Fighting for Life “If we must die, let it not be like hogs.” Claude McKay says it all with his opening line in the short poem “If We Must Die.” A little over a year ago I was introduced to college baseball. It was not the same game I was used to. It was bigger, faster and more physical. In order for me to make the team I was going to have to fight for it. In McKay’s poem he illustrates a theme of the pure courage and will power needed to take part in battle, the grinding and grit needed when your back is up against a wall, that feeling that today could be your last.
Correspondingly in the Volunteer Asquith uses language to present the power and fulfilment of joining the war by saying that life before was ‘Half his life’’. This shows the distinct lack of fulfilment in the clerk’s life before going to war as it is as if war would complete his life and therefore if he were to die at war at least he would have lived a completely fulfilled life. Both The Volunteer and The dead use the structure of the poem to show how the war changes men’s lives for the better. The Volunteer uses the first stanza to show how drab life was before war and the dead uses the first stanza for a similar reason to present life as less ‘glorious’ before death. However it should be noted that the Volunteer is significantly more optimistic and idealistic of war than the attitudes presented in The Dead and An Irish Airman Foresees Death because Yeats is more preoccupied with the pleasure that flying brought to the soldier, ‘ impulse of delight’, neither of
In particular these are heavy letters and help to create an image of the athlete’s foot hitting the floor while running. The first stanza also begins the continual two pairs of end rhyming couplets within each stanza: “Race & Place” (L.1-2) and “By & High” (L.3-4). This gives the poem a consistent rhythm and gives the idea of an athlete running in a race. Within the second stanza the reader is introduced to the idea that the athlete is being taken to a cemetery: “And set you at your threshold down” (L.7) Threshold conjures figurative imagery of the athlete at a point of entry, otherwise known as a ‘tombstone’. The last line of this stanza connotes that the athlete is within a cemetery: “Townsman of a stiller town.” (L.8) The word stiller creates a sense of complete silence, a trait associated with the deceased.
The movie shows ‘rags to riches’ story of Braddock. In the movie, James J. Braddock, a professional boxer and light heavyweight contender, is shown economically stable and prosperous before the Great Depression. He lost all his prosperity when he fractured his stronger right hand while vying for heavyweight championship. When the injured Braddock couldn’t get a comeback from his injury, he was eventually fired and was compelled to live in a critical condition with no money and job to support his family. After great determination and hard work, he is able to pull off a major comeback in his career.
The poem is about the life of a young man who went to war with the idea that that it was a brave and noble act and upon returning home he would be showered with thanks and parades on his bravery. However, the soldier comes back with both his legs amputated and his arm. The third person narrative of the poem makes the poem impersonal but to an extent that Owen's audience can sympathize and maybe even some can relate to the disabled soldier. The story of the soldier's life is put down in chronological order in which the poem starts with how happy he was when "Town used to swing so gay.." (Line 7) to when "There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year..." (Lines 14-15). The soldier's reminiscence of the past makes the reader pity the soldier as he was a youthful and lively young man who was innocent in the sense that he was living a vibrant life,
Now, it was time to find my brother. My family made our way from the bleachers to the tormenting hot pavement. We were all getting extremely sweaty while searching for my brother among the cluster of people. At last, I spotted him, or at least what I thought might be him. The person walking towards me resembled my brother; however, I was waiting to hear
Browning’s poem ‘The Patriot’ is the familiar ‘old story’ of a man whom was once celebrated but has since fallen from grace and is now facing death by hanging. Browning structures his story in six stanzas, each of five lines, which each narrate a separate stage in the narrator’s rise and subsequent dramatic fall. Browning’s use of roman numerals helps to reinforce the linear chronology of the poem and to suggest a causal connection between the narrator’s actions, whilst in power, and his downfall. Browning’s choice of setting in the unspecified past, as suggested by the epigraph ‘an old story’ and the archaic vocabulary choices such as ‘Alack’ and ‘trow’ and an unspecified European city, as suggested by the ‘church-spires’ which ‘flamed’ with the flags of celebration that welcome the patriot in the opening stanza, make this narrative almost universally applicable to the rise and fall of leaders and icons, whether political, religious or cultural in any time or place. Indeed it could be argued that this poem reflects aspects of Browning’s own, often fruitless, pursuit of popular recognition and critical acclaim in his own lifetime.
Wilfred Owen uses contrast in this poem to help show the major changes for example “ There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace” This talks about before the war he would have people wanting his picture. But now no-one wants to see him, he looks old even though he is still young and his back will not support him. Many soldiers lost their limbs in battle and this poem helps people realise the pain the soldiers went through both physical and mental. “Mental Cases” is about the men who went crazy due to the events of World War I. it helps explain how these men looked with the use of half-rhymes, metaphors and similes “ drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skullls teeth wicked?” This talks about what the men looked like after going crazy.
In a brief voiceover, Colin tells us that running is the way his family has always coped with the world's troubles, but that in the end, the runner is always alone and cut off from spectators, left to deal with life on his own. Elliot Barnes-Worrell portrays the fluent speaker but unfocused Colin who finds an escape from the bleakness of his life in an effective way. The death of his cherished father, clashes with his mum’s new boyfriend, and his reckless escapades, courting trouble with feckless best mate Jase (Jack McMullen) all leading to a spell in a Young Offenders Institute - through the self- titled solo sport. Colin made a name for himself through disgracing and hurting the people he loved. However Barnes
Have No Fear, Death is Here! In the following three poems, "That Time of Year", "Crossing the Bar", and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"; they portray a positive view of death to help the reader reconcile dying. In “That Time of Year”, the poet Alfred Tennyson prepared his friend, not for the approaching literal death of his body, but the metaphorical death of his youth and passion. “In me though see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon must expire,” this quote from the poem explains how the poet says he is the ember lying on the dying flame of youth, and that as the death proceeds, his youth will finally expire. Not all can be forever young, but sooner or later must begin to age and every breath you take, you draw closer to the end.