The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human
Both William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” and Walt Whitman’s “A child said, What is the grass?” are very similar in both their perspective on death, writing style, and elements of Romanticism. In “Thanatopsis”, Bryant attempts to soothe readers’ concerns related to death while conveying his perspective on the topic by stating, “All that breathe / Will share thy destiny” (Bryant 60-61). The “destiny” Bryant is referring to is death, and he tells readers that death is just part of the static cycle of life. One should embrace and accept death, which has no bias and is inevitable regardless of social status or age.
Bryant also explains how death is feared by many but he offers comfort to the people that do fear it. Bryant tells the readers about death in a way no poet has said before. Bryant gradually tells the reader more and more about death in each stanza. In “Thanatopsis,” Bryant uses diction to describe death, details to describe how death takes place, and organization to help show the different levels of how people feel about death.
Death, we all face it at some point in our lives. Although it is inevitable, there are certain ways in this world we live in to go about dying. “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray and “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” by Pablo Naruda, both poems about the death of something. In Gray’s poem describes a cat whose curiosity gets the best of him while staring into a bowl of goldfish. In the poem “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” Naruda is speaking on behalf of a tuna, now dead, that has shown up in the market and the adventures he must have had with the sea.
To begin, it’s important for the two poets to led the readers to understand the context about death behind their poems and how it has inspired them to write about it. Throughout Dickinson’s life, she has experienced death in many ways and forms: with that, death has made a great impact in her writings. In Dickinson’s poem, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” Dickinson looks into the physical procedure of dying and how it affects not just herself, but others as well. When Dickinson was dying on her deathbed, she describes the fly as a figure of the theme death itself, as the wings of the fly basically cuts off the speaker of the poem. For Whitman, he has experienced death in the time of the Civil War.
Donne’s poem centers around the narrator confessing their sins. Beginning with their personal sins and then proceeding to apologize for leading other people to sin, the speaker describing it as they “…made my sin their door?” (9) These confessions are showing the narrator's devotion
What really happens after you die? Some people see death as the end of life, and others see it as a new beginning. In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, death is perceived as the final part of a person’s life whereas in John Donne’s “ [Death, be Not Proud]”, death is not seen as a finishing point. The concept of death is present in both poems, although each author has a different view on the outcome of it.
In the poem Ozymandias, the narrator refers to a “lifeless” statue in the form of a great king. However, the irony of the poem is that while the statue is not living or breathing the wording of the poem treats it as if it is an actual body. The first time I saw this play on words was in line seven. When Shelley wrote this line he chose to say that the object is surviving, yet merely three words separate the words “survive” and “lifeless”. I find the spacing and wording here to be incredibly important because not only could our writer have replaced “survive” and “lifeless” with similar meaning words such as “live” and “dead” but he also had the option to paint a different picture with his words here.
‘Intellectually, Donne had always been a Christian, but his progress toward religious assurance was hindered by his sense of Roman Catholic outlawry, his shift to the Church of England, his moral lapses, the worldly disaster of his marriage, and his restless mind.’ (Douglas Bush) Consider the detailed treatment of ‘religious assurance’ in any three or four poems by Donne from the course. John Donne was an extremely complex and interesting character and these complexities are reflected in many of his poems. Donne was born into a Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was forbidden in England and as a result, suffered persecution for his religion. He was penalised because of his Catholic faith whilst at university and was unable to obtain
The poem “Ozymandias” written by Percy Bysshe Shelley is about a statue in Egypt which could be understood by the name of the poem. The speaker of this poem tells us about his learning from a traveler about a giant, ruined statue that lay broken and destroyed in the desert. Throughout the poem the speaker tells us about how the traveler describes the statue which looks strange, a pair of legs with head shattered lying in the sand. Even though the head is shattered in the sand, the face isn’t completely shattered because a frown, wrinkled lip and sneer could be still seen on the face. The traveler also praises the sculptor who made the statue because he has copied well the facial features and passions of the ruler.
Line one of Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” opens with a speaker meeting a stranger, from an “antique land”. After the first line, the poem shifts to the stranger being the speaker in the poem. The speaker in line one only serves to introduce and describe to the reader the later speaker from a foreign land. The original speaker describes the stranger as a “traveler from an antique land”. Shelley’s use of the word “antique” in line one invokes the sense that not only is the land that the traveler is from old but it is ancient and ancient evokes a sense of decay, which becomes important later in the poem.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" effectively conveys the theme that nothing lasts. He describes in the poem a message from a long-forgotten ruler, one that reveled in his power and tried to instill terror in his subjects. The narrator of the poem is being spoken to by a stranger about a faraway desert in which an ancient visage rests untouched. The visage is accompanied by a pedestal that tells of the glory of Ozymandias, a name no one knows in their present time.
Timeless Truths (An analysis of three messages from Ozymandias, Ode to the West wind, and To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley) Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of three very famous second generation romantic writers. Messages from Shelley’s poem were quite radical for his time, especially compared to the first generation romantic writers that came before him. Shelley would write about topics that were taboo for the time such as sex. As young writer, Shelley brings a new view and presents new messages, with some influence from older authors.
What goes along in the mind of an arrogant yet admired and mighty ruler, might not be in favor of what the power of nature holds and that ensures nothing lasts forever. I believe this is what the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, meant when he wrote his terrific and empowering sonnet called Ozymandias. Published in 1818 it tells the story of a powerful man whose magnificent sculpture faded into sand as transparent as the ruler’s once powerful throne. The poem starts with the statement of meeting a traveler, which initially shapes the direction the poem might go in.
In the poem “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson, death is described as a person, and the narrator is communicating her journey with death in the afterlife. During the journey the speaker describes death as a person to accompany her during this journey. Using symbolism to show three locations that are important part of our lives. The speaker also uses imagery to show why death isn 't’ so scary.
