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To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
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In the poem The Vanishing Valley by Ernie Fanning, a cowboy began to see his way of life disappearing right before his eyes. The natural beauty the valley once had was in the process of being transformed in to a playground for the city folk. The cowboy had a strong desire to halt the production of the buildings but could do nothing more than grieve. With great detail, you will see just how every element needed to create a poem aided in the production of this heartfelt piece of writing.
The diction in the writing is one of the roles to the creation of this poem. For instance, looking at the title, it prepares you for the poem. How does it do this? It engages your mind to generate questions that you might want answers to. Such as, “How does a valley just
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disappear?”. There is a key line in the poem that happens to be a question the cowboy keeps asking himself. Fanning questions, “Where the hell did the valley go?” (8). The reader is able to tell the cowboy is upset about the disappearance of the valley from this line. He used the profane word to exaggerate the importance of the question. Further along in the poem, the reader learns how the valley disappears and is beginning to be covered with “… mounds of steel and grey concrete.” (16). This poem took place out on the Truckee Meadows in Nevada around 1985. The poem describes the meadows thus: … did the valley go?
Whatever happened to the fields of spuds
And onions that the old degos used to raise,
And where have gone the lush green meadows
Where the fat cattle used to graze? … (8-12)
This was the third stanza of the poem. The cowboy describes the meadows in detail for a reason here. He does this because the meadow was held near and dear to him and to the others that lived there. He is upset and does not approve of the production of the buildings and roads that are being built in the meadows. Fanning reminisces on “When Kietzke Lane was nothing more / Than a gravel country road” (23-24). With such detail put in to describing the setting, it was quite simple to paint an image in your head creates the mood.
This poem made feel the same sadness and disapproval that the cowboy portrayed throughout the piece of writing. The cowboy was losing a place he loved dearly. Others in the poem shared the pain with the cowboy as well. A place that was once calm and peaceful would soon be taken over by city folk building a place of business and fun. The winding asphalt roads would cover up the memories the people in the valley had experienced on the dirt roads beneath. Memories would be buried and new ones would be
made.
Things like imagery, metaphor, and diction allow poetry to have the effect on the reader that the poet desires. Without these complex and abstract methods, poetry would not be the art form that it is. In Alan Dugan’s poem “Love Song: I and Thou”, he uses extended metaphor and line breaks to create tone and meaning in this chaotic piece.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
In N. Scott Momaday’s and D. Brown’s separate passages, they describe different views on the landscapes in Oklahoma. Momaday’s purpose is to reveal that in the midst of harsh surroundings, reverence can be found within.. Brown’s purpose is to explain how the relationship of nature is destroyed over time. Momaday creates not only a harsh tone, but also a spiritual one in order to reveal to the reader that the landscapes unforgivable qualities hide its sense of awe; while Brown adopts a mourningful tone in order to convey the landscape’s hopelessness and despair.
The first stanza begins with a familiar setting, a “… winter evening”(1). This is associated with a lack of growth and a loss of vitality. It also describes death and desolation. This does not last long when we are confronted,” with smells of steaks in passageways”(2) paints a picture of a polluted and mundane environment. The precise use of descriptive words composes this mood of decline and despair. As seen when you read ” …the burnt-out ends of smoky days”(4).
The poem in its self takes on a rhyme scheme that allows you the reader to feel the narrator, so that you can not only imagine that you were there, but you can also almost gather the same feelings as the narrator. In the begin he talks about how he first rode through Baltimore happy, and filled with glee. Unti...
The poem itself in structured into thirteen stanzas with each stanza containing eight lines. Patterson uses imagery as one of the main techniques to capture the audience’s imagination, with lines like “a stripling on a small and weedy beast” and “where mountain ash and Kurrajong grew wide” giving a description of the character in the first instance and the landscape in the second. The poem is set to a rhythm that is fast pace and builds anticipation throughout using metaphors like “And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed” and personification such as “the stock whips woke their echoes and they fiercely answered
...head; the war-torn countryside still lives on for Inman to relive and Ada to discover. The field burning, the sunrises and sunsets, the rivers flowing and the eternal rocks and trees that make up the landscape are all characters in themselves. Frazier conveys his love of the land through every word of ‘Cold Mountain’ and uses unusual adjectives or verbs to explain his sight from a different angle. (This is illustrated on page 215 as Inman is wedded to Lila; she ‘described little delighted circles in the dirt’.) Matthew Arnold states that ‘genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul’, and Frazier has simply shared this genuine classic to give a hauntingly true-to-life insight in to the search for the American Dream, based on his own experience of the Appalachian Mountains.
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
America has always been a land of great beauty and ambitious dreams. The most prominent dream of all is the American Dream: nice house, loving family, steady job. However, this vision is becoming less of a reality, and more of what it’s called, a dream, in this modern era. Through two different forms of art, poetry and music, two people describe their longing for a bit of the old world in this new one. “Dover Beach” is a poem in which Matthew Arnold laments the harsh realism that grips the world, wishing against all hope for romantic beauty to enthrall the world again. In the song, “Where the Green Grass Grows,” artist Tim McGraw expresses his longing for a peaceful, pastoral future, all the while describing his dissatisfaction of working in an increasingly gritty urban setting. The exploration of the effects contemporary society imposes on the beautiful, romantic dreams of the past are the centerpieces of the two different forms of art.
The falling snow soon covers the irregular jagged surface of the earth and this visual scene is gradually overwhelming the senses and sensitivity as the mind is going in a state of numbness. In such a state of numbness one becomes concerned and confined with ones own self. The poet is trying to find refuge in the lap of nature but the cold whiffs of night seals out his approach. The falling snow has further aggravated the chances of his meeting with nature.
The poem contains the central idea that many of these children never understood what home really means. In Native American culture the people venerate earth and it is referred to as mother nature which we see in the poem. The rails cut right through their home but they don’t view them like the average person. They view the tracks as if they are scars across mother earths face and her face is the Native American’s homeland. She is scarred for eternity but she is perfect in their dreams. This symbolism is ironic because the children try to reach home using the railroad that ruined natural life for them and many other Native Americans. In the second stanza the speaker says “The worn-down welts of ancient punishments lead back and fourth” (15-16). Which can be talking about the marks on the children’s bodies after getting caught while running away. But the “word-down welts” can also symbolize the welts that were put on mother nature throughout history. The last five lines of the poem sums up the symbol of hope through their memories and dreams. The last line of the poem says, “the spines of names and leaves.” (20-24). The “spines” symbolize the physical strength of the children and their ability to maintain hope individually “names”, and for their tribe
This beauty is non-existent to the unknowing eye. However, for someone like Laura, who has been challenged and overcome by the prairie, the beauty is evident all around her: “She liked the enormous sky and the winds, and the land that you couldn’t see to the end of. Everything was so fresh and clean and big and splendid.” (75) What started as a childish excitement for something new and unknown, developed into a deep appreciation for the nothingness and open skies that seemed to go on
The poem primarily starts, with a weird rhyming cadence form that gives the reader the idea of disorder and or confusion. The structure of the poem is strange, much like the poet’s thoughts and feelings. The author also uses a great deal of repetition. Her use of repetition helps to add importance and give a more of a dramatic effect to
The imagery in the poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” helps to illuminate several themes in the poem. The first stanza of the poem expresses that the narrator is in the woods at night. The narrator starts the poem by telling the reader that he knows that the owner of the woods is in the village, so the owner will not know/see that the narrator is in the woods. Thus giving off one off the first theme of the poem, isolation. The imagery in the first stanza helps to further pursue that the person in the poem is in the woods alone at night, when it is snowing. Which creates a theme of isolation because the imagery helps the reader to imagine being alone at night in the woods. In line one and lines 11 to 12, the poem states, “ Whose woods these are I think I know.” And “The only other sound’s the sweep/Of easy wind and downy flake.” The reader gets the feeling of isolation, and it puts the image of nature filled woods with no one in there. From the imagery of those three lines it gives off the theme of
The poem is structured as four, six lines stanzas. Within each stanza there are different ideas that all tie in perfectly together with the themes of nature, death, desire, passage of time and love. The narrator talks about his experiences by saying,” Out through the fields and the wood. And over the