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Essay on figurative language
After twenty years of literary analysis
After twenty years of literary analysis
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The author of Mending Wall and Nothing Gold Can Stay uses figurative language like metaphors and personification to demonstrate his overall tone. In Nothing Gold Can Stay, the author stated that “Natures first green is gold” meaning that the budding of a leaf is precious like gold is precious, having great value to people. When Robert Frost stated “Her hardest hue to hold...Her early leaf's a flower,” he was using personification acting as if nature, itself, was an actual person giving birth to a budding flower. He talks about leaves and flowers only lasting for a short time; in fact, only an hour to demonstrate his overall tone that nothing good stays and beauty is not permanent. He talks about the dawn of day also being extremely short
I finally finished the book Silver written by Chris Wooding. I am glad to say that I enjoyed reading every page! While finishing the book a quote that stood out to me was when all of the kids who are hiding in the school have to escape the building and fire is starting to fill the room. As stated in the text, “The hallways were filling with smoke. Impossible silhouettes flitted across fiery doorways, like capering demons from some medieval nightmare” (Wooding 240). This quote shows how the author uses figurative language to explain in detail how the smoke looked as it was entering the classrooms and hallways. This kind of description helps me get a clear image in my mind of what the characters are going through. From vivid passages such as
Both Frost and Caulfield have the desire for beautiful things to last forever. Holden Caulfield recalls a time when he and Jane were younger, they would be playing checkers, and Jane would refuse to move her kings from the back row. It wasn’t any kind of a strategy, nor was it for any particular reason, besides the reason that Jane just happened to like the way they look back there. “She wouldn’t move any of her kings. What she’d do, when she’d get a king, she wouldn’t move it. She’d just leave it in the back row. She’d get them all lined up in the back row. Then she’d never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were in the back row.” (Salinger, 31-32)Another example is when Holden is watching Phoebe go around and around on the carousel. He sees this moment as a beautiful thing that he wants to preserve. Robert Frost has the same idea when he says “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold”. He’s saying that this first green of nature is so beautiful, but there is no way to hold on to it no matter how much you’d like to.
The poem states that everything eventually comes to an end and that not even gold can remain unchanged. The poem explains this theme with many metaphors about everything that’s coming to an end. Freeman explains that “Even the poem's rhymes contribute to this sense of inevitability: Nature's gold we (or She) cannot hold; the flower lasts only an hour; the post flower leaf is like Eden's grief; the coming of day means that dawn's gold cannot stay”(2). The poem explains that everything has a natural cycle and that nothing lasts forever. When the poem states “nothing can stay gold”, Frost looks back at the flower and the time of day and implies that it all comes to an end.
In this sonnet, Neruda describes a romantic and enchanting afternoon with his lover as they float through elegant gardens under the clear sky. The author effectively translates this imagery by the uses of literary devices such as personification and implied metaphors. For example, in line 2 of the poem Neruda writes, “The light arrived and opened like a rose garden”. The use the words “arrived” and “opened” in respect to the light, give it human qualities in which inanimate objects cannot possess, which is also known as personification. This allows for the reader to obtain a more meticulously detailed picture of
Johnny, the meekest member of the Greasers, is slightly built, with big-black eyes in a dark tanned face and long, jet-black hair heavily greased and combed to the side. He has the appearance of "a little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers." He always seems to be cringing and uncertain of himself, largely because he is a battered child. His father frequently beats him, and his mother ignores him except to scream at him about something. As a result, the Greasers are always trying to protect Johnny. Dally, in particular, watches out for him, and Johnny, in return, idolizes him; therefore, it is very surprising when Johnny tells Dally not to bother Cherry Valence. Obviously, Johnny has the moral
Mending Wall written by Robert Frost, describes the relationship between two neighbors and idea of maintaining barriers. Where one of them feels that there is no need of this wall, 'There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard.' On the other hand his neighbor remains unconvinced and follows inherited wisdom passed down to him by his father, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' They even kept the wall while mending it, this reflect that they never interact with each other, ?We keep the wall between us as we go?. Robert Frost has maintained this literal meaning of physical barriers but it does contain metaphor as representation of these physical barriers separating the neighbors and also their friendship.
Shakespeare writes, “ The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms,/ And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;/ The third day comes a frost, a killing frost . . . “ (Shakespeare 3. 2. 353-55). The leaves blossoming symbolize the person putting a continuous amount of work into getting something and finally getting the prize they have been working hard for. The person is getting more powerful with their pride, but then, something knocks that person down. The frost is what kills the blossom, which symbolizes the killing of the person’s greatness and pride. In Professor Foster’s guide, he mentions “That shared storehouse of figuration - that is, types of figurative representation such as symbols, metaphors, allegory, imagery - allows us, even encourage us, to discover possibilities in a text beyond the literal” (Foster 243) meaning that the symbols mentioned in the poem are for the reader to see beyond just leaves blossoming. The symbol is there for the reader to comprehend that it symbolizes a person losing the pride they once
Nothing Gold Can Stay is a reference to childhood and how your personality and outlook is gold and over time it decays.
This poem delivers an idea that is the beauty of nature will outlive a world without humans and humanity. It is ironic that Bradbury chooses this poem considering the setting of his story, humans are gone, only left an automated house. Bradbury uses the poem, “No one would mind, neither bird nor tree / if mankind perished utterly (Bradbury 3)”, to mock the world he imaged. Even though humans are gone, nature lives on, the house keeps working and does not care humans no longer exist; Even though the house is able to last for some time, nature outlasts and does not care the existence of humans and their innovations, technology eventually malfunction and turns into rubble and steam: “even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam (Bradbury 4)”. In the end, the house is destroyed, but the sun rises to a new day. Nature has no concern for humans, and will live without
The figurative language hints at settle meanings that are not on the surface of this poem. They suggest the very connection between man and nature, and man’s desire to be part of the natural world. In this poem Wordsworth personifies the daffodils as people: “A host of golden daffodils / Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”. (Lines 4 & 6) This personification is relating the ecosystem around this majestic lake t...
may look at “All That is Gold” and think that there is no way J. R. R. Tolkien could fit so many powerful words and so much meaning into eight lines. These people would be wrong. With the poem directly relating to his Lord of the Rings series, it features a powerful speaker with magnificent tone. He includes great figurative language that helps to make the poem come alive. With a great rhyme scheme, Tolkien does not fail to include more forms of repetition. His masterpiece of a poem clearly conveys a story as well as a theme that can be applied to real life.
The second stanza of the poem focuses on a different aspect of the mother’s personality. Although Millay is addressing her mother’s death, the tone is not sentimental. In lines 5-6, the speaker uses the small detail of the mother’s brooch to illustrate her mother’s personality: the brooch is symbolic of some of her mother’s characteristics, “The golden brooch my mother wore/She left behind for me to wear” (Millay, lns 5-6). The fact that the speaker’s mother wore a golden brooch displays that she acknowledged finery: the brooch symbolizes the fact that the narrator’s mother had a good sense of style and was steadfast and brave, in addition to being feminine and beautiful, just like the brooch. The golden brooch accommodates as a contrast to
Robert Frost, an inspiring poet, enjoyed using extended metaphors, which can turn regular words and phrases into a deeper context that can be constantly viewed throughout the course of the poem. He uses this technique in both of the poems, “Mending Wall” and “The Cow in Apple Time,” by using environmental imagery and metaphor, to convey the message that boundaries display issues, even if the impact they have isn't negative.
"Mending Wall" is a poem written by the poet Robert Frost. The poem describes two neighbors who repair a fence between their estates. It is, however, obvious that this situation is a metaphor for the relationship between two people. The wall is the manifestation of the emotional barricade that separates them. In this situation the "I" voice wants to tear down this barricade while his "neighbor" wants to keep it.
It is by no means a permanent beauty; compared to humans, the lifespan of any flower is pitifully short. Yet it is a flower with which George Herbert compares humanity, a frail little blossom. “My shriveled heart... was gone / quite underground; as flowers depart / to see their mother-root, when they have blown” (lines 8-11). Every autumn, the flowers die and retreat underground, and every spring new seeds burst from the frozen ground, growing and blossoming into a new season of flowers. This cycle of nature represents a Christian 's spiritual walk, too, outlining the springs and winters of faith. As Herbert describes his spiritual life in terms of the seasons, he has hope that even as winter always becomes spring, so his worldly trials will eventually come to an end.