Created for the festival of Dionysus in 431 BC, Medea is a controversial study of impassioned love turned into furious hatred. It examines the liability of various characters for the final tragedy of the play, whence Medea butchers her two innocent children. It also disregards the concept of ‘heroes’ common to dramas in Euripides time. The clash of two contrasting characters — one, a barbarian woman with extreme emotional reactions, and her husband, a vain man of civilisation who lacks empathy — allows Euripides to explore whether it is the heart or the head that drives humans to commit inhumane acts. Medea’s extreme emotional attachments can only be expressed through extreme measures.
It was a place of slave labor laundries from the 18th to the late-20th centuries to house "fallen women", a term used to imply female sexual promiscuity. Asylums for such girls and women and others believed to be of poor moral character, such as prostitutes and teenage pregnancy. Harwood critiques her society for its oppressive treatment of women who are unprotected by marriage or respectability. So then she uses imagery to emphasize the hypocritical nature of the Christian Institutes that perpetrate it. Harwood recalls to our mind the sympathy for the young women portrayed in the poem and wants the readers to contemplate the sexism within
During this time, she raised their son Telemachus to adulthood. Penelope's character is complex. There is a deep unrest throughout the poem about how Penelope's relationships with the suitors will play out. There are seeds of doubt about Penelope, sown by the shade of Agamemnon who says to Odysseus in Hades that his own wife, Clytemnestra will give "an evil reputation to all women, even on one who does good" (199). This deepens the possibility that Penelope might prove unfaithful to Odysseus and builds suspense throughout the narrative.
Both plays show fearless women who intervene with political matters and cause tension within the kingdom. Lady Macbeth questions her husband and pressures him into being more aggressive, while Antigone defies Creon by burying her dead brother, Polynieces. Both Lady Macbeth and Antigone defy the social and political expectations of their society by adopting the expected behaviors of the opposite gender. Lady Macbeth disregards the social and political norms by wanting to become more masculine and aggressive. While she prepares to exterminate the current king, she cries out “Unsex me here,/ and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty.” (Shakespeare.
Miller encourages the responders recognition of Abigail as an autocratic power within the play by threatening the weak and vulnerable. This is show at the end of Act 1 with the repetition of "I saw ________ with the devil!" The climax of Abigail's confession creates such intensity within the scene the girls join in. Through Miller's use of dramatic stage structure exposes ____________ between John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth, *Elizabeth pauses, and turns her back on Proctor* this shows her reluctancy to confront Proctor on his affair with Abigail. As Proctor own feelings of disgust overcome him, his confession to the affair with Abigail brings him forward to the court where Danforth's ultimatum, "you are either with the court or you will be courted, there is no in between" conveys the juxtaposing value the town of Salem holds, you conform or become exiled.
[2] The rhyme scheme of this poem is abbaabbacdcdcd. This Petrarchan sonnet uses the last six lines (sestet) to answer the first eight lines (octave). Summary Wordsworth gives a fatalistic view of the world, past and future. The words "late and soon" in the opening verse describe how the past and future are included in his characterization of mankind. The author knows the potential of humanity's "powers," but fears it is clouded by the mentality of "getting and spending."
Later, in lines three and four, the “dark webs” are the swan’s webbed feet, because their feet are black. Also in line four, Leda’s breast is personified as being helpless as in the entire poem, she is helpless and weak to the bird’s attack Then Yates describes how the swan grabs her neck and presses himself against her. In lines five and six, Yates describes Leda’s fingers as terrified, personifying her fingers as being scared, noting how they are a part of her and how she is also terrified. In line six, Yates uses the phrase “feathered glory” to describe the swan’s genitals, as the swan is supposed to be the Greek God, Zeus and ‘glory’ was used to describe something great or divine like the gods. The structure of the poem consists of the form, rhyme and meter of the entire piece.
The Feminist Approach in Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” In Margaret Atwood's “Siren Song”, the feminist analysis is applied in various ways. This poem describes how a woman very cleverly takes advantage of the negative perception that man has compelled on a woman, by using a mental approach to prey on the man’s ego in order to destroy them. It reflects the sexual excitement of man towards woman, thus revealing the prevailing qualities of womanhood that validate the wrong perception of men being greater than women. Atwood integrates the feminist analysis in the “Siren Song” while also making a reference to Greek myths to prove a solid point about the weakness and idiocy of men. The speaker is one of the three sirens, which in this poem points to Greek mythology.
“…a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms…” (marriam-webster.com). It is from this basic definition of Romanticism that one can begin to distill the essence of it to the core aspects that Benjamin Franklin was beginning to develop and demonstrate in his time. Romantics wished to focus upon the self in regards to nature and their own human condition. They wanted to free their minds and, in a sense, become enlightened. They wished to explore the facets of their own world by improving themselves and become more than what they were.
Mo Pikes Ms. Lam Honors 4, 1st Period 6 March 2012 Siren Song This poem is about deception and trickery. It is a story from Greek mythology where half-bird half-women looking creatures, called sirens, use their beautiful voices in a song to lure men in that are sailing the sea. It was written in 1939; sirens can also be found in the Odyssey, where they play the same exact game of deceiving men into believing their lullabies. Once they have drawn in their prey, the sirens kill them. The sailors see skulls of dead men that have fallen for the siren’s song.