Summary Of Till Life Became A Legend Of The Dead

Diction

“Till Life became a Legend of the Dead” (Longfellow 578) is a line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Jewish Cemetery at Newport. The speaker shares information about a cemetery for passed on Jewish people who managed to come to America as immigrants from oversees. The speaker specifically states the line above towards the end of the poem signaling the coming of the end. Till is another way of saying until, which infers that there were events that occurred up to this point and history, though never really in the Jewish peoples’ favor, existed for Jews. Life shows a reader that whatever is being spoken about is, or has been, alive to this point. Life is away of referring to something as having life, having breath, needing food, water, and shelter, along with struggles that anything living must deal with, especially

Became signals that whatever is becoming, life in this case, was not in the same state as it was before, but it has changed and developed over time. A Legend of the dead, one of many legends of the dead, not the only one ever written; A can also signal insignificance which is how most Jewish people throughout history were seen. Legend entails heroic and memorable. A reader may know legends of Hercules or other great heroes of fiction or even great athletic legends such as Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali; though Jews were not necessarily considered heroic or memorable during their many times of persecution, looking back on their history today, historians see a stubborn, very strong people who endured numerous hardships and, though very few, survived. This presents them as a long-standing victim that always overcomes struggles put in their path, hence the