An experience becomes traumatic when one suppresses themselves to the truth. In The Nirvana Principle by Lisa Bird-Wilson, each time the imagery of a girl at the ravine is repeated throughout the story, the narrator exhibits progress with her healing process. The narrator is an intelligent yet stubborn 14 year old girl named Hanna. The story takes place in the room of the narrator’s shrink, Dr. Semenchuk. Throughout the short story, Hanna undergoes a healing process she is trying to work towards due to a trauma that she has encountered. Yet even with the help of her doctor, she struggles to be at peace with herself and the world around her. The narrator uses self-therapy when describing this particular recurring image of a body in the river …show more content…
To the readers, this reveals a further truth within the narrator each time. This repeated image that is described is a signifier to her true trauma. The first mention of the body in the river is a critical signifier in the story. Near the beginning of the short story, the first major imagery is presented by narrator. This imagery is dark and dreary and introduces the reason why the narrator is seeing a shrink in the first place. The narrator explains a lengthy description, allowing the readers to know the events that happened the day she encountered the traumatic experience. The narrator says, “Instead, there’s a girl. She lies prone over red stone, covering it completely with her body, interrupting the beautiful dip and flow of the water the way piece of debris sometimes does before it is eventually nudged on by the current” (Bird-Wilson 92). …show more content…
In The Nirvana Principle by Lisa Bird-Wilson, the narrator often describes a particular image of a body in the river that is used to help her work towards this healing process with self-therapy. Throughout the story Hanna gradually reveals more in her narrative as the reader’s progress further to the truth. As the story advances, the reader’s can identify a development with the narrators healing process by the imagery used of the body in the ravine. In the end, it is revealed the true representation and meaning behind this imagery. Ultimately, this discovery exhibits alleviation in the narrator distress from her trauma
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...
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
Susanna recalls her suicide attempt: “I wanted to get rid of a certain aspect of my character. I was performing a kind of self-abortion of my character… but i had no heart to try it again” (Kaysen 39). Although Susanna’s action is viewed by some critics as alarming, it was a learning experience for her, and she moved on. Furthermore, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs emphasizes the idea of undergoing drastic measures in order for results to be evident. Also, self-actualization stresses the need for personal growth that spans a person’s lifetime (McLeod). Susanna’s drastic actions allow her to realize her need for self-evaluation and understanding her actions. Susanna explains that “scar tissue has no character... It doesn’t show age or illness... It shields and disguises what’s beneath. That’s why we grow it, we have something to hide” (Kaysen 16). Seeing Polly’s scar tissue, Susanna acknowledges the motives behind the creation of the form of skin, and thus, her understanding brings her closer to identifying her motives and what she seeks to gain from her actions. Susanna explains what goes into one’s detachment from life: “... practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying” (Kaysen 36). Susanna acknowledges preparing for suicide, however, she realizes after
Readers can connect and identify with the story quickly through the verisimilitude that Joan MacLeod creates throughout the story. The descriptions that she uses to create images in the minds of the readers are probably very close to what most people had while growing up. It creates emotions in readers because the story relates so often to what is heard and seen in media everyday all over ...
The plot that develops from the setting is that when the narrator and the man are next to the river, it could be perceived as calming since that is how she felt
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...
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
...plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms”. Then his consciousness starts to give way, there are times of blackout, lapses, the story grows inconsistent. And in the end the protagonist opens his eyes into the darkness, i.e. dies. The story suggests that trauma affects physical state of human beings while perception grows more acute and senses are sharpened. Several seconds before his death the protagonist still is able to think quite coherently and logically.
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
...ony, and narration. Without these exceptional parts the theme would not have as much meaning and depth in its perception to the reader. The symbols show to the reader that there is a hidden message to what is going to happen in the end and hints to the theme of the story but is purposely ignored. Irony brings attention to the conscious or thoughts during the story and the unlikelihood of actually dying at the end shows how strong our minds are. Narration is brought to show the theme of his expected death and a diversion from the reality of the readers thoughts. The story is saturated with literary elements that help prove the theme of “An Occurrence of Owl Creek Bridge”.
In Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha and his friend, Govinda, leave their sheltered lives as Brahmins, Hindu priests, to be Samanas, ascetics who deny themselves all pleasure. Some years after, they meet the Buddha, whom Govinda stays with to be a monk while Siddhartha leaves to continue on his own adventures. Toward the end of their lives, they meet again at a river bank and discover if they have truly achieved inner peace. Hesse uses Govinda as a contrast to Siddhartha. As displayed in excursions with the Samanas, with the Buddha, and on other adventures, Siddhartha is a character who is more independent and must learn on his own while Govinda is more dependent and feels he must be taught.
Kimberly Tsau, for example, follows De Quincey's lead in her analysis of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, suggesting that among the violence, apathy, and disjointedness of the poem is a call to face and learn from suffering. Her essay, "Hanging in a Jar," examines how Eliot collects a variety of "cultural memories," cutting and pasting them together to form a collection that is both terrifying and edifying.
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.
Signs of the depth of the narrator's mental illness are presented early in the story. The woman starts innocently enough with studying the patterns of the paper but soon starts to see grotesque images in it, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a...
The poem, “After Great Pain”, by Emily Dickinson, is one that conveys an inner struggle of emotion and the process that a person goes through after experiencing suffering or pain. Through this poem, Dickinson utilizes physical reactions to allude to the emotional pain that can make people feel numb and empty. Included in this poem is an array of literary devices, such as oxymorons, similes, and personification. These devices help show how death and grief can be confronted, whether it be by giving into the pain or by regaining emotional strength, letting go, and moving on with life. As we work on the project, we discuss multiple aspects of the poem and how the structure and diction alludes the meaning of the poem.