Edward Hirch's poem Execution touches on various thought provoking and heart touching subjects such as cancer. Hirsch does this by using a common American loved sport football to make connections with the reader. Within the poem Hirsch begins to by building a character for us which was the football Coach who was diagnosed with cancer. Hirsch used an extensive amount of literary strategies in his poem to portray the Coach as a man who had always been a strong fighter and strives for the "perfect execution" and winning in life. The Coach's life is changed drastically when he is loosing his battle with his opponent Cancer which is shattering his hopes and battering him with Cancer's "deadly...power." Feeling inferior to cancer, the Coach devised a "spiderweb of options and counters, Blasts and sweeps..." in a futile attempt to defeat cancer. The Coach knew that his plans were "flawless" and he made sure to use every strategy out there, but just like other cancer patients who try everything they possibly can do to survive, most of the time it isn't enough. In the Coach's case the game that he was fighting against cancer was already lost and all that was left of him was a "wobbly...stunned by illness" man. Even though winning his battle would have been the ideal ending, the author's purpose was to show that Cancer is tireless and that sometimes in life, some battles will be lost no matter how long and hard the fight.
Diction is used through out the poem Execution to effectively portray the Coach's character through out the story and the battle he is fighting with cancer. In the story the game of football was used with an extended symbolic meaning representing the game of life. At the beginning of the story Hirsch used phrases...
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...ming because at some points you feel hope for the Coach but then the reader realizes how difficult the battle against cancer is and how most individuals have a slim chance of surviving. Which then creates a sense of reality, displaying that not everyone wins in life no matter what it is whether its football, or an illness. Hirsch then ties the reality back to something that is sort of unreal to humans until we experience it, death. This incredible combination creates a mood that over powers the reader throughout the entire piece until the end which is the loss of hope, and sadness. The poem was pieced together beautifully in an extended metaphor, which finalizes the impact of the authors purpose on the reader. Hirsch use of language made the poem become very real, and causes individuals to grasp a hold of a bit of reality and realize that in life everyone can't win.
The author tells the reader that his coach had 'cancer stenciled into his face,' which obviously implies that the man was diagnosed with the genetic defect, cancer. Though the man, whom we shall call Coach, made special plays and drew up as many plans of action that he could muster and believed in the new options as a way to win an uncertain game, he could not defeat the invading team from upstate. The way that Coach drew the plays and knew that the ?execution? of the plays was flawless, and his team was still demolished is equally compared to a cancer patient?s conferring with doctors on the course to take to beat the foreign body trying to control his body. The ?blasts and sweeps? were the plays that were created to defend from an impending defeat, just as chemotherapy is a preventative of the malignant invader. The coach ?had perfect...
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
The poem begins by introducing the main figure in the poem, a naturally talented baseball player named Hector Moreno. To the narrator, the game of baseball is more than just a simple game, “it [is] a figure – Hector Moreno” (6). Describing Hector Moreno initially as a figure closely associated with the game of baseball shows just how revered a person Hector is in the narrator’s mind. This image of Hector Moreno is quite concrete, but as the poem continues, the narrator expresses to the reader that his father died sometime during his childhood, as “his [father’s] face no longer [hangs] over the table” (18). Suddenly the image of Hector Moreno is not as concrete as it first appears, especially through the lines leading up to Moreno’s first appearance on the baseball field “in the lengthening shade” (4-5). The shadow of the narrator’s father over the dinner table when he was a boy has now taken the form of Moreno’s figure in the shade over the baseball field since the narrator’s father has died. This initial me...
Terry knew that aches and pains are common in athlete’s lives. At the end of his first year of university there was a new pain in his knee. One morning Terry woke up to see that he could no longer stand up. A week later Terry found out that it was not just an ache he had a malignant tumor; his leg would have to be cut off six inches above the knee. Terry’s doctor told him that he had a chance of living but the odds were fifty to seventy percent. He also said that he should be glad it happened now fore just 2 years ago the chance of living was fifteen percent. The night before his operation a former coach brought Terry a magazine featuring a man who ran a marathon after a similar operation. Terry didn’t want to do something small if he was going to do something he was going to do it big. "I am competitive" Terry said, "I’m a dreamer. I like challenges. I don’t give up. When I decided to do it, I knew it was going to be all out. There was no in between Terry’s sixteen month follow up he saw all the young people suffering and getting weak by the disease. He never forgot what he saw and felt burdened to thoughts that died to run this marathon. He was one of the lucky one in three people to survive in the cancer clinics. Terry wrote asking for sponsorship " I could not leave knowing that these faces and feelings would still be here even though I would be set free of mine, s...
Initially, Mailer used diction through imagery and emotional words to give the reader how the situation felt to him and to describe to the reader the situation. In the passage, emotional words such as “bad maulings”, “three disgusted steps away”, and “referee’s face came a look of woe” pop up. Mailer utilizes these negative emotional words to impose a tone that is solemn towards Paret and a tone that is disdainful towards Griffith. Consequently, the reader’s mood coincides with the tone of the author. For example, the phrase “referee’s face came a look of woe” gives the reader a grievous feeling because of the word “woe”. Another instance where a reader can see this is in the phrase “three disgusted steps away”. Mailer could have just stated “three steps away”, but he wanted to enforce the negative connotation of the story and to show the reader how he had felt. Additionally, imagery is used in...
In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” the author uses rhyme to show the readers how the glory of the runner came and went in a dramatic way. By having rhyme in “To an Athlete Dying Young” it allows the irony in the poem and the meaning that poet A. E. Housman is trying to convey, really stick with the readers. In stanza three, “away” and “stay” and “grows” and “rose” make that stanza really stay put in the mind of the readers.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
One must look at this poem and imagine what is like to live thru this experience of becoming so tired of expecting to die everyday on the battlefield, that one starts to welcome it in order to escape the anticipation. The effects of living day in and day out in such a manner creates a person who either has lost the fear of death or has become so frighten of how they once lived the compensate for it later by living a guarded life. The one who loses the fear for death ends up with this way of living in which they only feel alive when faced with death. The person in this poem is one who has lost their fear of death, and now thrives off coming close to it he expresses it when he states “Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture” (LL.6-7). What happens to this persona when he leaves the battlefield? He pushes the limit trying to come close to death to feel alive; until they push
From the very first word of the poem, there is a command coming from an unnamed speaker. This establishes a sense of authority and gives the speaker a dominant position where they are dictating the poem to the reader rather than a collaborative interacti...
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
The idea that Death wins, in both cases is portrayed when Death, a young man courting his love, triumphs in winning her life and taking her as his own. Dickinson uses the first two lines of her poem to introduce this compliant character.
The poem is told by the child’s view and everything is described in order for the reader to visualize what is happening. “The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy.”(1-2), Roethke starts off by describing the father through sense of smell instead of his facial features. Another use of imagery, “We romped until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf/My mother’s countenance/ Cold not unfrown itself.”(5-8), the kitchen is a mess and the mother only watches, providing no help. They “romped” until the pans fell, this creates an image of destruction because the dad is drunkenly moving through the kitchen and destroying everything. The mother only watches in despair and she had no power of the actions of the father. “The hand that held my wrist/Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10), the battered knuckle means that the father is violent and giving a strong image of how the father is. Roethke uses amazing imagery in order to make sense of the story. He wants the reader to connect with him and to visualize what he is trying to
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
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, “