Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Analysis of Crossing the Swamp by Mary Oliver
Crossing the swamp
Oxygen mary oliver poem analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the excerpt from “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair, the narrator makes use of diction, imagery and structure to characterize her naivety and innocent memories of her fifth-grade summer world. The diction employed throughout the passage signifies the narrator’s background and setting. The narrator’s choice of words illustrates how significant those memories were to her. Specific words help build the narrator’s Midwestern background with items like the locust, cattails and the Bible.
Lucille Parkinson McCarthy, author of the article, “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum”, conducted an experiment that followed one student over a twenty-one month period, through three separate college classes to record his behavioral changes in response to each of the class’s differences in their writing expectations. The purpose was to provide both student and professor a better understanding of the difficulties a student faces while adjusting to the different social and academic settings of each class. McCarthy chose to enter her study without any sort of hypothesis, therefore allowing herself an opportunity to better understand how each writing assignment related to the class specifically and “what
Mastery Assignment 2: Literary Analysis Essay Lee Maracle’s “Charlie” goes through multiple shifts in mood over the course of the story. These mood are ones of hope and excitement as Charlie and his classmates escape the residential school to fear of the unknown and melancholy as Charlie sets off alone for home ending with despair and insidiousness when Charlie finally succumbs to the elements . Lee highlights these shifts in mood with the use of imagery and symbolism in her descriptions of nature.
In the poem, “Crossing the swamp”, Mary Oliver makes the swamp a resemblance of her and her life. And how we so often get “stuck in the mud”. In the line that says “here is swamp, here is struggle”, Oliver very bluntly put, the swamp is her struggle. Her day to day, life is a constant struggle to which she feels as if she is constantly being pulled down and not being able to achieve her full potential in whatever it is she chooses to do. The relationship between the author, Mary Oliver and the swamp is a relationship of the inevitable.
This is seen in “ I listened to the man from 1194 and knew that he was making the time up as he went along”. The protagonist is soon traumatised by the death of Alan Mannering and is psychologically affected by the guilt he feels as if he was the reason of Alan’s death. The swamp was the most prominent place in the entire suburb and was a well attracted place. The swamp symbolises wonder, freedom, adventure and guilt and growing up.
He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.
Throughout life, we all go through rough moments where we think all is lost. However, we as humans always grow from these experiences and turn into beings with a new awakening and understanding of the world. In a passage from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, the narrator describes a striking ordeal, in which a man is coping with the death of a she-wolf. Despite the cause of death being left ambiguous, this dramatic experience has a vivid effect on the main character—causing him to change and grow into a new man by the end of the passage. McCarthy uses eloquent and expressive diction to create imagery which gives the reader an understanding of the narrator’s experience, supplemented by spiritual references as well as setting changes, elucidating the deep sadness and wonder felt by the protagonist.
In Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Ginny, mother to Elliot, suffers from PTSD, and maintains a garden as a means of possessing a sense of stability. In 4/Prelude, she recalls her purpose for bringing the garden to life, and the memories it brings back when she spends time there. Through elements of style such as diction, figurative language, and imagery, Hudes establishes Ginny’s garden as a symbol of healing. In this scene, Hudes establishes Ginny’s garden as a symbol of healing, as she utilizes diction to reference Ginny’s specific reasons for constructing the garden, and memories of Vietnam.
The agony the writer is feeling about his son 's death, as well as the hint of optimism through planting the tree is powerfully depicted through the devices of diction and imagery throughout the poem. In the first stanza the speaker describes the setting when planting the Sequoia; “Rain blacked the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific, / And the sky above us stayed the dull gray.” The speaker uses a lexicon of words such as “blackened”, “cold” and “dull gray” which all introduce a harsh and sorrowful tone to the poem. Pathetic fallacy is also used through the imagery of nature;
In the journey written by Mary Oliver, she writes about the journey one has to take in order to become more aware of who they are as individuals. In order to find themselves, the reader must break away from society's control over their actions and instead find their own inner voice. The speaker in the journey reveals, symbolism, mood, tone, style, and repetition, enjambment, and dictation to captivate the readers. From the beginning of the journey, the speaker introduces us to the sudden realization, that the moment we find our own inner voice, is the exact moment we will know true bliss. However, the speaker wants the readers to act fast, so the speaker constructs the poem to illustrate her message without having to put into words by rushing
Not of immaculate spotlighting, however of progress, advancement and comprehension. He utilized poetry to convey his philosophy and through this structure I see his imagination, innovation, and ability with dialect. He manages the issues of life in an organization which few others do, and through it presents the complexities and nuances of his perspectives on how the world ought to be, or could be better. While doing this he makes pictures and scenes that resound with readers, actually going with his poetry with visual craftsmanship, an all the more simply emotional structure. His finished articulation is more full and more satisfying than whatever other craftsman I have yet
“An Entrance to the Woods” is an essay by Wendell Berry about the serenity and importance of nature in his life. In this essay, the author uses tone shifts from dark to light to convey his idea of finding rebirth and rejuvenation through nature. In the beginning of the essay, Berry has left civilization for the first time in a while, and finds himself missing human company and feeling “inexplicably sad” (671). This feeling of sadness is in part from the woods itself, and partly due to Berry leaving the hustle and bustle of normal life in the cities, and the violent change from constant noise to silence causes him to feel lonely in the woods. As a result of feeling alone in the woods, the tone of the essay is dark and brooding, as seen through Berry’s somber diction and mood, as seen on page 671: “And then a heavy feeling of melancholy and lonesomeness comes over me.
Your usage of different types of plants gives an image of this overgrown river, which is cool to imagine, and I think it could be expanded if you wanted to describe things in more detail. During the first stanza, I kind of get the feeling that in the second line, “water depths” was meant to be “watery depths”. It still works as is, but something about the line feels a bit off. As someone who is familiar with her story, I think that this poem hits all of the right notes considering tone, word-choice, and
Within this poem walcott uses poetic devices such as metaphors and mood in order to convey the significance of the event. The way that this story is presented creates an eerie and almost creepy mood, which serves to put the reader on edge and therefore force him or her to read more intently. This all stems from the way that the author recalls the entire experience. Walcott begins the recollective poem with the sentence, “With the frenzy of an old snake shedding its skin, the speckled road… twisted on itself…”(1-3).
There is a contrast between the stillness of the air and the general lack of motion and to the trickling river, which is a dissonant element in the environment. She feels both drawn by the river and “Every day she looks out at the river, and longs to swim in it” Yet there is fear holding her back at the same time when she sees that “Ahead, the second bend tugs the path in an extravagant right-hand swoop, swinging it into the field.” Her thoughts are stirred with anxiety and she fears that she might be swept away by the current like dozen of other things have