Explore how the writer presents her ideas about death in conscientious objector. Conscientious Objector is written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It expresses her strong views on pacifism. The poem is written from the viewpoint of a conscientious objector and uses personification as one of its key poetic devices. The title of the poem gives us a clear indication of the theme.
In the case of Frost’s poem, “Home Burial”, and Poe’s short story, “A Cask of Amontillado”, the theme of death plays an essential role in each piece of literature. Although the theme of death is dealt with differently in each piece, “Home Burial” and “A Cask of Amontillado” rely heavily on miscommunication between characters to explore the theme of death. Death itself, in each story, couldn’t be used any differently. In a literal sense, the death of a couple’s child and subsequent burial begins the action of “Home Burial”, while in “A Cask of Amontillado”, the death of Fortunato and premature burial are the resolution to the story. So, “A Cask of Amontillado” concerns itself mainly with the theme of revenge and “Home Burial” concerns itself with the theme of mourning, in the scope of the overall arching theme of death.
Emily Thomas Professor Marshall English 1102 13 February 2012 The Experience of Death and Denial Throughout Life Although Miss Emily and Granny Weatherall are very different on the outside, their shared internal values and the way they experience death and denial are very similar. Death and denial can both create a significant impact on one’s life by causing many emotional and psychological problems. Death is something everyone has to experience in his or her life whether it is just a friend or a family member. Death can come by surprise or you can watch someone slowly die in agony, while being in denial can create the same effect. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Katherine Ann Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” they both examine the central theme of death and denial throughout the two short stories.
Although it was just one unfortunate couple so terribly disturbed, they may represent the thousands of unnoticed tragedies that occur. The poem depicts one tragic death paralleling it with the loss of love and familiarity. The poem is from a woman, whose husband had recently died, as an expression of her sentiments. I believe the poem was a monologue and the woman was speaking to herself in a loss. It could also be interpreted as a funeral speech because she makes strict orders to aid her mourning.
Death has to be accepted but is not always understood. It is not always concrete. In the poems “I could not stop for Death” and “The silence of Women” death is the issue at hand. In the poems the carriage ride is the symbol for death and the angry women are also a sign for death. “Because I could not stop for Death” is about someone seeing her death every day and different parts of her life she has gone through that lead up to her death.
In the two short stories, “Lives of The Dead” by Tim O’Brien and “In The Cemetery Where Al Johnson is Buried” by Amy Hempel, a common theme of death is presented to the reader. More specifically than just death, is the idea of coping and dealing with the deaths of others. Although both stories are completely different from each other we see this similar theme develop in very similar ways. Both stories deal with the idea of coping with the death of friends, through the use of humor. We see that in “Lives of The Dead” many of the U.S. soldiers, of Vietnam, use humor to deal with the constant reality of death that surrounds them.
Part 2: Analysis of the Death of the Moth: The author’s consideration of life and death through death of a moth. A “bead of pure life”, the moth, which Virginia Woolf values is her determined symbol of the being. (106) The author uses narration of her own individual experience in observation of struggling insect in order to illustrate best the idea carried in the story. She shows how a moth flies from one end of the window to the other and at latter on, it lays pathetically on the window panel, waiting for its fate. There is quite a great lesson to be learnt in this story as will be seen in this writing.
In the first stanza, fourth line it says “of grey unrest moving across the land.” This could be interpreted as death itself, creeping up on her to take her precious soul away. Forever. “…Moving across the land” means that many have died where she lives, and she is just the next victim of death’s cold grasp. She may not know if she is exactly next to be ripped of her life in death’s cruel game, but she knows that it will find her sooner or later. Even in a game of hide-n-seek, the seeker always wins eventually She accepts death in a manner that is almost calming.
However the vision of death it presents is rather threatening. Moreover, the extract from Dracula relates to the theme of death at the end, rather than throughout. It relates to the death of all living organisms, unlike the poem, which merely correlates with the death of a human, the poet herself. The poem of Emily Dickinson, describes her death right the way through the poem. In comparison, the extract from Dracula is actually much more descriptive of the journey towards the tomb.
Reading her poem about preferring to be isolated quickly transited to being a lot more depressing in her latter poems. “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” shows a darker side to Dickinson’s writing. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,/ And Mourners to and fro “ (1-2). Dickinson writes about a funeral and describes it as if it were her own. Her dark tone speaking of death lead her literary mentor Thomas Higginson to “ advise her not to publish her work because of her violation of contemporary literary convention” (Dickinson 1).