Alvi also employs the use of end-stopped lines in key moments of the poem to highlight key aspects of identity. At the height of the poem, when Moniza Alvi is feeling deeply connected to her culture, she claims she has “new brown veins.” This is the first end-stopped line we encounter in the entire poem, and Alvi uses it to accentuate her connection to this newfound aspect of her identity. The “brown” she if referring to is the henna that someone is making on her hand of a peacock. The henna, as well as the peacock, is symbolic of India, and the Indian cultural identity, as henna is something associated with India, and the peacock is the Indian national bird. The fact she has “new brown veins” shows the magnitude of how the speaker has been impacted by her hennaing experience, as the brown, of the henna and the peacock, is inside her, meaning that the Indian cultural identity is within her. Not only is it within her, but it has become her “veins”; it is necessary for her to live, as we need our veins to carry the blood to our body. This illustrates to the reader how significant the speaker’s experience was, as not only has it affected her, but has become crucial to her very survival.
The other utilization of the second and last, end-stopped line occurs at the lowest-point of the novel, when the tone shifts from comfort and happiness to sadness and longing. The speaker describes how the henna “will fade in a week.” The henna continues to be symbolic of India, and the Indian cultural identity, which the speaker does not want to lose. The use of the end-stopped line accentuates her sadness that she will eventually lose this new aspect of her own identity, as when something fades, it is a sadder event than when something is gone altog...
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...could imagine, they are clinging for their lives, for if they let go, they will fall off the train and quite likely be killed. She compares her desire to hold on to the henna, which represent the Indian aspect of her identity, and the Indian identity she discovered in the bazaar, to holding on desperately for your life on a fast train. This illustrates to the reader how desperately she wants to keep this experience and her newfound identity.
Moniza Alvi employ a wide variety of techniques, from end-stopped lines and formatting in structure, to rhyme, tone, and even imagery and language to attempt to explore the vast concept of identity. She successfully manages to explore the concept of identity, and conveys to the reader the meaningful message that discovering your true identity is dearly valued and highly significant.
Works Cited
"An Unknown Girl" by Moniza Alvi
In “Fault Lines” (1993), Meena Alexander’s autobiography utilizes multiple examples of rhetorical devices to describe her sense of identity, or more importantly, the shattered pieces of herself. She describes this process by comparing and contrasting the aspects of who she is as a person as opposed to what she once dreamed to be. She wrote her story to explain how hard her journey was in order to express how much it took out of her as a person “What might it mean to look at myself straight, see myself?”. (3) Her ambivalent tone can be targeted towards those who are still trying to figure out their sense of identities themselves, and how much it takes for a person to question themselves to find out who they are.
Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and the Mythology of “Elysian fields” in lines one through three, she leads the reader to the assumption that this is a calm, graceful poem, perhaps about a dream or love. Within the first quatrain, line four (“I wove a garland for your living head”) serves to emphasise two things: it continues to demonstrate the ethereal diction and carefree tone, but it also leads the reader to the easy assumption that the subject of this poem is the lover of the speaker. Danae is belittled as an object and claimed by Jove, while Jove remains “golden” and godly. In lines seven and eight, “Jove the Bull” “bore away” at “Europa”. “Bore”, meaning to make a hole in something, emphasises the violent sexual imagery perpetrated in this poem.
through the connection of hair to culture. In the poem, Alexie calls attention to the pressure
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Through the discussion of terms such as supercrip and home, alongside discussion of labels that he chooses to accept or leave behind, Clare is able to analyze the way that he looks as his identities. Clare’s autobiography uses words and language as a tool to show that a person’s identities aren’t simply labels, but are ways to understand oneself, unite, and even find a place to
... is shown moreover through these pauses. We also see that he places question marks at the end of sentences, which is another way he is showing us the uncertainty in the voice of society. Through his punctuation and word placement, we clearly see the voice of society in his poem, but in a way that tells us not to conform to it.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
It was a dark, menacing night as she stood there in the shadows. Waiting for the finale of the show that was playing, she glanced toward the exit through which people would soon be leaving. The rich, as patrons of the theatre house, promised her a salary at least for today. Her tattered clothes revealed the effects of personal destitution; the emaciated frame, that presently existed, harked back upon a body she must have once possessed. Driven by poverty to the realms of "painted cohorts," she makes up her face daily, distinguishing her life from the respected (264). She is an outcast, a leper, a member of the marginalized in society; she envelops the most degraded of positions and sins against her body in order to survive. As she looks up, her eyes reflect a different kind of light, a glimmer of beauty that has not yet faded despite her present conditions. She was, at one time, a "virtuous" woman, most likely scorned by a dishonest love. Finding no comfort or pity for her prior mistakes, she must turn to the streets and embrace the inevitable - the dishonor and shame from her previous engagement will follow her unto death. Shunned from society she becomes the woman who sells herself for money and sadly finds no love. She is the abandoned, the betrayed, and the lost, embarrassed girl; she is "of the painted cohorts," the female prostitute of the streets (264).
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The top piece gives a more somber feeling, with the black face staring blankly forward, showing no emotion. The portion of Ntozake Shange’s poem, no more love poems #3, lady in blue, for which the piece was painted, states “we deal wit emotion too much/ so why don’t we go on ahead, & be white then/”. This blank, emotionless stare shows the expectations for black women to be stoic, whereas it is acceptable for white women to display emotion without being labeled as overreacting or crazy. The ropes, tied around the woman’s waist, signify the restrictions this places on black women; at the bottom of the piece, the ropes appear to be loosening slightly, representing women breaking free of these constraints placed on them by
Not only does this personification alter the pace of the poem, but the fact that the woman’s breasts – important sexual organs and symbols of female sexuality – are portrayed as sleeping conveys a lack of arousal and general desire, particularly on the behalf of the woman. This sense of a lack of desire between the gypsy and the woman is communicated later in the poem through the description of the characters’ undressing before they begin to have sex:
...t she has put on a new “costume” and is now a completely different person. The stockings are “night-black” representing the backyard and its negative connotation. In line twenty, the author writes that she wants to “strut down the streets with paint on [her] face,” again emphasizing Brooks’ new rebellious nature since crossing over into the backyard. The “paint” suggests that her rebellion is just and act, and as soon as she removes the paint, she can return to the front yard if she pleases. The repetition of “and” at the beginning of the last three lines illustrates Brooks’ desire to completely rebel against her mother and the front yard life since it shows how she wants to rebel in so many ways. The main theme of the poem highlights the desire people have to experience what they do not have and live life on their own terms.
...ustrates this by removing color from Sethe’s life and making her “as color conscious as a hen” (38). For instance, “Sethe looked at her hands, her bottle-green sleeves, and thought how little color there was in the house” (Morrison 38). For in her house, “the walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor was earth-brown, [and] the wooden dresser the color of itself” (Morrison 38). Her life was “like life in the raw” (Morrison 38). Here, Morrison emphasizes the absence of color because Sethe’s life is devoid of hope.
Authors are frequently categorized in some ways by the particular era they are writing in. This often gives a sense of what message the speaker is trying to relay, and the context in which the author is writing. Addressing the issue of self identity through this context allows a
Throughout life, a person can expect to endure many challenges, trials, experiences, accomplishments and disappointments. How one recovers, from those challenges, and can set the lifespan is a lifelong process from birth to death and includes the formation of identity (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). I will cover in the paper six life events that influence my identity development from childhood to middle adulthood. Each life event will be explained based on the significance of the event as well as the impact the event had on my development. Also, theories will be discussed as they relate to my development.