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In "The Change" by James Dickey and "Basking Shark" by Norman MacCaig, both poets describe an unforgettable encounter with another creature. Through visual imagery and divergent word choice, the poets elicit a similar tone of awe as they grapple with their encounters and their aftereffects.
The poets’ visual imagery emphasizes the shock and amazement they feel after coming upon a shark in the open ocean. On one hand, Dickey begins by labeling a hammerhead as “unstirrable” (1), giving readers an opportunity to visualize the shark as an immense being with a very noticeable, presence that cannot be ignored. He continues to carefully illustrate the shark’s movement, describing how the “dreaming” (1) “hammerhead goes by the boat, passing [him] slowly
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Also, while explaining the he would transform himself into this creature if he could, Dickey metaphorically compares the shark’s place of emergence to “a place as apparent as Heaven” (18), further demonstrating his awe and amazement toward the shark. On the other hand, MacCaig starts out by describing his boat being “[some]where none should be” (1), and him hitting a shark that “[rose] with a slounge out of the sea” (2), letting readers picture the poet in a dangerous place far out in the ocean, and a shark …show more content…
Likewise, both poets portray their attitudes throughout their meeting: one that is continually idolizing according to Dickey and another that is uneasy toward the shark at first, but self-disparaging later on according to MacCaig. Dickey is continually admiring and appreciative of the creature he meets throughout his poem. He relates the shark to being the “strength” (6) of creation, emphasizing a belief that the shark is superior to any living being, and therefore showing his admiration of the creature. Dickey also refers to himself as a man “in love” (10), admitting the appreciation he feels toward the mesmerizing “creature of light” (13). Indeed, the poet’s admiration is so prominent, he reveals that he “name[d] the blue shark” (19). The use of the word “heart” (20) to explain where the shark had affected him during the encounter, along with the comparison of the shark to an unknown “brother” (21), also shows just how strong of a connection he had with the shark. Contrastingly, MacCaig seems threatened when he first come across the shark. However, after more time with the shark, he slowly realizes that his initial thoughts about the creature may have been misplaced. The poet begins by calling the shark a “rock” (1) to depict its power, showing that it is a force to be reckoned with. Furthermore, he uses words such as
The poet uses diction to characterize the female lover as a fish, showing their playful, endearing nature, but also the physical limitations their love possesses. She has “scales”, “fish eyes,” and “kissy lips”(4,8,9). These are all the characteristics of a fish, making her seem unnatural and
William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can...
Some of the most intriguing stories of today are about people’s adventures at sea and the thrill and treachery of living through its perilous storms and disasters. Two very popular selections about the sea and its terrors are The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Longfellow. Comparison between the two works determines that “The Wreck of the Hesperus” tells a more powerful sea-disaster story for several different reasons. The poem is more descriptive and suspenseful than The Perfect Storm, and it also plays on a very powerful tool to captivate the reader’s emotion. These key aspects combine to give the reader something tangible that allows them to relate to the story being told and affects them strongly.
The imagery contrasted with the “vaingloriousness” of the ship and its passengers showcase how all the materialistic amenities and goods on the ship have no value at the bottom of the sea. The poet describes the marine life as “slimed, dumb, [and] indifferent”. Animals do not understand human desires for unnecessary aesthetically pleasing luxury items. These animals are gross and slimy, yet they still swim around these valuable items with disinterest. Another example of imagery is of the jewels lying at the bottom of the ocean. They were “designed” to be beautiful “, yet now “lie lightless” at the bottom of the sea. Under the waves, everything from the Titanic is irrelevant and loss its value. This shows that in
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
In this poem, the author tells of a lost love. In order to convey his overwhelming feelings, Heaney tries to describe his emotions through something familiar to everyone. He uses the sea as a metaphor for love, and is able to carry this metaphor throughout the poem. The metaphor is constructed of both obvious and connotative diction, which connect the sea and the emotions of love.
The poem is notable for Hayden's characteristically accurate evocation of imagery. Just like his other poems, Hayden’s imagery in this poem is very vivid. The reader is able to imagine or see these images in their inner minds. Thus, the diver “sank through easeful/azure/swiftly descended/free falling, weightless/plunged” he described the diver’s carefree attitude and relaxed attitude as he dove into the sea. Thrilled and enchanted by what he sees in the wrecked ship, he lingers for more than intended. When he was brought to the reality of the danger he was in, he, “...in languid/frenzy strove/began the measured
A vital element of Currie’s “The Diver” is the strong presence of imagery, which helps to sustain the theme of captivating hope. The image of “the solitary figure” provokes a strong sense of despair, followed by his painful struggle “up the arch”. The images give the impression that the events are unfolding in a captivating slow-motion means.
Write a comparison of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World and The Drowned Giant, commenting in detail on the ways in which the authors' use language to convey their respective themes. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and "The Drowned Giant" by J.G. Ballard are both short stories written with similar plots but explore extremely different themes. In this essay I am going to compare the theme, plot, setting, language choices and stylistic effects between the two short stories and how all these relate back to theme itself. The themes of the stories are totally different. They are both about how societies react to the external world and exotic things, but the meanings are exactly opposite.
One of the most prevalent of the literary tools used in this poem is the simile. Repeatedly throughout the poem Bishop uses the simile to give the reader a clearer picture of the situation at hand. The simile is an ideal literary tool to use when the author is trying to convey a sensory description of an object or idea. When describing the fish?s physical appearance in lines 9-15 she compares the fish?s skin to ?ancient wallpaper?; this immediately gives the reader an impression of the age and outward appearance of the fish. Later in the poem when in lines 61-62 she describes the pieces of broken fishing line hanging from the fish?s mouth as ?medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering? she is using a simile to give the impression of pride and honor. This comes at a point when ...
The story’s theme is related to the reader by the use of color imagery, cynicism, human brotherhood, and the terrible beauty and savagery of nature. The symbols used to impart this theme to the reader and range from the obvious to the subtle. The obvious symbols include the time from the sinking to arrival on shore as a voyage of self-discovery, the four survivors in the dinghy as a microcosm of society, the shark as nature’s random destroyer of life, the sky personified as mysterious and unfathomable and the sea as mundane and easily comprehended by humans. The more subtle symbols include the cigars as representative of the crew and survivors, the oiler as the required sacrifice to nature’s indifference, and the dying legionnaire as an example of how to face death for the correspondent.
One might say we are presented with two fish stories in looking at Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, a marlin in the former and a whale in the latter. However, both of these animals are symbolic of the struggle their hunters face to find dignity and meaning in the face of a nihilistic universe in Hemingway and a fatalistic one in Melville. While both men will be unable to conquer the forces of the universe against them, neither will either man be conquered by them because of their refusal to yield to these insurmountable forces. However, Santiago gains a measure of peace and understanding about existence from his struggles, while Ahab leaves the world as he found it without any greater insight.
A man’s journey at sea has always been romanticized as an individualistic struggle against the backdrop of the cruel elements of nature. Paradoxically, though, within that same journey, the sea possesses an innate sense of timelessness that can become a man’s quest for God. In “O Captain! My Captain!” Walt Whitman describes the narrator’s sense of aimlessness at sea after his beloved Captain dies. In Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” the speaker is beckoned by the sea and its soundlessness even though he senses foredoom there. And so, although both Whitman and Tennyson employ a voyage at sea as the predominant image and metaphor within similar structural frameworks, they do differ in how they represent the journey and depict the tone of the poem.
Santiago went through many turmoil’s in his life and his story is one of wisdom in defeat from the lengthy time of which he could not catch anything to that of his loss of the marlin to the sharks after such a lengthy battle to catch it then attempt to bring it back to shore. Now I could go on and on like any other paper about all the symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea but no matter what I did while reading it, in almost every aspect it screamed out to me as an impersonation or reflection of Hemingway’s own life in a multitude of ways that no one can deny. The Old Man and the Sea was an allegory referring to the Hemingway’s own struggles to preserve his writing i...
E.J. Pratt is a poet who is especially well known for his narrative poems, which are in the nature of epic tales that are told about man’s battle with nature, and his experiences at sea and other Canadian stories [Froesce, n.d.]. His poems may be divided into two categories, the longer epic narrative poems which have drawn more public attention and the shorter variety. The poem “Ice floes” is an example of the former, while the poem “Newfoundland” is an example of the latter. The poem “Ice Floes” details the experiences of several men who are battling the frozen waters of the arctic in the pursuit of seals, but as they are busy skinning and scalping the seals, the fury of a storm ravages the area. The poem ”Newfoundland” is also about the sea, a descriptive poem that touches upon the tides and the weeds, the winds and the crag. Therefore, both these poems essentially deal with the theme of the sea and its constituents. There are other similar themes explored in these two poems, of which the fury of the wind and the power of the sea are the predominant ones.