Comparison Of Death In Remember By Christina Rossetti

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The six poems poems I have chosen to write about each incorporate death in a different way. There are many ways that the authors use death, and they all achieve something different in the way they use it.

“Remember” is a poem written by Christina Rossetti that describes Rossetti’s feelings about dying, and it also shows how her opinions change about it while writing it. In the first half, there is an octet. This octet describes Christina’s initial feelings about dying. She is demanding that her husband do not forget her. This is almost the same use of death as in the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” They are similar because they are both afraid of death in a way. In “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” the man who is telling his father to resist is frightened by death and doesn’t want to be alone to face it, so he portrays his feelings on his father when urging him to resist. In “Remember” Rossetti is also scared of death and she does not want to be alone when she faces it. We see this because no where in her poem does she mention that her husband might die first. So in both poems a fear of death is there.

The second half of “Remember” is different from the first because Rossetti has changed her view of death. It is so monumental that it makes it appear that she wrote the second half a few years later than the first. She is now urging her husband, in a non-demanding way, to forget her if he would be happier that way. This shows us that she accepts death for what it is and that she knows that at some point she will be forgotten. This acceptance of death relates to “Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep” because Frye has also accepted death. We see this throughout the whole poem. Although at the end she says, “I did...

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... poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye that describes how she does not want anyone to be sad about her death when she dies. The reader sees this in the second to last line in the poem, “Do not stand… and cry.” She shows that she accepts death for what it is and does not want anyone to pity her.

Dylan Thomas’s Poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” is about Thomas urging his father not to give in to death, but to resist and fight it. This shows his hope in his father to resist death. This poem at first suggests that his father is either of old age and his time is almost up, or that he is very unwell. However, after reading the line, “Blind eyes… and be gay,” the reader sees that the father is actually of old age. Death in this poem is brought about by repeating lines that symbolize death. This love for her father mimics the love that Alice Walker had for her father.

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