In Mary Robinson’s poem, London’s Summer Morning the speaker describes the fast-moving hustle and bustle of a busy London street. The poem serves as a kaleidoscope of the speaker’s surrounding describing not only what she sees, but how all of her senses engage with her environment. There is a clear focus on the surrounding commerce and occupations. The author makes distinct choices in tone, diction, word choice and sensory imagery to convey the utter chaos that she is immersed in. Despite Robinson’s choice to start and end the poem with negative connotations, she displays an argument that explains the beautiful commerce that takes place in the chaotic nature of the mornings in London. The poem starts with a rhetorical question, this conveys
During 1910 and 1970, over six million blacks departed the oppression of the South and relocated to western and northern cities in the United States, an event identified as the Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns is a powerful non-fiction book that illustrates this movement and introduces the world to one of the most prominent events in African American history. Wilkerson conveys a sense of authenticity as she not only articulates the accounts of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, but also intertwines the tales of some 1,200 travelers who made a single decision that would later change the world. Wilkerson utilizes a variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, and economics in order to document and praise the separate struggles but shared courage of three individuals and their families during the Great Migration.
In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid criticizes tourists for being heartless and ignorant to the problems that the people of Antigua had and the sacrifices that had to be made to make Antigua a tremendous tourist/vacation spot. While Kincaid makes a strong argument, her argument suggests that she doesn't realize what tourism is for the tourists. In other words, tourism is an escape for those who are going on vacation and the tourists are well within their rights to be “ignorant”, especially because no one is telling them what is wrong with Antigua.
This can be seen in all the stanza except for the last one. ‘who’ll give his country a hand?’ is an example of this. this sentence is used so it seems like if they do not participate in the war, nobody will. The use of rhetorical questions involves the audience by making sure they have to think about the question. This also causes the reader to remember it and not to forget after reading it once. Especially young men like to participate in games and by asking "who's for the game?" it makes them feel like they are missing out on a lot of amusement they would otherwise get from the game. This is especially effective for the audience at who it is aimed as they would like to participate in these kinds of
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of a lonely, English lady in France. Miss Brill is a quiet person who believes herself to be important. The whole afternoon at the gardens, Miss Brill does not converse with anyone, nor does anyone show any inclination to talk with her. She merely watches others and listens to their conversations. This provides her with a sense of companionship; she feels as if she is a part of other people’s lives. Miss Brill is also slightly self-conceited. She believes that she is so important that people would notice if she ever missed a Sunday at the park. It does not occur to her that other people may not want her to be there.
The setting is London in 1854, which is very different to anything we know today. Johnson’s description of this time and place makes it seem like a whole other world from the here and now....
In Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, King intertwines stories to create a satire that pokes fun at Indian culture compared to European culture. The book attempts to also poke fun at Judeo-Cristian beliefs by examining the creation story. King makes fun of the story of Adam and Eve. He pokes fun at western civilization and government. Although the book made me laugh some of the meanings behind kings writing puzzled me and made me question king's motives. The book is truly a puzzle that can be hard to decipher for most. I found the book to be challenging but entertaining and interesting.
while still making it’s point. One of many rhetorical questions used in the poem ...
sun from fading his books. He dies in 1985; he was to have all his
In spite of England’s tyrannical and destitute conditions, the Romantic era engendered many influential writers motivated to evoke reformation. The precursors of Romanticism included the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the widespread poverty and oppression that followed. Although many important essays and letters were written by the Romantics in support of social and economic reform, Romantic poets published profoundly influential poems reflecting the visible inequality subsequent to industrialization. Nowhere was this inequality more evident than in the slums of London. Unsurprisingly, romantic poets William Wordsworth and William Blake both wrote poems, adequately titled “London”.
In this poem, Mary Robinson writes about the hustle and bustle of a street in London. Robinson fills her poem with noisy communication, and she captivates her audience by showing the city in all that it has offer. She engages our senses with implacable street sounds, which is why this particular quote was chosen. The very first line of the poem gives you an idea of what to expect the poem to be like. She describes several different sounds she wakes up to every morning, and uses auditory imagery to identify the occupation of specific people in this busy street.
The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
A rhetorical strategy that this poem has is dialogue. The whole poem contains dialogue between the boy and girl who plan to meet each other in the orchard to be alone.
Given that the poem deals with a vision of a journey into the "garden", we could perhaps also view the poem as a commentary on the ways that conscience and guilt are imposed on the imagination and on what is natural and instinctual, the 'mind-forged manacles' of London.
In Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie attempts to use history in order to gain leverage on the present, to subvert the single story stereotypes that dominate many contemporary discourses on Africa. Written in the genre of historical fiction, Adichie’s novel transcends beyond mere historical narration and recreates the polyphonic experiences of varying groups of people in Nigeria before and after the Civil War. She employs temporal distortion in her narrative, distorting time in order to illustrate the intertwining effects of the past and present, immersing deep into the impact of western domination that not only catalyzed the war, but continues to affect contemporary Africa. In this paper, I will analyze her portrayal of the multifaceted culture produced by colonialism – one that coalesces elements from traditional African culture with notions of western modernity to varying degrees. I will argue that Adichie uses a range of characters, including Odenigbo’s mother, Ugwu, Olanna and Kainene, to each represent a point in a spectrum between tradition and modernity. Through her juxtaposition, she undermines the stereotypes that continue to characterize Africa as backwards and traditional, proving instead that colonialism has produced a cross culture where the two are intertwined.