of Eel Marsh House to create a wholly different place where the supernatural happens. The marshes of Eel Marsh House appear to Kipps to be beautiful and tempting and Hill uses this to show the reader his naivety towards the supernatural and the harm it can bring. He claims to want to ‘drink in all the silence and the mysterious, shimmering beauty’ and this seems a little confusing to the reader that Kipps finds the ‘bleached bone-pale’ marshes ‘mysterious’ and beautiful. The words ‘hissing’ and ‘rattle’ are mentioned, describing the sounds of the marshes, both of which create unpleasant onomatopoeic sounds and yet Kipps finds this pleasing.
The description of this London fog is an allusion to Charles Dickens, “A Christmas carol”, a particularly famous ghost story, and also other Victorian novels. Hill is deliberately trying to evoke the feeling of a Victorian ghost story. The fog is unnerving, sinister and malevolent, it makes the familiar things become disturbing and puts the reader in an unfamiliar world. In this chapter Susan Hill uses techniques of foreshadowing in her description of the fog as the sea frets that appear at Eel Marsh House whenever Arthur hears the phantom cries of the 'shabby pony and trap' and passengers screaming and drowning in the marshes. The word 'shabby' is used because the pony has been used for this particular job a lot.