Compare the methods the poets use to explore a character’s sense of identity in ‘Casehistory: Alison (head injury)’ and in one other poem from Character and voice. In "Casehistory: Alison (head injury)" and "The Hunchback in the Park" we find two poems that treat about the character's sense of identity by highlighting the idea of isolation, disability and first appearance. In "Casehistory: Alison (head injury)" the poem tells us that Alison has lost her memory perhaps she doesn't remember anything including her family and herself and this is shown by saying ' I would like to have known my husband's wife, my mother's only daughter '. In the previous sentence the idea of isolation is emphasized by the past tense which indicates the fact that she doesn't know who her family is and the tone of the phrase suggests the fact that she's talking as a stranger. In "The Hunchback in the Park" the writer directly tells us that the character is lonely and doesn't have anyone that loves him because of his appearance and this is shown by saying ' A woman figure without fault Straight as a young elm Straight and tall from his crooked bones That she might stand in the night After the locks and chains'.
In his case it’s only himself and being alone is a sign of loneliness. “Oh will she stay with me will she stay”. This quote also has a sign of loneliness as he once again REPEATS “will she stay”. The reader also gets a sign of him being a little bit paranoid due to his loneliness and he badly wants her to stay with him seeing as he has no one else. Therefore, both characters are in need for a woman to fill up their loneliness.
‘Crooks said sharply, “You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me.”‘ This passage from the text illustrates what loneliness has done to Crooks. Just like Crooks Curley’s Wife and Lennie are both lonely too. The barn is where they all feel safe.
In the poem “Diary of a Piano-Tuner’s wife” I believe the wife is suffering from a life of loneliness and lack of attention she does not receive from her husband while he is out “keeping the world in tune”. The wife is trying to teach her husband a lesson by throwing chaos into his well-organized life by digging the bed-row stones away, therefore throwing his garden out of order. She is ultimately trying to seek his attention and cause him to acknowledge her in any way. This is evident in the verse, “So only meanness every now and then is strong enough to make him stop and feel”. Perhaps his neglect is related to his own feelings of trauma during and after the war.
The reader can infer that she has no one to spend her time with. Her loneliness is apparent when she gives her fur coat human characteristics. When she takes it out, she talks like it is an old friend: “What has been happening to me? Said the sad little eyes” (6) .Her assigning life-like qualities to inanimate objects shows how isolated she feels. Her descriptions of strangers in the park also give the reader a feeling of just how alone she feels.
In this poem ‘The Lost Heritage’ by Heather Buck, the poet is seemingly concerned about forgotten past; how man is now alienated from nature when at one point, man and nature shared a very close and warm relationship. The poet expresses her views that we are so engrossed and lost in our present lives, that we have forgotten the legacies of the past. Our lives are ‘indelibly printed by one another’. Buck claims that our children today do not have a role; they are merely objectified as something sitting on the floor surrounded by a myriad of towering adults. They are deprived of learning the ‘intricate’ and colourful patterns that have shaped their lives, and thus, have lost their heritage.
This contrasts with the way that Miss Emily avoids going out and being with other people. It is first noted when the town’s peoples reaction to her death. Faulkner writes “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for the fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant-a combined
Even more painful is the fact that she remembers very little about her previous life: “I [can] remember my name, my age, that I [am] a woman, but death swallowed the rest” (4). She attaches herself to different humans or “hosts”, her first being a lonely poet. Helen and this character have an unspoken bond. While the poet cannot see her ghost, they are learning from each other. This host’s life is similar to that of writer Emily Dickinson, in that they both are isolated poets who express darkness and death in a lot of their work.
“Rose for Emily” Theme Essay In the Short story, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character Emily Grierson is viewed by the unnamed narrator as an “unchanging monument to the past.” The narrator of the story seems to pity Emily, and never truly indentifies them self as an individual, but remains hidden behind the collective voices and gossip of the townspeople. As the story goes on, the narrator, also without realizing it, fails to change their thought of Emily’s character even when the hidden, repulsive truth is discovered in Emily’s House at the end of the story. Resistance to change is shared both by Emily and the narrator becomes the story’s central theme: the idea of resisting change and the un-acceptance of the evolution of time into the present and future, by living in the past. In actions and thoughts shown through flashbacks after the beginning of the story where Faulkner describes her death, he describes the attitude changes in Jefferson as time passes and a newer generation comes about. It is evident that as time passes, the people of Jefferson as well as her dying father become forceful (needs to be a different word) towards her.
When reading both poems, readers are placed on edge, feel unnerved and experience uncertainty for the poets and feel equally helpless. In ‘The House’, it states ‘To leave the house dark’ which gives the impression that the vicious and energetic wind is no longer in motion because the sudden stop in the line creates a dramatic and abrupt pause to the energy which was being portrayed by the wind before. This dramatic stop could be mirroring the sudden darkness falling over the house, again, creating a dramatic sense of insecurity as the comforting light fades away. In both poems, caesura or lack of caesura creates a specific affect; in ‘The New House’, on line four, the winds energy is dramatically halted for the account. This lack of caesura conveys the winds, but also the poets, thoughts and the progression of thoughts.