Creativity is very fragile. One person can destroy the balance. In this poem, it is the government that is disrupting this balance. They are trying to suppress all creativity like a seine. During “The Purse Seine”, the suppression of creativity is an ongoing battle. In “The Purse Seine”, Robinson Jeffers tells the audience about the helplessness of humans to the oppressive government using metaphors and other literary devices.
Symbolism is used throughout “The Purse Seine” to show that something as simple as a closing net can relate to a bigger picture. The most notable symbol in this poem is the actual seine. This net represents the government, and the pursing of the net represents that the “government takes all powers” and closes in on creativity. The seine depicts the trapping government. The fish “wildly beat from one wall to the/ other...” This symbolizes the intelligent people fighting back, but they are too late. The net is already being hauled in. Jeffers has many symbols personifying human weakness and helplessness. “How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the/crowded fish know they are caught...” The beautiful shimmering bodies represent how beautiful a human life can be, yet they are terrible because humans know that even in the joys of life, being caught by death is a threat. “…each beautiful slender body sheeted/with flame, like a live rocket…” Human lives are like the rockets. Although they are beautiful, they are short lived and can wane into oblivion without a trace. “The inevitable mass disasters” are also used by Jeffers to illustrate the helplessness of humans. If these “mass disasters” are inevitable, then the humans are too weak to stop it from happening. The symbols used by Robinson Jef...
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..., so no new ideas can be heard. In “The Purse Seine” many metaphors are used to portray the government, creativity, and human life.
Throughout “The Purse Seine”, many literary devices are used. Robinson Jeffers gives his opinion about humans through this poem by suggesting that they are dependent, helpless, and oblivious. He tells the audience this through the use of literary devices. By using symbolism and metaphors, he shows the reader that a closing net is more than closing net. It is a trapping government that is trying to ensnare all human creativity. Jeffers uses imagery to add depth to his words. His imagery adds to the symbols and metaphors, and makes them more descriptive and expressive. All throughout “The Purse Seine”, Robinson Jeffers uses metaphors and other literary devices to describe the oppressive government and the crushable creativity of society.
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...
In Julia Alvarez’s poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries”, Alvarez skillfully employs poetic devices such as imagery and personification to help convey the speaker’s discoveries. Alvarez’s use of imagery paints a vivid picture of the setting for the reader, allowing for a better understanding of the context of the poem, and a clarification of what goes on within the college bookstore. The use of personification highlights the significance of the special book of poems and its persuasive effect on the main character.
Throughout this poem the speaker contemplates stealing a book of poetry. The poet Julia Alvarez gives the action of stealing the book a deeper meaning while portraying the significance of the book to the speaker. Julia Alvarez does this through the use of many poetic devices. Throughout this excerpt of the poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan's ‘The Blue Estuaries’” by Julia Alvarez, the poet conveys the speaker's discoveries through the use of imagery and diction in order to portray the overall meaning of the work as a whole.
The poem begins with many examples of imagery and reveals an important role of the meaning of the poem. In the first four lines of the poem, Jeffers uses imagery to establish his connection between him and the bay.
Through imagery, diction, and the personification of poetry, Ruth Forman reveals her personal connection and love for poetry and how poetry represents human need in “Poetry Should Ride the Bus”. The images of young girl cartwheeling and a woman dropping off a sweet potato pie bring you closer to the story, while the diction creates a connection between you and the people, this poem is a girl growing up realizing and seeking different things in her life and you realize that as Forman personifies the poem.
The novel is starkly realistic. With the Joads as they travel, we meet the dark underside of capitalism with its uncontrolled poverty, its inhuman greed and human cost, and sense a fractured trust between government and people. The underside cont...
The struggles that many face while experiencing poverty are not like any other. When a person is experiencing poverty, they deal with unbearable hardships as well as numerous tragic events. Diane Gilliam Fisher’s collection of poems teaches readers about labor battles within West Virginian territories, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of these battles include the Battle of Matewan and Battle of Blair Mountain. The collection of poems is presented in many different manners, ranging from diary entries to letters to journal entries. These various structures of writing introduce the reader to contrasting images and concepts in an artistic fashion. The reader is able to witness firsthand the hardships and the light and dark times of impoverished people’s lives. He or she also learns about the effects of birth and death on poverty stricken communities. In the collection of poems in Kettle Bottom, Fisher uses imagery and concepts to convey contrast between the positive and negative aspects of the lives of people living in poverty.
Symbolism is a recurring theme in this novel, the river and fish symbols both contribute to the overall growth to the protagonist, Lily, and to the storyline as a whole. “The river has done its best, I was sure, to give her a peaceful ride out of this life. You can die in a river, but maybe you could be reborn in it too” (Kidd 229). The river as a symbol represents life and death, Lily mentions how it brought May’s death but also brings life too, for example, a baptism is sometimes done in river with symbolizes rebirth. This influential symbol contributes to the organization of the storyline by partly helping Lily come to terms with May’s death, in turn, keeping Lily content and the story continuing. “They held me down on the bank and hooked
Michael Gray’s analysis of Dylan’s lyrics being a contrast between hackneyed expressions and “beautifully done” are exemplified in the song “Just Like a Woman.” Dylan’s lyrics “she aches just like a woman but she breaks just like a little girl” is given the harsh description of “maudlin platitude” and deemed to be a “non-statement.” If Dylan’s lyrics cannot uphold against meaningful music of the same category, how can they be expected to stand against literature written for a different field. John Lennon had his own critiques of Dylan’s works, calling out how the abstract nature of his lyrics, having loose definition, never achieved an actual point. Lennon’s definition of “poetry” referred to “stick[ing] a few images together” and “thread[ing] them” in order to create something meaningful. It once again boils down to the fact that Dylan’s music that was written and intended to be received as a live performance. The acknowledgement that “…you have to hear Dylan doing it” is a recognition of his composition’s failure to come across as a normal literary work. It’s all part of a “good game.” This in itself should disqualify Dylan as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize.
Though the way it relates to people in the 19th century and the way it relates to the modern world greatly differs, the symbolism in the poem and shift in tone throughout it shows a great appeal to human nature, and how desperate one can be to change it. The symbolism in the poem paints a ghastly picture of a man’s life, falling apart as he does his best, and worst, to keep it safe from himself. In lines 1 through 8 (stanza one), he gives a brief description of an incident in his life where things have gone wrong. “When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind/Repose trust in his footsteps of air?/No! Abandoned, he sinks into a trance of despair,” He uses these lines to show the lack of control he has over his actions, how his will to change his circumstances has weakened.
In their article, “The Creativity Crisis”, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explore the urgency of the downfall in the public’s “creativity quotient.” Bronson and Merryman emphasize the necessity for young children to be imaginative. Through an IBM poll, they verify that with the decrease of creativity in our society comes an array of consequences seen in the work field. The authors remind readers of another reason for the importance of creativity; they argue that creative ideas can solve national matters. Hence, Branson and Merryman believe that original ideas are key for a better world. Though I concede that creativity is a vital key to the solution of many national problems, I still insist that teaching creativity,
Principal themes in the poem consist of consumerism, capitalism, and most importantly greed. The poem described the journey of the poet as he went--goes through an implied spiritual transformation starting with getting annoyed with one of his students wanting to yell at him “how full of shit” he is, after that he recalled his dream, after dowsing off, he recalled something else a poem by Karl Marx a major communist. “I was listening to cries of the past when I should have been listening to the cries of the future,” after the fact, he came to an understanding with the student while imagining the mediforeical nightmare. Grouping themes together there are dreams, nightmares, waking life, dream life, sleeping, and clarity exactly, and being aware that the person is dreaming. When Hoagland references people drowning in the river, it could be compared to people working across seas in different countries, manufacturing goods for the average American while the workers live in harsh environments, but no one thinks of that when running around in new Nike shoes. The “you” in the pleasure boat is American people or America frankly, or even the ideals of consumerism were the normal person needs a new IPhone ever year when it is released. In the poets dream when he talks about stabbing his father and “Ben Fra...
This poem is full of visual imagery; one can imagine being the speaker, staring at the fish on the hook. The fish’s brown skin, shapes on his scales, the tiny white sea-lice, the green weed, the blood flowing from his gills, his entrails, and his pink bladder all describing the fish’s body. This allows the reader to imagine as if the fish was in their hands. She not only illustrates the fish as a whole but also ge...
While growing up, he prepared himself to become a lawyer; yet, his chief struggle rooted itself in his lacking desire to practice law. Le described this monotonous lifestyle by saying, “Every twenty-four hours I woke up at the smoggiest time of morning and commuted…without saying a word, wearing clothes that chafed and holding a flat white in a white cup” (23). The droning demands of becoming a lawyer led Nam to discover his hope for creativity elsewhere. Furthermore, he explained how the shackles, which held his mind captive led him to hate those who were free to explore their imagination. Therefore, he sacrificed his profession to become a writer, which led to an anarchic and disintegrated lifestyle. Although Nam’s life became hectic and he faced new adversities, he set his ingenuity free at a young age and freed himself from cultural
In the poem “A song of Despair” Pablo Neruda chronicles the reminiscence of a love between two characters, with the perspective of the speaker being shown in which the changes in their relationship from once fruitful to a now broken and finished past was shown. From this Neruda attempts to showcase the significance of contrasting imagery to demonstrate the Speaker’s various emotions felt throughout experience. This contrasting imagery specifically develops the reader’s understanding of abandonment, sadness, change, and memory. The significant features Neruda uses to accomplish this include: similes, nautical imagery, floral imagery, and apostrophe.