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My Last Duchess Analysis

1904 Words8 Pages

Through the Duke’s abuse of power, love is presented in a negative way throughout ‘My Last Duchess’. Throughout the poem, Browning uses a heroic couplet in order to signify his grandiose nature; he views himself as a superior being who nobody can ever surpass. This is reinforced when the Duke juxtaposes the different gifts the Duchess received he specifically stated that ‘as if she ranked / My gift of a nine-hundred years-old name / With anybody’s gift.’ Juxtaposition is used in order to highlight the significance of the Duke’s gift. Browning specifically mentioned the name of the Duke’s gift to put emphasis on the meaningful surname he has gifted the Duchess, nevertheless giving him a reason to command and control her. Due to his individual …show more content…

Throughout the poem, Achebe uses free verse to represent the continuous flow of the crestfallen emotions and thoughts of the mother, due to the poverty she and her son have to suffer. The suffering of the single-parent family is explicitly highlighted when Achebe describes the mother’s, “ghost-smile between her teeth.” The juxtaposition “ghost-smile”, suggests that the mother’s smile is forced, she purposely held the smile up in order to cover up her depressed and hopeless emotions. This amplifies the unconditional love a mother has for her child as she only wants to show the best side of her in front of her son. Love can also be portrayed in a depressed light when the mother used, “A broken comb and combed” her son. Plosive alliteration is used to amplify the pessimistic mood and poverty that the refugees are suffering in the camp. Despite of the poor conditions that the family is suffering from, the mother continues to use the limited appliance she has to provide her son the best she could afford. This intensifies the amount of love the mother has for her son, as even the poor conditions did not affect how much she loves and cares for him. Therefore, through the mother’s unconditional love for her child, Achebe presents love in a positive

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369 Words | 2 Pages

Claire Standish is labeled “The Princess” of the group as she is rich, beautiful, and possibly the most popular female at her school. Many people assume her life is perfect and a dream when in reality her parents are on the verge of a divorce. They use, pamper, and indulge her in order to spite each other and Claire is painfully aware of this. The group initially see Claire as a “snobby stuck up bitch” assuming she is solely shallow and materialistic.

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1239 Words | 5 Pages

Revenge: A Narrative and Scientific Perspective Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and Browning’s “My Last Duchess” both revolve around revenge. We are introduced to men who swear vengeance on other characters. Yet, the mindsets of these men are, in some aspects, very different. To truly comprehend a story, we have to understand why authors make their characters behave the way they do in addition to the message being presented. In the case of “The Cask of Amontillado” and “My Last Duchess,” why do both narrators believe murder is totally necessary?

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800 Words | 4 Pages

The poem transitions into the past tense and mentions their grandmothers and children. In contrast to the first half of this piece, the grandmother is now old and the children are now ghosts. This represents the rambunctious, naive young man looking back on his life and truly beginning to see the pointlessness of his ways. The final line in the third stanza may perhaps be the most important line in the entire poem. Oliver writes “After that, all their nerves click like frozen leaves.”

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1015 Words | 5 Pages

The piece revolves around the subject of motherhood, portraying a women who feels smothered and consumed by her children. Poetic devices were used by Harwood to emphasise the affect that change had on the woman and her life progression, whilst illustrating the negative response which became evident as a result. In the poem, whilst taking her children to the park, the woman encounters an ex-lover, briefly discussing their life progression and stating to herself after his departure, that her children 'have eaten [her] alive’. Harwood’s use of this metaphor and hyperbole, shows the affect of the change her choices created, and its impact. The use of symbolism, to a large extent, also portrays the woman’s feelings derived from her sense of imprisonment.

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658 Words | 3 Pages

The shift from empathy toward the mother to empathy toward the father reveals what the speaker believes; while neither of the parents was truly the victim in their relationship, the ones who suffered the most were the children—the real victims. From the outset of the poem, the reader learns why the speaker’s mother divorced her spouse. The father

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562 Words | 3 Pages

In lines 15-20, two big things happen; the author finally mentions her mother, for the first time, after she expressed strong feelings for Meema and Daddy, in stanza one. The second thing is the author uses “gum leaf” to symbolize the mother. Lines 18-20 state, “Each square holds a sweet gum leaf whose fingers I imagine would caress me into silence.” It has always been said that a mother has a gentle or tender touch. When reading the this poem, it can be detected that there is a bit of disconnect between the speaker and her family.

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883 Words | 4 Pages

The son writes this poem as “the sign” that he understands his father’s lessons (22). Moreover, the relationship between the son and his father has clearly changed with time. In the past, the two were unable to appreciate fully each other, whereas now the son finally breaks through the disconnect that he formerly shared with his father. Through points of view, this poem conveys both the former misunderstanding between the father and the son and the son’s newfound recognition of his

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246 Words | 1 Pages

Unlike last poem, this time the narrator is not a mirror, because she has the ability to “pinch” and “look at myself in the mirror”, however, this narrator’s attitude is very similar to a mirror: she does not feel the pain and suffering of herself or other people, but it appears that she does not want this, because she is “frightened” by it. Then the narrator headed to the “streets”, where all kinds of misery happen: loud “shouts”; “children with dirty faces”, they are apparently very poor, because they “ask for charity”, even sell their body for money; also there are “tanks” and soldiers with “bayonets”, so the narrator is in a war zone. After she saw the terrible scene, she can “feel” and “hurt”, but soon she “feel nothing” again, the surroundings

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445 Words | 2 Pages

This can be seen at the end of the poem which states, “No,’ she said, ‘bring me tree-grubs”. This young girl wants a functional, practical love, simple love where her dream husband is providing for her the basics and necessities of life, where love is not represented through materialistic objects. On the contrary, the second line of stanza one, from The Child wife, states, “Life’s smile of promise, so soon to frown.” This is evident that the young girl who is present in this poem, is talking about her life which is now miserable, by being chosen to marry an old man. It enables the reader to feel guilty and sorrow for this young girl as she did not get a chance to have her say but rather was forced to marry the old man when she got chosen by him.

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478 Words | 2 Pages

Maybe one of the most shocking point is that it has actually taken Carrie Fisher as long to fess up. The notoriously honest star and also memoirist has actually been asked many times whether there was a real-life love on the collection of Star Wars, to mirror the partnership in between Princess Leia as well as Han Solo. No, certainly not, she would inevitably respond: she was a teen, Harrison Ford was 14 years older, they could not have actually been much more various, just what a daft concept. Currently she has actually composed The Princess Diarist, where she gets in touch with the journals she composed at the time, to expose that she had an extreme event with Ford.

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1526 Words | 7 Pages

Title? Belonging is the pivotal axis around which human life revolves. Genuine poetry reflects directly or indirectly an awareness of the social problems of a country. Belonging and poetry, Miss Lawlor and my fellow students is one of the most curious combinations and this is what we see in the genre of poetry produced by the Australian poets in the 1960’s when……... Bruce Dawe was a vernacular poet known for his extraordinary empathy with people which characterises his poetry and gives a voice to the ordinary Australians.

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1479 Words | 6 Pages

Poems depicting love and loss are extremely popular in the Victorian era, Robert Browning is a well renowned poet that has similarly written poetry featuring love and death. Browning’s poems My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover has multiple ways they can be individually interpreted. One may focus on the love or attraction presented in each text, or the focus could be the deceit and death within the poem. Both of the poems have rudimentary similarities; male narrators, a beautiful woman who passes, and an eerie uncertainty of why the woman was killed.

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862 Words | 4 Pages

Each stanza of the poem illustrates the feeling of love that the mother has towards her unborn fortune. The mother’s tone contains great feeling of wanting to meet her baby finally and be together for the rest of their lives. The mother argues that she has kept the baby safe in her womb for nine months and cannot wait to share with her feeling with rest of the world. The subject of the poem, the mother, asks the baby to come outside, and meet her waiting loving friends and family. Entirely, this poem is filled with hope and excitement.

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1505 Words | 7 Pages

However the word ‘combing’ is used to show the mother’s unconditional love for her child and how she will always care for him and never give up hope, this antithesis fabricates an element of power in the poem, and demonstrates the powerful effect of a mother’s love towards her child. This is also exhibited when the poet describes her as bathing her child amidst the ‘heavy odors’ of ‘diarrhea’, as she is ‘rubbing him down’ with her ‘bare palms’. The use of sensory imagery here to describe their surroundings also emphasises how the mother will always love her child unconditionally. The end of the poem contradicts this moment of hope by ending on an extremely solemn tone, with the use of

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420 Words | 2 Pages

The last Empresses of the Qing Dynasty. She was a vicious and strong woman who was brought to empire to help the Emperor Xianfeng’s find plans for the China’s future. She was born on November 9, 1835. Her name was Yehenara, born into a ruling Manchu minority. There are a lot of rumors about the story of her life.

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