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Diane Thiel’s poem “The Minefield” is about a man who’s mind has been ravaged by memories of a war in his childhood. She shows that even though the war had been over for years, the memory of it haunted the man in everything that he did. Through a powerful combination of symbols, dark images, and a split chronology, she creates a full picture of a life changed forever by war.
In the first stanza, the tone is lighter, describing a scene where two boys are running through towns. The boys race, the faster one being described as a “wild rabbit”.
This stanza feels dream like, the organization of thought is loose, and word choice seems almost erratic, almost unrehearsed. The first stanza ends with a twist. The faster boy is killed by a mine and his friend, just seconds behind, witnesses the whole thing.
The second stanza is only two lines, “My father told us this, one night,/and then continued eating dinner.” This stanza breaks up the chronology of the poem, pushing the previous stanza into the past, and making it disjointed, almost like another poem in itself. The result of the father continuing eating after he tells the story shows how dead he is inside, the recalling of the story no longer affecting him in the same way it does the reader and his own family. It is implied that he is the only one able to eat after telling the story. This short stanza foreshadows the father’s personality change.
In the third stanza, the language becomes much darker, words like: anger, explode, and against make this stanza seem even more warlike than the first stanza.
In line five and six, the male feels so down and intimidated and could not do anything. In the third stanza, in line one to four we see that the male tries to change the present state but it does not seem to bear fruit. In line six and seven the female is still dominating the male.
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The Catcher in the Rye is a story about a boy, Holden Caulfield, and a few days of his life as he goes to New York near Christmas. He has been kicked out of four distinguished high schools for his poor grades. From the beginning of the story it is visible he is very pessimistic and has a negative outlook on almost everybody in the book. It is because of this that I do not judge people based on his opinions of them. Holden’s brother died three years before the story starts, and his death might be the cause of some of his personality. At the beginning of the book, he is getting ready to leave the all-boys Pencey Prep in a few days. His roommate, Stradlater, is going on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl whom
...e fathers overpowering the son to do what he wants. The clinging in the last line can be viewed as the boy just trying to survive and is grabbing whatever he can to just make it through this ordeal. There is no way for him to fight back due to him being so young, because in the first stanza just for him to hang on is not easy. The narrator could focus on many other instances with his father, but he does not because this one hurts him the most deep down. He does not describe his father he just focuses on his knuckles and belt.
The poem being separated into two indicates change of direction. In the sestet, there is a sudden change in emotion. The first line, ‘the final hour’, immediately shows this. The father is now dying. Weak. ‘Your hands between the sheets’ indicates that the father is in a bed, suggesting restricted physical movement, unlike before. There is then a role reversal, as the son is lifting the fat...
Thiel makes him young in the first stanza, but by the third stanza he is a much different character. The poem starts out with, “He was running with his friend from town to town. / They were somewhere between Prague and Dresden.” (1-2). The father grew up in the middle of a war torn country. The reader can see that he had no family because he wasn’t going from town to town with anyone in his family, he was going from town to town with another friend that most likely also didn’t have a family. It goes on to say, “He was fourteen. His friend was faster / and knew a shortcut through the fields they could take. / He said there was lettuce growing in one of them, / and they hadn’t eaten all day.” (3-6). The father was just a teenage boy when this happened to him. He was obviously not living the life of a boy who was a part of a happy family. He was hungry because he hadn’t eaten all day, because he had no one to feed him, so they decided to take a shortcut through a lettuce field. This decision seems harmless, but it was one that he would always remember. The actual incident only lasted for a very brief moment and in the poem, it lasted for only one line. The very end of the first stanza says, “like a wild rabbit across the grass, / turned his head, looked back once, / and his body was scattered across the field.” (7-9). The imagery that Thiel creates with the wild rabbit almost makes the boys appear more innocent.
Most cancer happens at different rates in other parts of the world. Lifestyle can increase a person’s risk for cancer because it can affect cells that are prepared to become cancerous by helping them grow. The environment can change genes which cause them to be cancerous in the first place. An abnormal cell is what causes a tumor. This cell appears to be no different from normal ones and only functions and divides when needed. Then, even though the organ it supports has a sufficient amount of cells, it divides uncontrollably (Weinberg 1-2).
In the first line, the alliteration of the letter w in the words weak and weary adds to the tired drained feeling the narrator is experiencing. The sound w flows through your lips with little effort, almost as easily as a vowel would. The second line repeats the phonetic k sound in quaint and curious which helps make the items he is reading seem peculiar. The hard aspiration draws attention to the words letting us know what the narrator is reading should not to be overlooked. In the third line, the n-n-n in nodded, nearly napping sound feels ominous. The repetition of the n sound feels drawn out and tired but with a little force. Not quite as hard as a d, it feels like someone trying to stay awake.
Throughout the times war has effected people immensely both physically and mentally. All people deal with their circumstances differently to help cope with what they dealing with. Whether it’s a fatality in the family, or post traumatic stress disorder most people find a way to heal from injury or emotional damage. In Brian Turners poem, “Phantom Noise,” he writes about the constant ringing he hears from the war he served in. The poem expresses that Turner seems to deal with his emotional damage by writing poetry about what he feels, hears, and sees during the time he spent in war and in civilian life. Even though Turner is no longer in war it still effects him greatly each day. The overall tone of the poem is very solemn and makes the reader
The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered a classic. Many times classic lose some of their impact as time goes by but that is not the case with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. It can be argued that the story has more meaning and impact now then it even did when it was first published. It is a glimpse into a dark period of American history that people have no actual frame of reference to understand. Books like Stowe’s puts a name and an emotional context to what can otherwise be viewed through a detached lens of indifference.
Each year more than 8 billion people are diagnosed with cancer all around the world. Everyone knows that cancer is a disease but what exactly is it? Cancer is not just one disease, there are actually more than 100 different types of cancer. Cells from any part of the body can become cancer and spread. Some types of cancers are more common than others. In order to understand what cancer is, it’s important to know how healthy cells function. Healthy human cells grow and divide in order to produce more cells when the body needs them. When the cells becomes damaged, it dies and gets replaced with a new cell; this process is called apoptosis. Unlike healthy cells, cancer causes the cells to grow out of control. The damaged cells survive and the
The first stanza begins by stating, The children go forward . They are leaving their mothers behind, going to a place inaccessible to them. At the moment the children are on their way to school, but as they progress, they will begin to move past the achievements of their parents. Instead of becoming resentful, the mothers do all they can to ensure this progress continues. All morning the mothers have labored . They exert themselves strenuously for the benefit of their children. They put forth much time and energy at manual labor. The mothers labored in giving birth to their children, and are laboring to raise them to adulthood. They sacrifice themselves so that their children may have a future better than their own.
In the last line of the second stanza, the subject enters dramatically, accompanied by an abrupt change in the rhythm of the poem:
The speaker seems to have become anxious in the second stanza. The first couplet “But at my back I always hear / Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying ...
The first stanza starts by the word “I”, so we can see that it is written from his point of view and he feels isolated in the “college sick bay”. This suggests sickness and death. The word “knelling” is an onomatopoeia which shows the idea of funeral bells. “At two o’clock” shows how long he had to wait, where he had lots of time to think. The first stanza does not explain what is the reason for the break was, but his time waiting in the sick bay sets up a feeling that something is wrong.