For this close reading assignment I decided to analyze a passage on page 164. ”The Well, with its slightly torn metal lid, was filled with water to a level above eight feet. The neighbor’s plastic bucket lay at the foot of the silt around the mouth of the well. Boja’s body was floating atop the water, his clothes formed a parachute behind him, bloated like a full balloon. One of his eyes was open and could be seen beneath the surface of the clear water. The other was closed and swollen. His head was held half above the water, resting against the fading bricks of the well, while his light-skinned hands lingered on top of the water as though he was locked in an embrace with another who no one else but he could see.” When the family has just discovered …show more content…
The more times I read the passage, the more I realize that there really is more meaning in this passage than the description of Boja’s body in the well. For example even though there actually is a metal lid on the top of the well that is cracked, I think it is a metaphor that represents the family. When you think about it metal is a very strong material and is hard to break because at the atomic level its atoms are packed so close together and have such a strong bond between them. I think it represents the family. Before all of the madness the family has such a close bond and everyone has their place. When father leaves that crack starts to occur. It’s much like a windshield crack, one some pressure is applied and other outside forces are applied to that crack, then the crack starts to spread and before you know it catastrophic things that you thought could never happen have now occurred. As a unit the family is very strong but as individuals everyone is weaker than they would be with support. Another example of the author's clever choice of diction would be how he uses the word parachute to describe Boja’s shirt. He says that the back of his shirt looked like a parachute and parachutes are used to keep someone from hitting the ground to hard when they are being dropped from the sky. It is basically an external thing that keeps you safe. This “parachute” that Boja has can represent all of the …show more content…
For example when the author uses “mouth” to describe the opening of the well. This makes the well seem like it is almost a creature that is alive. This would make more sense because the well has swallowed and killed Boja, the Mother hawk, and the lizard. His word choice adds this superstitious animate feel to the well. This passage also talks about how there was silt on the very edge of the well. It’s like it was waiting to fall in. I looked up what silt was and it is dirt and people have big problems with dirt being in their wells because it can carry many germs and diseases which would be harmful to the people drinking the water. This brings up the theme of invasion. Once the dirt invades the well, then the well is no longer the same. The water will be forever murky or described and remembered as murky. Much like the image of the family to the people on the outside. They will forever remember this family as the family that was once perfect but is now almost like outcast because one brother killed another and that is a very taboo subject in society. They will now have a very distorted image according to the other people in the town. This can also be related to Adaku, the boys mom who is mentally invaded by insanity and her sense that there are spiders all over the place. When she comes back she isn’t the same because of all the things that she
The guest waked from a dream, and remembering his day’s pleasure hurried to dress himself that might it sooner begin. He was sure from the way the shy little girl looked once or twice yesterday she had at least seen the white heron, and now she must really be made to tell. Here she comes now, paler than ever, and her worn old frock is torn and tattered, and smeared with pine pitch. The grandmother and the sportsman stand in the door together and question her, and the splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock-tree by the green marsh. But Sylvia
it shows the initial shock and the very quick denial of the situation that comes after the initial “deed”. he screamed it and he could not be sure if the scream awakened him or the pain in his stomach. Brian stood at the end of the long part of the lake and watched the water, smelled the water, listened to the water, was the water.” The first part of the quote shows how even in sleep you will have a desperation for someone to love and care about you and this book shows this feeling almost perfectly. The second part tells us that in depression you may resolve into isolation and emotional dullness.
The author uses diction in the passages to signify the effect of the author¡¯s meaning in story and often sway readers to interpret ideas in one way or another. The man in the story arrives to a ¡°[dry] desert¡± where he accosts an animal with ¡°long-range attack¡± and ¡°powerful fangs.¡± The author creates a perilous scene between the human and animal in order to show that satisfaction does not come from taking lives. With instincts of silence and distrust, both of them freeze in stillness like ¡°live wire.¡± In addition, the man is brought to the point where animal¡¯s ¡°tail twitched,¡± and ¡°the little tocsin sounded¡± and also he hears the ¡°little song of death.¡± With violence ready to occur, the man tries to protect himself and others with a hoe, for his and their safety from the Rattler. The author criticizes how humans should be ¡°obliged not to kill¡±, at least himself, as a human. The author portrays the story with diction and other important techniques, such as imagery, in order to influence the readers with his significant lesson.
The wooden bucket enriches the flavor of water, and connects you to nature through taste. Hence, Darl has found a better way to satisfy his needs. William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can feel the floor shaking when he walks on it that came and did it....
Imagery was used to describe the cold conditions in the dump. The cold conditions were too much for the divers and they were “wrapped in burlap sacks that they used as blankets, but the cold wind seeped through everywhere. The grey sky of clouds used in the north and dragged to their country by the winds’ garbage truck” (132). Additionally, there was imagery when it was described how Bacán’s chest was kept warm during the cold, “rubbing it with alcohol until the bottle ran out, and then they used bottles of perfume, rancid ointments and old balms the Única would pick up” (130). Dialogue was also when Única spoke to Mondolfo about the cold weather. When Única was upset with Mondolfo for bringing God into the conversation, she said, “If you continue blaspheming, I’m going to get a divorce”. Another example was when Única said, “that’s how he gets with the flu” when Mondolfo said Bacán was turning yellow (131). The tone at the beginning of the story was optimistic. Única was optimistic about living in the dump and tried to see the world in a bright light. The tone later changed to depressing when Bacán died. Bacán’s death caused her to change and age. After Bacán’s death, “days ran together rapidly, undifferentiated, identical and interminable. Única would only drink a teaspoonful of sugar water” (161). A subtheme in the story is that there are good people everywhere. For example, when Bacán died and the divers to help out. Some people
4. Chapter 5, page 53, #1: “I couldn’t figure out exactly what this word meant, whether It meant broken in one or several places, cleanly or badly, and I didn’t ask.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
"A man wading lost fields breaks the pane of flood" which starts the second section gives the effect of pain and hurt. The man survives by going along with nature and resisting it, but it also gives the effect of danger at the same time. " Like a cut swaying" carries on the effect of being deliberate, sharp and precise and "it's red spots" and "his hands grub" continues with the theme of the animal sort of.
The fact that the children are so comfortable doing so means they often find dead bodies washed up on their shores. This hints at the village’s gloomy, dark setting. The miserable atmosphere is further described with the following “The village was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desertlike cape.” When the villagers found the dead man’s body they didn’t need to clean off his mud-crusted face to know he wasn’t one of their own. They had so few people they “simply had to look at one another to see that they were all there.” This is a lonesome, miserable village that gives off an air of
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.
With both hands resting lightly on the table to each side of his white foam cup, Otis stared into its deep abyss of emptiness with his head bowed as if willing it to fill again, giving him a reason to enjoy the shelter that the indoors provided. I could almost touch the conflict going on inside of him, a battle of wills as if he was negotiating with an imaginary devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I sensed a cramp of discomfort seizing his insides, compelling him to flee, then a silent resolve, as if a moment of clarity had graced his consciousness.
The poet uses examples of imagery in this poem. The poet uses a simile in the first line of the first stanza to start off the poem. The simile she uses is ''the skin cracks like a pod''. The opening of the poem gives a clear message that something is severely wrong. A pod cracks with barely any resistance so the comparison to the skin is a unreserved statement outlining how easily the skin is. There is obviously a drought or a vast undersupply of water. The opening surprises the reader and gives an indication of what is to come. The poet uses a short and abrupt line which is effective
...n help depict the bhikkhu in a more poetic manner than just a straightforward description. For example, in verse 369 the metaphor that is used is that of a boat needing to have the water bailed from it. The boat is representing the mind while the water is representing hate and lust. Again a metaphor is given in verse 377 when the text talks about jasmine shedding its leaves. The jasmine is representing the mind, while the leaves are representing passion and ill-will.
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.
The theme is portrayed through very unique imagery with the extremely exhilarating word choice this poet carefully chose to make this whole poem flow like a brook in mid-summer with an unbelievable number of trout in the glistening blue water. When he introduces us to this Clod of Clay that is living a horrible, but in it all he finds a silver lining through it all. This little Clod of Clay lives under cattle’s feet and gets stomped on all the time and although he is getting trampled on ninety percent of his life he finds what the silver lining through it all is. He says, “