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Grieving a loss essay
Sample of grieving essay
Grieving a loss essay
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Katherine Philip’s “Epitaph,” written in a couplet form, is memorializing her firstborn son who only lived less than six weeks after he was born. In this poem Katherine Philips is desperately trying to renew her faith in life, but she is struggling to do so because of the death of her son. She is attempting to justify the loss of her child, but is also questioning whether there is even a reason for hope. “What on earth deserves our trust?” If you cant trust anything then you have to rely on faith. Even things that we know as certain, like the sun rising in the morning, Katherine seems to not trust, “And so the Sun if it arise…” The “if” implies such a strong sense of doubt that it clearly emphasizes Philip’s struggling attempt to renew her faith in life.
One of Philip’s greatest tactics in this piece, to convey her intense grief and desolation, is her use of promising phrases about her son’s future, and her sheer joy about what it holds for him. In doing this she is able to build an emotional connection between herself and the reader, “Seaven years Childless Marriage past/ A Son, A Son is born at last…”(5,6), “As a long life promised,” (9), and “Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Aier,” (8). The emotional feelings that are withdrawn from these phrases all resonate with the reader, and allow us to become much more sensitive to not only her and what she is going through, but also her son and his lack of life. The repetition of “Son” is very effective in showing how elated she was, and actually makes the depressing realization that follows even darker and more troublesome.
The phrases she chose are also significant because they allow us to see that her shift in language represents, and coincides, with her shift in emotion and tone. Ph...
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...a purposeful tactic she is using to detach herself from the painful death of F.P. Choosing to refer to the grave as stupid instead of something less colloquial may be one of Philip’s a coping methods. However, she did not use that coping technique in any way in “Epitaph,” giving us our point of distinction, she is not as emotionally attached to the death in “In Memory of F.P” as she was in “Epitaph.”
Katherine Philips is desperately trying to renew her faith in life, but she is struggling to do so because of the death of her son. She is attempting to justify the loss of her child as a form of consolation, while keeping somewhat emotionally detached to the later death of her stepson in “In Memory of F.P.” The differing phrases, words, and language contrast the two elegies and emphasize the loss and pain in “Epitaph” while diminishing the pain in “Memory of FP.”
In her article, Quindlen delivers her position to the massive mixed audience of the New York Times, drawing in readers with an emotional and humanizing lure; opening up about her family life and the deaths she endured. Later presenting the loss of her brother's wife and motherless children, Quindlen use this moment to start the engine of her position. Quindlen uses her experiences coupled with other authority figures, such as, the poet Emily Dickenson, Sherwin Nuland, doctor and professor from Yale, author Hope Edelman, and the President. These testimonies all connect to the lasting effects of death on the living, grief. She comes full circle, returning to her recently deceased sister-in-law; begging t...
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
More than death itself, Harwood’s poetry shows how many people fail to accept death. Their belief in immortality and fear of the end is also potrayed in Nightfall. Although when the subject of the poem is death, the words describe life, as if reluctant to face up to reality. The images are of suburbs, lights, birds and trees. Even with so many experiences, many of us will forever be ignorant seems to be the truth ringing perpetually though Harwood’s verses.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
The components of marriage, family and loss has played a big role in Anne Bradstreet’s writing of “Before the birth of One of Her Children”, “In Memory of Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”, and Edward Taylor’s “Upon Wedlock and the Death of Children.” In, these writings both authors Puritan culture and their faith plays a big role. In these poems one author starts questioning their God and the other to take honor in their God throughout their grieving process, while both showing different aspects of their everlasting union with their spouse, and the love for their children.
The author targets the emotions of parents who are forced to think about losing their children as result of the war. Moreover, readers are overcome with sadness due to their emotional bond established with the character in the previous chapters. The passage relates to the author’s purpose in that particular chapter by providing a window into the hours after the Khost tragedy.
Through an intimate maternal bond, Michaels mother experiences the consequences of Michaels decisions, weakening her to a debilitating state of grief. “Once he belonged to me”; “He was ours,” the repetition of these inclusive statements indicates her fulfilment from protecting her son and inability to find value in life without him. Through the cyclical narrative structure, it is evident that the loss and grief felt by the mother is continual and indeterminable. Dawson reveals death can bring out weakness and anger in self and with others. The use of words with negative connotations towards the end of the story, “Lonely,” “cold,” “dead,” enforce the mother’s grief and regressing nature. Thus, people who find contentment through others, cannot find fulfilment without the presence of that individual.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Helen of Troy, known as the most beautiful woman of ancient Greek culture, is the catalyst for the Trojan War. As such, she is the subject of both Edgar Allen Poe’s “To Helen” and H.D.’s “Helen”; however, their perceptions of Helen are opposites. Many poets and authors have written about Helen in regards to her beauty and her treacherous actions. There is a tremendous contrast between the views of Helen in both poems by Poe and Doolittle. The reader may ascertain the contrast in the speakers’ views of Helen through their incorporation of diction, imagery, and tone that help convey the meaning of the work.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
This poem is a firsthand account of how Anne Bradstreet was feeling when she experienced the loss of her granddaughter, Elizabeth. Although Bradstreet's attitude on Elizabeth's death seems to reflect her belief in God's plan, the diction suggests otherwise.
Many people find it hard to imagine their death as there are so many questions to be answered-how will it happen, when, where and what comes next. The fact that our last days on Earth is unknown makes the topic of death a popular one for most poets who looks to seek out their own emotions. By them doing that it helps the reader make sense of their own emotions as well. In the two poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, the poets are both capturing their emotion about death and the way that they accepted it. In Dickenson’s poem her feelings towards death are more passionate whereas in Dylan’s poem the feelings
Death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Everyone will experience death, whether it is of a loved one or oneself. In W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” (1003), he describes such a catastrophic event and the drastic effect that it has on his life. It is interesting how people choose to accept this permanent and expected event, death. Similarly, Emily Dickinson has written many poems about death, such as “The last Night that She lived” (843), which describes a family waiting for a woman or girl to die and the dreary and depressed mood that exists within the household. Mourning is considered a perfectly healthy reaction when someone who is deeply loved and cared about passes on, and this is illustrated in “The Memory of Elena” (1070-71) by Carolyn Forche. She writes about the events following a funeral and also flashes back to the actual moment that a wife has watched her husband die. W.H Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” Carolyn Forche’s “The Memory of Elena,” and Emily Dickinson’s “The last Night that She lived” are all poems which share death as their subject matter, but differ in the fact that they discuss death in a unique style with a variety of literary devices to make them more effective.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.