In The poem “Root Cellar”, Theodore Roethke describes the environment inside a dark, wet, and unkempt root cellar in which you would not expect life to be able to thrive. He describes this environment using a variety of descriptive words throughout the poem which would indicate a particular distaste for the cellar in all its filth, but it is not until the final lines in the poem that the reader learns that the speaker is, in fact, amazed by the existence of life in this place. Roethke uses imagery, alliteration, and personification to portray his attitude that although he indicates throughout, a thorough dislike for the cellar, life in the cellar, amazingly, is surviving and thriving despite deplorable conditions that would suggest the opposite result. Roethke uses imagery to show his attitude that life in the cellar, is defying the odds by describing the cellar and its inhabitants in the first eight lines of the poem as something repulsive indicating that the cellar is “Dank as a ditch” (1) with a “Congress of stinks” (6) and plant life that is “Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates” (4) thus creating a scene in which everything is at its most undesirable state through the use of negative verbs such as dank, stinks, lolling, obscenely, and mildewed, all of which bring to mind the worst possible environment one could be in, and makes it seem to the reader that Roethke does not have a very high opinion of the cellar. The speaker also uses alliteration to show his attitude toward the cellar as being that of loathing but amazement by using the hard sound of the “D” to show the filth of the cellar.
[qtd in Heller 5]. In all of Faulkner’s fiction, there is an element of spiritual annihilation. Faulkner revered modernist writer, historian and sociologist, is known for capturing the raw beauty of the rural South in all its dark complexity. While his passion of knotting together past, present and future has overwhelmed some critics, others have responded to reality of his writing. Faulkner needs a narrative technique that would seamlessly tie one scene to another.
Mildew and spiders’ webs grow within, and unpleasant smells manifest themselves within root cellars. From the first glance at the title, the reader instantly gathers that the tone is one of being displeased and somber. The diction unveiled the tone, and the grave detail protruded it. The grave detail throughout the poem displays total disgust for the root cellar which distracts the reader from the hopeful ending.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” was written in 1839. The gothic horror story has a psychological element and arguable symbols that have given rise to many critical readings. It can be viewed literally or metaphorically. The collapsing of the house down into the tarn symbolizes the ultimate collapse of the Usher family. In Poe’s short story, symbolism is the mechanism used to create understanding, images in order to establish mood, and reason to the story.
How does the exploration of the connections between two texts from different times deepen our understanding of what is constant in human nature? The comparative study of the poetry of John Donne and Margaret Edson’s play, W;t, reveals changes in context inform what we value in human nature, specifically in regards to finitude, relationships and humanity. John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, ‘Death be not proud’, ‘This is my playes last scene’ and ‘If poysonous mineralls’ explore the fear of death and the need to belittle it, whereas ‘Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse’ (‘Hymne’) and ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ (‘Valediction’) deal with the idealised, spiritual aspects of love and relationships. The need to undermine the power of death is reflected, though expressed differently, in both ‘Death be not proud’ and W;t. In ‘Death be not proud’, the personification of death, the logical argumentative structure and tone of the sonnet cohesively highlight the idea that death is not the absolute end, and can be transcended through a religious belief in salvation. In the concluding couplet, Donne affirms that after “one short sleepe” imposed upon us by death, we wake to the eternal life of salvation and in that life of the soul, “death shall be no more”.
This paragraph is found in the middle of William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”. The narrator uses description to provide the reader with a clear image of Miss Emily’s funeral. As the writer consistently jumps backwards and forwards through time in his story, this excerpt takes us back to where the story began. This paragraph exemplifies one of Faulkner’s central themes in the story: the constant struggle between the past and present. This theme is most evident in the author’s description of the very old men.
They were trying to tell a true story in a way that evokes a response from the reader. Responses of sadness, horror, hatred, disbelief, every possible response that the atrocities of the Holocaust deserved to evoke. I found the information provided alongside the poem put it into context, it was very helpful and interesting, giving the poems even more specific and less interpretational meaning. The telling of facts with flair and emotion, history lessons in a poem! I have included a selection of the poems here: STRUGGLE FOR LIFE By Frigyes Karinthy (1887-1938): poet & satirist.
The drawing shows a scary Skelton face that have different pattern around it full of sadness, pain, hurt and damage. This painting shows a dark and unfriendly feeling that crushes his spirit. The pain that the picture shows can be base on his heritage and how slavery had to go through a tough life. Alissa Goldberg even quoted “this is a really good painting it describes his life and soul must have been tough”. The author believes that the painting is mainly expressing a plot about the artist life and his mood.
This paragraph is found in the middle of William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”. The narrator uses description to provide the reader with a clear image of Miss Emily’s funeral. As the writer consistently jumps backwards and forwards through time in his story, this excerpt takes us back to where the story began. This paragraph exemplifies one of Faulkner’s central themes in the story: the constant struggle between the past and present. This theme is most evident in the author’s description of the very old men.
Second: Morality confers a compensatory value of life. And most importantly third: Age is a paralytic stasis of body and health. Then she analyzes the connection between Stevens´s poetic structures and content of his poems. Stevens´s late works seem to be nearly obsessed with experience of time and death. His most impressive and distinctive stylistic analogies to one of his favorite topics are repetitive forms which recall strongly the stasis of the end described in Vendler´s premises to Steven´s work.