In “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds, the speaker is on a train and finds herself across a man, she describes has “the casual cold look of a mugger.” It is not clear as to why she sees him as a mugger, but he is larger than her. As the poem unfolds, we get a better look at her thinking process and the differences between the speaker and the man. “He is wearing red, like the inside of the body exposed” is a simile the poet used to express how simple and open the man looked; by comparing him to an open body. On the other hand, she is in a fur coat.
The poem “Making Sarah Cry” and the play “The Watsons go to Birmingham” have the similar theme of being different. In “Making Sarah Cry” Sarah is different from the other kids on the playground. In “The Watsons go to Birmingham” the Watson family have a different skin color so they are separated from whites to do everyday tasks. The texts, both share a similar theme but have different qualities. For example, in “Making Sarah Cry” only two people are excluded from playing with kids because of their differences.
In the Spoon River Anthology series, two of Edgar Lee Masters’ poems are about two characters named Lucinda Matlock and George Gray. In these poems, Masters describes Lucinda Matlock as being vivacious and lively while describing George Gray as dull and monotonous; despite differences, both characters seem to have the same philosophy on life. These two characters are similar and different in many ways, including tone and characterization. Although these characters differ throught the ways they live their lives, both Lucinda and George share the tone of reflection by the way they describe their past.
This essay is going to be about comparing two short stories that I have read. There are many things that a person can compare, whether it’s the literal meaning of something or a figurative meaning. Both things will be discussed in the essay, along with contrasting the two stories The first story I will be talking about is “The Interlopers” by Saki. This story is about two neighbors fighting over hunting grounds.
He highlights his message to his audience by exampling a ship lost a see and whose sailors were dying of thirst. The only way they managed to survive was after they had listened to the advice of the skipper who told them to “cast down their bucket” into the sea and bring up the fresh water. This analogy exemplifies how blacks were also
Simile: “True, I don’t look so good by the end of the day ... but it’s the brilliant green-and-yellow uniform that gives me away, like prison clothes on a fugitive.” (Ehrenreich 100) In comparing the obviousness of Ehrenreich’s maid outfit, to that of a Prisoner’s, a simile is utilized. This is a smooth and effective way of comparing the two, and adds to somewhat ornate language in Nickel and Dimed.
Each stanza also makes the readers question their opinions and their understanding of the poem and the street. While analyzing Kenneth’s poem we see his use of imagery , personification, metaphorical language and repetition. With the end of each stanza repeating the words “you find this ugly, I find this lovely” the use of repetition gives the audience the sense of how the poet is displaying his message with this literary technique. The repetition also gives insight in how he see’s something that everyone calls ugly as something beautiful. The readers are also always drawn back to processing their opinions with his use
Poets and other writers often express life through their works and characters. Some poems convey a depressing, gloomy attitude towards life, while others show the world as a joyful and simple place. Two skilled creative writers, Edgar Lee Masters and Edwin Arlington Robinson, wrote detailed poems describing the lives of characters with extremely different perspectives on life. Many obvious differences can be identified between the lives of Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy and Masters’s Lucinda Matlock. Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem about Miniver Cheevy paints life as miserable and useless.
Although the two people had different problems during their era, the reader believes they both were very alike by how they’re
In 1773, there were slaves all over colonial America working in plantations, and cleaning their masters houses. It wasn’t common for a slave to be writing poetry with their owners consent. Phyllis Wheatley’s success as the first African American published poet was what inspired generations to tell her story. It was her intellectual mind and point of view that made her different from others, both black and white. Phyllis’s story broke the barrier for all African American writers, and proved that no matter the gender or race, all human beings are capable of having an intelligent state of mind.
One of his most famous works is “Negro,” which is a poem that highlights African American identity through the personification of African American heritage. The narrator is the personified figure that connects African Americans by explaining historical allusions that contributed to African American heritage and culture. This personified narrator enhances the theme of unified heritage among African Americans in the poem “Negro” with the use of structure, historical parallels, and historical context. One of the ways the use of personification in “Negro” enhances the theme of unified heritage is by manifesting African American history and experience structurally into one person, who is also the narrator. Hughes wrote this poem in the first person, so the poem is laden with “my,”
The poem “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds is about a very delicate subject. It is about discrimination and devices such as imagery, symbolism, and first person point of view give the reader that immersion they need to capture the main point of the story. The first device that is used to display this racism in the poem is Imagery. The author tries to make this the most obvious device by basically making the whole poem a big description of the other person on the subway. She uses the imagery to make the other character look bad for example, “I look at his raw face.”
Thus, he carried the free paper to prove his status as a free African American. The last line of the poem reveals the characters named Brown and Hamilton, who were actually men who drugged
The poem begins by saying “Talk like a nigger now, my white friend, M, said (1) / after my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations (2)”. M.L.K and Ronald Reagan were two highly respected superiors. The word choice of each was that of a more educated level. Which is why the young African American is told to “Talk like a nigger now”. His friend, the white guy, is saying that although his impersonations were good it was time to talk like other African Americans talk.
The gender of the speaker cannot be defined since there are no indications to suggest the speaker’s gender. The main idea of the poem is the integral part of music in African American culture as a “hypodermic needle / to [the] soul” soothing the weariness and pain from the “smoldering memor[ies]” of “slave ships” (6). In stanza 1, the larger theme of social inequality is addressed through the allusion of the slave trade by trumpet player’s memory “of slave ships / Blazed to the crack of whips,” (6-7).
