He was never waving to the people that passed in and out of his life, but crying for help all along. In the first verse both physical and emotional isolation are explored with the imagery of a drowned man. The first line, “Nobody heard him”, introduces the physical isolation of the man as he was so far away no one could hear, but also could mean that no one was listening and understanding him, he was isolated by having no one to turn to. There is a confusion of tenses, “the dead man…lay moaning”, however, the poet is using the dead man as a symbol for her own feelings of loneliness. The man really wanted to be helped; he wanted to be heard, especially in his time or urgent need.
A Cry for Help The poem Not Waiving But Drowning, written by Stevie Smith, expresses the gloomy death of a man due to drowning. The beginning of the poem tells us that “nobody heard him, the dead man,” before he died and even though he is dead, “still he lay moaning.” This poem describes a man that appeared to be a well-rounded individual, however, in reality described a man with a life-long inner struggle that ultimately resulted in his death. The water in this poem symbolizes life in general. This man was almost submerged in water throughout his life. He had a hard time keeping his head above water.
Sassoon’s poetry described the horrors of the war and how disgusting it is. Two poems which show the perspective of war is: Firstly, Counter-Attack, which describes how war is like; and secondly, died of wounds, which show the condition of war. The poems relate to the feeling and emotion war creates. Also it shows how horrible war is. The techniques that Sassoon has used in the poems are: imagery, simile, metaphor and onomatopoeia.
Ones who died from these toxic gases were in a painful and miserable death. The ones that survived will never forget these images they saw and horrific experiences they had went through. Through Wilfred Owen’s imagery and Irony’s in his poem we can detect the tone, “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a horrific battle scene from World War I. The strong use of figurative language helps to interpret the real meaning of war. In the first line, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, shows us that the troops are so tired that they look like old beggars, slouching from being so drowsy.
Not So Sweet Nor Becoming Wilfred Owen was a man of two professions: writing and fighting. As a soldier in World War 1, Owen was horrified by his experiences and the tragedies he witnessed. These memories motivated him to write poems that relayed the truths of war. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is perhaps the most famous of these pieces. When looking for a poem to analyze, this one jumped out at me; immediately upon reading its title, I thought of another piece of art that references the same phrase.
All these things are shown many times throughout the play but there are certain times that stand out more than others. Hamlet’s being suicidal and his depression takes over most of his thoughts and they are two main characteristics he shows. During his soliloquies most things he talks about is himself being upset or not wanting to live. He shows his depression by saying, “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” (I ii 133-134). He is really upset about his mother and his uncle, but also his father dying.
“The Weary Blues” is about a man singing the blues and how he wished he were dead. “Got the Weary Blues and can’t be satisified-I ain’t happy no mo’ and I wish that I had died.” This man feels all alone, depressed and feels like life is not worth living anymore. Langston had these same feelings and writing his poems was a way of him expressing his feelings. “Too Blue”, another Langston poem about depression and giving up on life. “But I ain’t got neither bullet nor gun- and I’m too blue to look for one.” This poor man is so down in the dumps that he can’t even find the energy to get up and get a gun to take his life.
Robert Browning attains a reputation for “oddness”, as the novelist Henry James termed it, for his difficult and obscure written poems. Browning’s poems are written in Dramatic Monologue. The nature of this monologue is almost as if you are ease dropping on a conversation between two people. According to Anderson et al. (2011:97) Dramatic Monologue is a device whereby the poet invents a character to provide the voice and opinion represented in the text.
Poetry differs from prose in its compactness, emotional appeal and its weight of content. There are many examples in writing such as figures of speech, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, consonance, assonance, and imagery that let you know you are reading a poem. In a Prose piece you are bring an event or situations to life through literature. Prose is more of a story telling form of art that poetry. A poem written in prose instead of using verse or line breaks, but preserving characteristics of a poem may is known as a “prose-poem”.
So I imagine in my mind a man looking down from heaven watching his body die. I think the writer is referring to himself as being beyond being saved, but he is still crying for help. When I read, “I was much farther out than you thought.” I think that the person he refers to as you, would be the person that he drank his alcohol with, and he is saying, I was a lot father gone than you thought I was. Then it goes on to say for the first time, “Not waving but drowning.” Which to me, it is said sarcastically, in a sense that he is crying out for help, “Poor chap, he always loved larking and now he’s dead… they said.” but no one believes him. The poem uses imagery about his death as drowning.