In Margaret Avison’s poem titled “The Swimmer’s Moment,” she depicts individuals of the human race as swimmers debating whether or not their thirst for knowledge justifies imminent dangers of swimming into a whirlpool. With this analogy, Avison claims that, although it may be tempting to stay innocently yet safely ignorant, pursuing the quenching of curiosity is worth the chance of enlightenment. In the first stanza, Avison describes the scenario of swimmers that refuse to swim in the whirlpool. Initially, she claims that such people, “by the refusal… are saved,” suggesting that ignorance of chasing after knowledge can often be the most appealing option due to the fact that they need not carry the burden of experience with them. Using …show more content…
Blank faces of said swimmers means that they seem not to have any aspirations, and, therefore, not true value in existing. This causes them to swim in circles, without end and any true destination worth reaching, thusly. Them having pale faces, moreover, suggests their lack of experience, namely, going out to explore. A pale complexion is also associated, typically, with the connotation of nervousness or fright. These words describing cowering swimmers contrast with the seeming pleasantness contained within ignorance so as to communicate Avison’s message that mindless conformity and lack of yearning to attain enlightenment and the truth can be enticing, as it means leading a simple life, yet it furthermore states that said people live in a pitiful state of irrational operation with no real meaning other than to live and to
Knowledge can be the key to success and can lead people to happier life. However, there are some instances that you can not gain any more knowledge because of how it would change your whole life. The drive of wanting more and more knowledge is best portrayed through two well -known books. In Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, and in Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon, both the creature and Charlie are ostracized by society because they are different from everyone else but this distinction gave way for distinct fallouts because of their quest for knowledge beyond their reach to achieve happiness.
It is common for human beings, as a race, to fall into the comforts of routine – living each day similar to days before and days to come. Unfortunately, it is often too late before one even realizes that they have fallen into this mundane way of living in which each day is completed rather than lived, as explained by David Foster Wallace in “This Is Water”. This commencement speech warned graduating students of the dangers of submitting to our “default settings” of unconscious decisions and beliefs (Wallace 234). However, this dangerous way of living is no new disability of today’s human race. Socrates warned the people of his time: “A life unaware is a life not worth living” and who is to say he wasn’t completely right? A topic of long debate also includes the kind of influence that consciously-controlled thoughts can have on the physical body. A year after Wallace’s speech, neurobiologist Helen Pilcher, published “The New Witch Doctor: How Belief Can Kill”, which explains the influence of the mind and individual beliefs on the quality of one’s life. Together, both authors illustrate how detrimental a life lived unaware of one’s own thoughts and beliefs can be on the body and spirit. And though it is easy to live by
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Reading through The Awakening for the first time, a passage in chapter X intrigued me: Edna’s first successful swim. I begin my close reading halfway through page 49, “But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence.” Her success is sudden and in spite of assistance from “the men and women; in some instances from the children” throughout the summer. Robert himself had devised a system of lessons. But her triumph does not result from any such assistance, but from her own abilities. By comparing the experience to a child’s first steps, it conjures imagery she herself must have experienced with her own children, which is emphasized by referring to “the” child rather than “a” child. Before her triumph, she totters, stumbles, and literally clutches at any “hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her,” always requiring the assistance or reassurance of others. But on this night, her powers, which by virtue of the strength of such a word choice suggests its relevance to far more than swimming, overtake her. It is significant she does it alone, and her over-confidence possibly foreshadows the conclusion.
After reading both “Self Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson and “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” by Frederick Douglass, one might notice a trend in what both writers regard as the key to happiness or self-fulfillment. Emerson and Douglass both imply that acquiring knowledge is what people should strive for throughout their lives. However, their perceptions on the kind of knowledge should be attained is where their ideas diverge; Emerson is the one that encourages one to develop the soul whereas with Douglass, it is the mind.
Mary Shelley brings about both the positive and negative aspects of knowledge through her characters in Frankenstein. The use of knowledge usually has many benefits, but here Shelley illustrates how seeking knowledge beyond its limits takes away from the natural pleasures of known knowledge. She suggests that knowledge without mortality and uncontrolled passions will lead to destruction. Victor and his monster experience this destruction following their desires and losing self control. Walton, on the other hand, becomes of aware of the consequences and is able to turn back before it’s too late. Shelley also suggests that without enjoying the natural pleasures of life, pursuing knowledge is limited, but how can knowledge be limited if it is infinite?
I often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything no matter what to get rid of thinking” (Fredrick Douglas 132) He or she might not give any thought to the fact he or she can read at write. It comes very easily to put a pen to paper and start to write, that it’s not given a second thought. But for Fredrick Douglas literacy brought his mind to utter torment. He knew what he wanted; he knew that the ability to be able to read and write could give him so much more than his fellow slaves. The saying “ignorance is bliss” is something that holds true to Fredrick Douglas. He wishes he could stop thinking about learning to read and write he wishes he could stop thinking that he did know the difference between being literate and illiterate. He deserves to have the power of reading and writing so he could be someone, someone he knew he wanted to
One should learn from the situations present in the novel because life comes with an enormous amount of knowledge; going after the unknown is an act of rebellion against God. Works Cited knowledge of the aforesaid. " Merriam-Webster.com -. Merriam-Webster, n.d. -. Web.
The pursuit of knowledge can lead to a humans destruction and awareness. The pursuit of
In John Cheever’s, “The Swimmer”, on a hot summer Sunday ,while sitting by the pool with his wife and neighbors, as they all complained about their hangovers, a man of higher status named Needy Merrill decides to get home by swimming through the pools in his county. When Needy first starts off his journey he feels young and enthusiastic; he is then greeted in a joyous manner by his neighborhood friends. Apparently, Needy is a well-known and respected man. As his journey progresses he starts seeing red and orange leaves; he then realizes that it was fall. In the middle of his journey he starts to endure some turmoil, but he does not let that stop his journey. As his journey ends, Needy starts to come encounter with some people who constantly mention his misfortune and struggle with his family. Needy does not remember any of the turmoil that had been going on in his life, and starts to wonder if his memory is failing him. Towards the end, many of the people that came encounter with treated him rudely. Needy realizes that something must have went wrong in his life. When Needy arrives home, he sees that his house is empty and that his family is gone. In “The Swimmer “, John Cheever uses setting to symbolize the meaning of the story.
Through metaphors, the speaker proclaims of her longing to be one with the sea. As she notices The mermaids in the basement,(3) and frigates- in the upper floor,(5) it seems as though she is associating these particular daydreams with her house. She becomes entranced with these spectacles and starts to contemplate suicide.
I dip my toes in—feels cold. My nerves rise up and spread like fire throughout my body while I watch—while I wait. Stomach hurts. All those butterflies clash and crowd. They come every time that I race—it never fails. There is so much noise—the splash of water, talking, yelling, whistling, cheering.
Salty tears of frustration streamed down my checks into the steaming mineral water that surrounded me. No one noticed; no one cared. I was just another stranger in the crowd drifting along in Glenwood Pool. There was only one difference; I was alone. Everyone else in the pool seemed to have someone, and everywhere I looked couples were kissing! If someone had been surveying the whole thing they would have found happiness in every corner ... then they would have seen me; sulking in my corner of the pool with fat, old, wrinkly, bald men swimming past me repeatedly.
Consciously, Mr. Ramsey aspires to intellectual enlightenment through his philosophizing. His attitude in traveling to the Lighthouse mirrors his attitude towards attaining this goal. Mr. Ramsey has no hope that he will be able to reach either, and almost gives up both before trying, shifting the blame from him to outside forces. The trip to the lighthouse was unattainable because of conditions that do not have to do with neither him nor the goal: the weather conditions were not easily sailable. Intellectual enlightenment will be unattainable because of conditions that do not have to do with either him or the goal, as well. “He would have written better books if he had not married (Woolf 69).” His marriage and children become the scapegoat for this goal not being attained. Mr. Ramsey makes excuses for not becoming intellectually enlightened in the same vain that he makes excuses for not sailing to the Lighthouse.
Learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of. For some that thought this felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high and heavenly as acquaintance with the stars, gave themselves to Astronomy… (An Apology for Poetry ).