The speaker dictates, “but most lay like corpses, their coverings coming undone, naked calves hard as corded wood spilling from under a cloak” (Olds Lines 12-15). The beginning of the simile “but most lay like corpses” brings back the idea that all the events happened and that the poem is not just meant to be symbolic. Also it reiterates that death is upon the reader and that the siege caused the tragedies that occurred. The second part of the simile “naked calves hard as corded wood spilling from under a cloak” again is a simile about appearance of the dead. The claves of the dead bodies have gone stiff and no longer are filled with life or the willingness to move.
Conyus uses repetition at the end of this stanza to demonstrate time, how he sat watching this horrific scene for a while as the waves came and went, taking in what he was seeing and trying to digest how this oil spill got to this point where a new morning brings a new nightmare. This line also lacks the presence of other humans in this scene; the fact that he does not comment that others are watching with him gives the idea that he alone is observing, and that he alone is going through this feeling of sadness and mourning as he watches the carcass float in the tide of regret. The imagery is infused with the idea of being forced to relive a mistake over and over again, like a recurring nightmare that does not seem to ever leave because it haunts one’s unconsciousness from the inside
I think the narrator is saying that like the sea his mother is dark and intimidating like her people who are also fishing people. In my opinion I think the mother makes the mood of the story dark and melancholy. She wants so much out of her husband and children, and when they don’t do what she wants she doesn’t talk to them. The mother puts too much pressure on the family to do what her family did. I can understand that the mother didn’t want to be alone, but as a mother you should want you kids to do better than you did and want them to succeed in life.
Throughout the story many of the objects and scenery around Rainsford are described using the words black and red. The reader associates those colors to things in our world. This in turn creates suspense, because you know that something awful is going to happen. For example, the air is described as “moist black velvet” and “it pressed its thick warm blackness upon the yacht”(15). Additionally the water is described as “blood warm waters”(15).
The overall theme of the poem is sacrifice, more specifically, for the people that you love. Throughout the poem color and personification are used to paint a picture in the reader's head. “Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees.” (46) This description is used to create a monochromatic, gloomy, and dismal environment where the poem takes
Everytime she says “here lies” an image is created of her walking down the graves and acknowledging the unnamed slaves. Both uses of anaphora add to each poem positively, and help establish the poet’s
In the sixth stanza, the ocean is personified as crying and pounding, “The crying and pounding sea” (Gluck 18). On line 4, Circe claims that she is, “sick of your world” (Gluck). This is an example of an idiom, for Circe can not become physically sick due to the human’s world but she can feel that the world is unwell and it deeply affects her. Another example of an idiom is, “they/ Sweetened right up” (Gluck 10). This is not a reference to the actual taste of sweetness but the personality development to sweet and kind
In the first two stanzas they talk about what some people are doing after they realize what dangers are happening. In the next two stanzas they talk about what starts to happen as damage sets in. in the next two stanzas they talk about the events after the damage. In the last two stanzas they talk about the last thing people would have seen before the sinking came. Gordon Lightfoot wrote the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald with the message talking about how the ship sank.
In the first stanza, Harwood tells about a memory that was told to her by someone else. It was a memory of her father taking her to the beach. The uncertain tone in the first half of the first stanza and the definite tone in the second half of the stanza emphasises the importance of the emotions she felt at the time of the event rather what happened. The imagery of the beach is portrayed as fearful - ‘sea’s edge’ can represent the danger of life and mystery
This lyric can be seen as resurrection because one knows how they died and when they’re reborn they already see the ending which referring to their death. By falling into the sea, allowed Icarus to be resurrected; which is the general symbolic perspective of seas and how it allows people to be reborn after
The rambunctious sea is an important element in the novel, it forebodes for evil and help to establish the sense anxiety . 31 “ I could see the sea from the terrace, and the lawns. It looked grey and uninviting, great rollers sweeping into the bay past the beacon on the headland” (R.,P.130). The sea carries a great secret; the secret of Rebecca’s boat is in the bottom of it . So, as people’s mood is reflected on their behavior , the sea is treated as a person whose mood is reflected on [his] behavior, the sea behaves wildly and hits the waves to reflect the horror that [he] witnesses and the big burden [he] carries and signaling a warning to the strangers .
The imagery is also used to prepare the reading for the end with the line “the air was damp, the silence close and deep”. This line showing that death was near and soon after finding this Myop comes across a dead
The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.
The speaker has endured tragic loss and after realizing the importance to carry on, she finds solace and assurance with the realization that her parents who are now dead do not care about her current actions, and she can carry on with her life knowing that the sorrow she faces will not prevail for much longer after she passes away. The speaker questions what the dead are thinking by rhetorically asking, “And what of the dead? / They lie without shoes / in their stone boats” (13-15). The metaphor about graves being stone boats shows the inability to avoid death because boats made out of stone will always sink, forever unable to rise to the surface. Just like she is swallowed up by her grief, her dead parents are the stones that were swallowed up by the waves, symbolizing death’s certitude.
The poet compared the graves like a shipwreck that is the death will take the human go down and drowning to the underground like the dead bodies in the graves. The last line “as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.” is like the rotting of the dead bodies. The second stanza there is one Simile in this
