In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, death is a reoccurring factor. Hamlet, who has recently faced the death of his father, is stricken with grief as he does not understand exactly what death is. Elizabethans all believed in the afterlife. Everyone strongly believed in ghosts, God, witches, and eventually ending up in either heaven or hell. Due to these beliefs and the complexity of Hamlet’s character, it is inevitable that his thoughts of death would wander outside the lines of his religion.
In John Donne’s sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud” the speaker illustrates the mortality of death and addresses the fear people associate death with. Throughout history death has been an effective method of control, ultimately causing fear among men. Donne uses figurative language, statements of why death should not be proud, and religious beliefs to relinquish this fear. Donne uses many forms of figurative language throughout this sonnet. The beginning of the sonnet states, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee” (line 1) Death is apostrophized, being directly spoken to as if this entity were a person.
“Floundering like a man in fire or lime” The literal images depict the horror of death in war, abolishing the romantic notions of war set up previously by jingoistic poets of the time, such as Jesse Pope. Owen goes on to further confront these patriotic views in the final four lines of the poem. “My friend you would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mori.” This sardonic address to the aggressive nationalist views of the era causes a strong reaction in readers as they realize the truth about war – how horrific and desolate the scene actually is. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” explores another aspect of a soldier’s life in World War One. Death is corrupt and vile, and the soldiers must suffer all by themselves.
The poem Dulce et Decorum Est is filled with many disturbing images, death and suffering. Wilfred Owen is able to portray his perception of war by using strong imagery to show how barbaric the war was and how life is so easily wasted. The poet uses the figures of speech, the simile and metaphor in one sentence to convey the devastating way in which soldiers die. This can be seen when it is written, “And floundering like a man in fire or lime….As under a green sea I saw him drowning,”(line12-14)by doing this Wilfred Owen successfully compares how soldiers died at that time to be something that a human should normally not endure. This reveals the brutality and waste of life experienced.
This story depicts not only the physical elements of death and the conflicts suffered because of it, but the psychological ones as well. Throughout every story there is an underlying theme, which is a generally reoccurring subject or idea conspicuously evident in a literary work. In this short story, I believe the theme the writer is trying to portray is the greed and pure ignorance of man. In our world, one must die to have lived. There is no cheating this, no matter who you are.
In this paper, I am going to compare and contrast John Updike’s “Dog’s Death” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. The basis of comparison will be the themes, narrative styles, uses of personification, content, form, tones, and languages, among other aspects. I chose these two poems because they talk about an issue of universal relevance to each one of us, which is death. Both poems explore the subject of death, and they show how it is unavoidable, in spite of our efforts to pre-empt it or our pre-occupations. In the poem ‘I Could Not Stop for Death’, the speaker says: “And I had put away/My labor and my leisure too” (6-7).
Dulce et Decorum Est Question: Choose a poem which explores a powerful emotion. Show how the poet has used techniques of poetry to make the power of the emotion clear to you. “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen is a poem which explores a powerful emotion. It is a bitter, angry, anti-war poem which clearly presents the horrors of war and gives a graphic account of life in the trenches in WW1. The poem also gives a horrific description of a soldier dying in a gas attack, while his comrades look on helplessly.
This is the greatest poem in the world due to effective use of poetic devices in order to touch on the themes of death, honor and revenge. To enhance these themes McCrae uses other forms of poetic devices such as alliteration, “ In Flanders Fields the poppies blow” (McCrae). Personification, “the larks, still bravely singing, fly” and metaphor, “The torch; be yours to hold it high” (McCrae) Firstly, the poems main focus is on war, thus implying death. McCrae’s poems included many uses of death. .
Instead focuses more on the social interaction of those dealing with the death. In her essay she writes “death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levels.” I feel this statement is flawed, in many ways. It puts us all on the same playing field. But that is unrealistic. None of us deal with things the same.
Whispers of Immortality depicts imagery of hissing rumours; reminding the reader that in life they create the image of themselves they wish to remain after they relinquish this power in death. The almost threatening tone of the poem attempts to evoke fear in the reader by reminding them of this mortality. The whispers that create this everlasting reputation bring to mind a poem of Dante’s, from which Eliot takes the epigraph to Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The epigraph depicts a character from Dante’s Inferno, who after death takes exhaustive steps to avoid saying anything wrong, that may be carried back to Earth from the underworld and affect his reputation or further his punishment in purgatory. Eliot’s description of ‘Daffodil bulbs instead of balls’ occupying the eyes of the corpse,