"The Demon Lover”, a story written by Elizabeth Bowen,Is about a woman names Mrs.Dover at the end of WWII.We can see that Elizabeth uses a lot of ambiguity to give sense of the story about what happens to Mrs.dover.We get to know a lot about her past.But i think the interesting part is the ambiguity in the short story. We have two teams the ones that think that the story is a spiritual story (ghost)that mrs dover husband is a ghost or a psychological story (she is crazy). My point of view of the poem is that she is mental!because from what we read there is a lot of evidence that states that she is not dead.well I believe she is mental because of all the evidence we have.Mrs dover keeps talking about her "real husband" about how she remembers
Her poem switches from positive to negative. She starts the poem with the story of the mother spider and her babies which has a happy ending, but then she goes into talking about herself. In Marie Howe’s essay, she says “…a white frame house, and rising, / and I thought of a room it was shining in, right then, / a room I might live in and can’t imagine yet.” From this quote we notice that she is imagining a house that she could possibly live in one day. Maybe it’s the man’s house and she is thinking one day she could live there with him, but not yet. She says “And this morning, I thought of a place on the ocean where no one is, / no boat, no fish jumping, / just sunlight gleaming on the water, humps of water that hardly break.” This quote provides a sense of loneliness, to think of a place on the beach that is deserted, there are no other people, little noise, and there is nothing there to keep you company. Then she says, “We argued about one thing, but really it was another,” this shows that there was a lack of communication between the two, which could cause Howe to feel like she was alone. Part of one of her quotes, “unbroken by footprints”, created a huge sense of loneliness. She is all alone, awaiting the return of the man she loves, and he hasn’t yet shown up. The fact that the path leading to the front door hasn’t been walked on in two days, would make the reader wonder if anyone besides the man would normally visit her, or if Howe has even left her home in those two days. The last line in her poem is “Anything I’ve tried to keep by force I’ve lost”, and she uses this to provide a sense of emptiness. The movement of her poem from positive to negative is what helps create that feeling of being
The poem explains her hardships. Reading poetry is different from reading prose because you really have to dig deeper and study harder. A poem is not always straight forward like many other writings. You have to use context clues and understand imagery, tone, and sense. Summarizing a poem becomes difficult if you do not re-read several times. I learned that figurative language and lifestyle really tells a great story. Language especially helps you understand what is going on between the lines. Overall, family is always there at the end of the day. Sometimes situations get tough, but there is always a light at the end of the
At the same time, Howe notes, guiltily, that she had already begun to imagine him dead and to plan what she would write about him. The poem ends with a reference to Jesus’ raising of the dead Lazarus. When Lazarus’s sister saw him alive, Howe says, she was “crushed . . . with gratitude and shame.” (Howe uses a similar biblical reference to Lazarus’s sisters Mary and Martha toward the end of this collection in “Memorial,” a poem about the death of a friend.)
One study that Bartlett conducted to test this story was the ‘War of Ghosts’, which was a story about 300 words long. Participants were asked to read it and then
In "Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen, various symbols and motifs are used to describe the events happening in Kathleen Drover's life. In the story you are given the impression that Mrs. Drover's dead ex-husband has come back to life in the aftermath of a bombing in World War II. During the story, Mrs. Drover is contemplating the reality of her husband being a ghost or the stability of her mind. My thoughts are that Mrs. Drover was going insane due to this quote from the story,"had . . . an intermittent muscular flicker to the left of her mouth, but . . ." which gave me that impression.
Because of the manipulation of point of view through the narrators, this novella is considered a masterpiece. Henry James’s use of point of view not only is an effort to involve the reader in the story in order for the reader to question the narrator’s reliability but also alters the structure of a traditional ghost story. As said above, a first narrator introduces the reader to the story as well as explains the origin of the story through a character named Douglas. Then, a second narrator is introduced; the interior voice of the manuscript, so to speak, embodied in the figure of the governess, who makes problematically decide whether the apparitions are real or mere delusions. This is because the governess' point of view does not provide conclusive evidence about her experience; hence, the conflict remains a mystery and open to the interpretation of the reader.
The self- examination part of her religion part comes into play because this poem was very long and confusing; much like how I believed her life was. She had rheumatic fever and through out her life she suffered from periods of fatigue and faced death eight times by giving birth to eight children. I think that she wrote the poem to represent her life she felt that her life was very long and drawn out. She also saw that there were a l...
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
A funeral is usually seen as a formal event meaning there will normally be order and control with very minimal chaos. The funeral Dickinson describes in the poem is far from a “normal” funeral. The control and order of a funeral contrast the chaos within the speaker’s mind. Also, a funeral marks a passing from one state to another, life to death. This parallels with the passing in the speaker’s life, from sanity to insanity. She is an observer of the funeral and a participant. This tells the readers that there is a divide in the Self of the speaker. By the end of the poem, Self is destroyed and shattered. On the other hand, funerals can also be viewed as celebrations of one’s life. This can signify the freedom of the speaker’s freedom as it
The speaker connects a symbol of death with her brain and says her “mind is going numb,” which implies that a part of her is dying (Dickinson 8). At the end of the poem, the speaker also states “a plank in reason broke / and I dropped down and down” (Dickinson 17-18). The statement of an interruption of logic followed by her descent is a hopeless ending that shows the speaker is losing her rationality and declining mentally. Dickinson portrays a speaker who is dying physcologically and thus is becoming mad. In addition, “I Felt a Funeral,” characterizes death as forcefully acting upon the speaker beyond her control, much like it is in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the former, Dickinson does not demonstrate the funeral and the downturn as stoppable or preventable, and in the latter she unsuccessfully avoids death. The opening lines “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me” shows the speaker did not want to give up her earthly life (Dickinson 1-2). Though the figure of death treated her politely, it is clear that the presence of death was unavoidable, as it was in the previous poem.
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
All three versions of “The Demon Lover has the same common messages: to be careful in trust, be careful of the vows you make, and that the decisions of the young often come back around negatively. All three pieces exemplify these messages heavily. Of all of the works maintaining these themes, Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” displays these messages the most vehemently. Bowen’s version of “The Demon Lover” take on the principles of Harris’ “The Demon Lover” and makes the ideals more noticeable to the novice reader.
In "The Demon Lover," by Elizabeth Bowen, Kathleen Drover returns to London from her house in the country in order to gather some things that she and her husband had abandoned during the bombings of the war. It is a humid, rainy day in late August and her once familiar street is now mostly deserted. The caretaker of her house is supposed to be out of town for a week and her arrival is assumed unknown. Mrs. Drover enters the old musty house and discovers a letter addressed to herself and it is marked with the present date. Curious to know if the caretaker is back in town and a little annoyed by the letter seeming to have no urgency in being mailed to her, she proceeds upstairs to her old bedroom to read it. In utter shock and complete horror, Mrs, Drover realizes that the letter is from her dead fiancé from twenty-five years ago. The letter is written in a threatening tone and is very vague but refers to a promise that she made to him and it is apparent that he plans to meet with her at the "agreed upon hour" to fulfill the promise. She can not remember what promise she had made was nor had any idea of what time he intended to meet, but she, in a panic of terror, flees the house. She proceeds to go to the town square where she might be safe and hails a cab. Mrs. Drover gets into the cab that almost seems to be waiting for her and as the driver turns to look back through the partition her jaw drops open and she proceeds to scream and helplessly beat on the glass. The driver then speeds off onto the deserted street and takes her away. We are led to believe that the driver is indeed the demonic lover that has captured her and going to force the promise to be fulfilled. Through this bone chilling suspenseful story, Bo...
It can be concluded that the speaker is a caring and loving gentleman. The narrator of the poem is a young gentleman whom can also be perceived as Edgar Allan Poe himself. “That a maiden there lived whom you may know/ By the name of Annabel Lee” (line 3, 4). The poem is about a person loving a woman; therefore it is positively obvious and apparent that the narrator is a gentleman. There are also repetitions of the words “I” and “my” throughout the whole poem, which confirms that the narrator is in fact Edgar Allan Poe himself. “And, so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side/ Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride” (line 38, 39). The use of the words “I” and “my” supports the theory that the person narrating the poem is Edgar Allan Poe. It is also visible that the speaker is very sad and emotional about the loss of his wife. The narrator is having a difficult time getting over the death of Annabel Lee which is apparent in the last stanza. He still sleeps by her even though she is
Death is something no one bears the power to control. Emily Dickinson does an extraordinary job at presenting death in many of her poems. Dickinson uses death as the central theme for many of her poems. Living next to the cemetery from a young age, it had a great influence on Dickinson and her incorporation of death and immortality in her poems. Emily Dickinson talks about death and the meaning of death in many of the poems give her readers an understanding of how darkness can be viewed. It is strange for a writer to talk about death as much as she does, however, it is presented very smoothly in her poems. Talking so much about death, it seemed, as Dickinson was obsessed with the idea of an afterlife. The loss of a very close friend, Samuel