Sarah Vowell and Annie Dillard both wrote essays about their youth with nostalgia, highlighting the significance of childhood as an innocent and mischievous time in their lives. In Sarah Vowell’s essay “Shooting Dad,” Vowell realizes that despite their hostility at home and conflicting ideologies concerning guns and politics, she finds that her obsessions, projects, and mannerisms are reflective of her father ’s. On the other hand in Annie Dillard’s essay “An American Childhood” Dillard runs away from a man after throwing a snowball at his car, after getting caught she realizes that what matters most in life is to try her best at every challenge she faces no matter the end result. Sarah Vowell’s essay is more effective than Annie Dillard’s because she includes allusions and tones, which juxtaposes warfare and religion with the innocent
A variety of issues are examined in Dawe’s poetry, most of which, aren’t uniquely Australian. In ‘The Wholly Innocent’, the poet utilises the narrator being an unborn baby to express their opinion on abortion. The emotive language; “defenceless as a lamb” and comparisons of abortion to “genocide”, all turn this poem into a type of activism, for pro-life; a concept that is certainly not uniquely Australian; as abortion is only legal (on request) in 4 states and territories. These issues aren’t always directly referenced in Dawe’s poetry, much like in ‘The Family Man’, which chooses to explore suicide and it’s effect. The man who killed himself had no name - he was just a statistic, that had “all qualifications blown away with a trigger’s touch”.
“Execution” by Edward Hirsch is about an adult recollecting his thoughts about his high school football career and especially how his coach inspired him because his authoritative role model was battling cancer. The speaker talks about the coach’s goal for “perfect execution” and the infinite strategies the coach would draw up in order to reach his goal. The speaker concludes with their team’s loss against “the downstate team” and how they were ironically defeated by “perfect execution.” A superficial reader might assume that the poem was about the disappointing results that came from his team working hard to reach a goal, but the author’s use of impersonal tone and irony in the fact that their team’s loss is caused by “perfect execution” shows how a strong force can be conquered even when putting your best foot forward when accepting a challenge. Have you ever been a part of a team that seemed invincible and you lost?
Love causes people to do strange things. People either love the idea of love, or desire to run as far away from it as possible. Clarence Hervey is a character that has good intentions to be liked by others and to find this love; however, he is arrogant and easily swayed, causing him to lack moral values and turn away from his true self. This is evident through Edgeworth’s use of contrasting diction, capricious syntax and deceptive imagery. Edgeworth often uses contrasting diction in this excerpt as to reflect the contrast that Hervey feels within himself.
La Migra is a poem written by Pat Mora about the Mexican - American immigration issue. It’s purpose is to acknowledge the emotions and sentiments of the Mexican immigrants who try to come to the United States illegally. The denotation of the poem’s title means immigration and the connotation is referring to the police officers standing at the Mexico-United States border. The poem is divided into two stanzas to acknowledge immigration through the different perspectives of the illegal immigrant and also through the eyes of the border police. The first stanza is through the perspective of the male border cop, who thinks his power and nonessential items make his superior to the immigrants.
A theme is a moral that the reader can take away from the story to use in their everyday life. The allegory, “Terrible Things” by Eve Bunting, the poem, “ First They Came for the Communists” by Martin Niemöller, and the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel all share one common theme. In the 1900’s during the holocaust, many Jews and anyone who was part of the aryan race (blonde hair blue eyes) were taken away by Nazis led by Adolf Hitler. They were taken to concentration camps many children, the elder, and babies were exterminated once they got there because the Nazis felt there was no use to them. The jews that were needed went and got their heads shaven and marked with a tattoo of numbers that were used to identify them.
He explains his guilt that “burns like acid in [his] veins” as the leftover feelings from his childhood remain “as though [he] were still concealing the family shame” (744). This descriptive language showcases how deeply and painfully this trauma has been within in as he has made his own life for himself. He saves this for the end of his essay so that he does not pull too much of the audience’s sympathy from other people who made need it “more.” He introduces the topic of physical violence by writing that “[his] own father never beat [them]” (740)—a curious phrase as he goes on to say that the image was so vivid in his mind that it felt tangible and real. There is an emphasis on the absence of physical violence, but also an admittance of how the threat of such can be just as painful and imprint such images on the brain for years to come.
Growing up in an ideal world, a child should never have any kind of burden placed upon their shoulders; but that ideal is just that; ideal. In the memoir First They Killed My Father, the hardening of a child’s innocence is shown as it follows the early years of Loung. The memoir captures moments and feelings that were once constantly questioned and seen as gruesome, to those same instances now just accepted and seen as the norm. The eventual numbed thoughts of a young child show how truly awful some things and some people can be; as just a child the author states that “there were times when such scenes [as bodies being buried] terrified [her], but [she] has seen the ritual performed so many times that [she] feel[s] nothing” (85). These hardened
Responsibility often comes with the connotations of burden and sacrifice and most of the time, this is true. In The Wars, by Timothy Findley, the concept of responsibility is demonstrated in the character of Mrs. Ross whose duties as a wife and a mother may be viewed as cold, cruel, and purposefully isolating; the complete opposite of the archetype of a compassionate mother figure. However, like each unique individual in society, the way one responds and takes responsibility varies infinitely; Mrs. Ross attempts to dissociate from society when she feels she has not fulfilled her duties and responsibilities. However, her empathetic nature prevents her from completely isolating herself from all sentiment. Rather, she subconsciously internalizes the welfare and hardships faced by others while sacrificing her own well-being.
“Hurt Hawks”, by Robinson Jeffers, tells the story of a hawk whose wing is hurt and a man who makes the decision to take the hawk out of its misery by killing it. Jeffers describes the hawk in the first stanza of the poem by stating, “The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, / The wing trails like a banner in defeat, / No more to use the sky forever but live with famine” (Lines 1-3). Jeffers is describing the hawk’s broken wing as the bone protrudes from the skin and blood has clotted on its wing. He describes the wing as white like a flag of surrendering to his fait.
Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” expresses a contemplative tone that underscores the speaker’s longing for readers to appreciate poetry with a open mind in order to showcase the lost opportunities many do not experience due to the impatience and demanding qualities society currently retains. In order to accentuate the profound influence poetry held on his life, Pablo Neruda’s “Poem” reflects on his first encounter with poetry through an introspective tone that brings forward to light how poetry allows its writers the freedom of self-expression in a setting with no
The poem, At Mornington was written by Australian poet, Gwen Harwood. It was published in 1975 under her own name. At Mornington is about a woman reminiscing about her past when she is with her friend. There are many themes explored in this poem including memory, death and time passing.
“Incident” by Natasha Tretheway brings to life the horrors African Americans faced during the time the Ku Klux Klan was rampant in the United States. Fear and secretiveness was an everyday part of African American lives. They were unable to live like white Americans were due to the racism they faced. This poem, however, symbolizes the idea that life continues through the fear of it crumbling. The narrator is still alive to tell his or her story; therefore, this is evidence that life continues.
Emotions are part of everyday life and they have different meanings to different people. They were first studied by Charles Darwin in 1872, he suggested that emotions developed and adapted over time. He wanted to prove that humans and animals had the same emotions so he observed not only their facial expressions, but also their behavior. Charles Darwin and ,a physician, Guillaunme-Benjamin- Amand Duchenne concluded that face expressions worked together to show a few emotions.
Many poems about the civil war convey universal themes of the time. Stephen Crane’s poem “War is Kind” is no different. The poem,“War is kind” written by Stephen Crane(1871-1900) has three themes common to civil war literature: Warfare, Home, and Patriotism. This poem’s overall theme is about how war destroys families conversely to the title of “War is Kind” or the many times which Crane says “War is Kind”.
