Written in the era directly preceding the holocaust, High Holy Days, written from the perspective of a young girl, is more telling than is evident at first read. Themes of a young girls distance, and doubt pertaining to her religion are prominent throughout the piece. There is an obvious divide between the speaker and her religion, as well as the speaker and the others among her congregation. The physical divide between the men and the women is mentioned to be like “the Red Sea,” the sea that Moses crossed in Exodus, which separates Egypt from Saudi Arabia. Later in the poem, she describes the congregation as lambs, keeping with the metaphor of the sacrificial altar in the preceding lines. She seems to correlate the people with the sacrificial …show more content…
The speaker seems to feel removed and poor in contrast to the decadent Torah scrolls, “dressed like matching dolls, each a king and a queen.” This simile points out the decadence and the perfection of the scrolls, and emphasizes how not human they look. They are “dressed” better than anyone in the synagogue and are in superior condition compared to the synagogue itself. The speaker is wearing a wool suit in the hot Indian summer, suggesting that she has nothing else proper to wear to synagogue. Her father is wearing a borrowed prayer shawl and is balding. While balding is a natural process, it may suggest the stress that the speaker 's family is going through; they are obviously poor. The synagogue itself has a broken window which “bled sunlight on the congregation.” The adjective bled has an ominous connotation in this sense; the coming war would kill millions of people and blood would be spilled all over …show more content…
The doubt of religion in a young person is shown, and is realistic; she feels a divide between the past and herself. The poem 's themes are carefully and subtly executed, and the seemingly descriptive poem becomes very deep when analyzed, exposing the doubt that is ingrained in all
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
Perception is a continuous theme as she requests readers to be privy to and does not forget differing factors of view. She also recognizes with others, pays attention and understanding their concerns. She observes fact as the method to revitalize and awaken human beings wrecked by means of some losses and burdens. She generates poems honoring humanity and nature to intensify readers’ appreciation of their international network and how their moves or indifference impacts distant humans and environments. Her poem, “One Boy Told Me,” demonstrate her fictional characteristics of openness, kindness, and concern, which call on readers to trust and recognize her
Holy Feast and Holy Fast emerged as a pivotal work during the mid-1980s in response to a prevalent trend among scholars which placed apostolic poverty and chastity at the very core of the Western European vita religiosa at the expense of attention toward the forms of austerity, some of which were more common to women. Bynum builds up her narrative by exploring how, although the renunciation of money and sex had a shared significance to both genders, the chief metaphor governing the spiritual life of women specifically concerned food. Bynum weaves her monograph together through a careful analysis of both food symbolism and food-related religious practices as described in the works of female mystics themselves and in the hagiographical vitae of female saints. Although this review will be chiefly focused on the latter portion of the work, “Chapter 6: Food as Control of Self” in particular, a brief overview of its preceding sections may be useful for setting context.
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
In “High Holy Days” by Jane Shore the idea of innocent youth awakening from a slumber for the first time is conveyed at a rate of infinite constancy from beginning to end. At the poem opens the tone of the speaker is childish and picayune. Throughout the eloquent stanzas filled with reminisces of the speaker, the tone becomes passionate and valiant. The writer, Jane Shore, awakens the speaker to her reality as a Jewish woman living in a world that does not condone her religion.
which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress". Throughout the passage Dorothea's beauty
In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they endure.
In the end, the journey the speaker embarked on throughout the poem was one of learning, especially as the reader was taken through the evolution of the speakers thoughts, demonstrated by the tone, and experienced the images that were seen in the speaker’s nightmare of the personified fear. As the journey commenced, the reader learned how the speaker dealt with the terrors and fears that were accompanied by some experience in the speaker’s life, and optimistically the reader learned just how they themselves deal with the consequences and troubles that are a result of the various situations they face in their
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed…“(Wiesel 32) Livia-Bitton Jackson wrote a novel based on her personal experience, I Have Lived a Thousand Years. Elli was a Holocaust victim and her only companion was her mother. Together they fought for hunger, mistreatment and more. By examining the themes carefully, the audience could comprehend how the author had a purpose when she wrote this novel. In addition, by seeing each theme, the audience could see what the author was attacking, and why. By illustrating a sense of the plight of millions of Holocaust victims, Livia-Bitton Jackson explores the powerful themes of one’s will to survive, faith, and racism.
The delineation of human life is perceiving existence through resolute contrasts. The difference between day and night is defined by an absolute line of division. For the Jewish culture in the twentieth century, the dissimilarity between life and death is bisected by a definitive line - the Holocaust. Accounts of life during the genocide of the Jewish culture emerged from within the considerable array of Holocaust survivors, among of which are Elie Wiesel’s Night and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. Both accounts of the Holocaust diverge in the main concepts in each work; Wiesel and Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their survivals. Aside from the themes, various aspects, including perception, structure, organization, and flow of arguments in each work, also contrast from one another. Although both Night and The Sunflower are recollections of the persistence of life during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their existence during the atrocity in their corresponding works.
Lang, Ariella. "The Politics and Poetics of Vatican Holocaust Discourse." Infohio.org. Judaism 207/208.3/4, 2003. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
When first approaching this work, one feels immediately attracted to its sense of wonder and awe. The bright colors used in the sun draws a viewer in, but the astonishment, fascination, and emotion depicted in the expression on the young woman keeps them intrigued in the painting. It reaches out to those who have worked hard in their life and who look forward to a better future. Even a small event such as a song of a lark gives them hope that there will be a better tomorrow, a thought that can be seen though the countenance by this girl. Although just a collection of oils on a canvas, she is someone who reaches out to people and inspires them to appreciate the small things that, even if only for a short moment, can make the road ahead seem brighter.
The self- examination part of her religion part comes into play because this poem was very long and confusing; much like how I believed her life was. She had rheumatic fever and through out her life she suffered from periods of fatigue and faced death eight times by giving birth to eight children. I think that she wrote the poem to represent her life she felt that her life was very long and drawn out. She also saw that there were a l...
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.