The Individuality of Experience: The Physical’s Impact on The Psychological in Fruit Bowl
The physical world is what all of us share. It triggers our senses in much the same way—we all see, hear, smell, taste and touch the same things. Yet, after these senses, our interaction with a physical stimulus differs almost entirely from everyone else’s, becoming a unique intellectual and emotional reaction. These personal responses are a result of our experiences and greatly inform our individuality. Fruit Bowl, my suite of poems, seeks to demonstrate this point, through imagining the responses of six different people to six different pieces of fruit. In this essay I will explain how the poems do so, looking at how similar ideas are expressed by my
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This subject unifying all of the poems was chosen due to its rich symbolism and place in popular culture, as well as for its variety and commonness in daily life. Each a dramatic monologue delivered by a different character, the poems delve into characters’ psyches, each revealing the instinctual processes stimulated by a specific fruit. For instance, in ‘Cherries’, the speaker reminisces about and grieves for their lost lover, prompted by the sight of cherries being sold at a greengrocery—a fruit they would always enjoy …show more content…
In her opening chapter, Jones introduces the distinctive voices of her five seemingly unrelated protagonists, each observing and perceiving their environment—that of Sydney’s Circular Quay—in very different ways. Ellie is shown to be creative, commenting that the Opera House is ‘poised in a kind of alertness to acoustical meaning’ (52); Pei Xing focuses on familiarity and order, calling the same edifice ‘a fixture she [relies] on’ ‘like porcelain bowls, stacked’ (52); while for James it is a threat, with ‘maws open to the sky in a perpetual devouring’ (53), evidencing his negative state of mind. The accumulation of different characters’ varying mental metaphors and images regarding the same physical construct intrigued me, demonstrating the uniqueness of each individual’s mind, and prompting me to explore this theme in my
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he
As we can gather from the examples, Gwen Harwood uses language to create dynamic backgrounds and images to subtly delineate the changes experienced by the persona in the poems. Sometimes the characters themselves are not aware of these changes but the readers are able to appreciate them with the aid of skill Harwood posses in using language to such great measures.
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. "The first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously" (10). Gazing across the garden...
I chose to do my poem analysis on Oranges by Gary Soto. When I first read the title, I predicted that it was going to simply be about oranges and what characteristics it has. Instead, it was about a young boy who talks about the first time he went on a walk with a girl he liked. They walk to a local drugstore and he buys her a chocolate with everything he has: a nickel and an orange. It ends with them walking hand-in-hand and proceeding to the point where they stop and separately eat the orange and chocolate. In the end, it shows the significance of the title which is that he sacrificed one of his beloved oranges for the girl he admired. Gary Soto is known for being an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Memoirist definitely shows throughout
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
The pear tree for example is similar to that of the Garden of Eden. The pear tree and the horizon signify Janie’s model of a perfect life. In the bees’ interaction with the pear tree flowers, Janie witnesses a perfect moment in nature, full of energy, interaction, and harmony. She chases after this ideal life throughout the rest of the book. Janie’s romantic and idealistic view of love, seen in her reaction to the pear tree, partially explains why her earlier relationships are not successful. It is not until later in her life, when she slowly opens up to her relationship with Tea Cake on a more mature level, that Janie sees what love really is. Janie resists Tea Cake at first, remembering her early pear tree encounters, and her early sexual awakening. She becomes infatuated with Tea
The barbarous images illustrated in the poems of tortured souls were so harsh to picture and not even experience in real life. In the first poem “Strange Fruit,” we get this image of discrimination
In her eyes, cucumbers are pesky perverts with an anal fetish, carrots are passionate but worried lovers, peas are prudish, and onions are entirely self obsessed. The poems are at once funny and relatable, covering various ways sex is seen by people in society in a way that’s not alienating or deliberately button-pushing. It’s simple truth through a lens of good humor, a signature trait of her
“Marigolds” is about change. Collier chose a “fourteen-going-on-fifteen” (1) year old girl because the transition from childhood to adulthood adds layers of conflict to the story. The initially obvious conflict is that of the woman and child inside Elizabeth. She represents the child when she pulls up the marigolds: “The fresh smell of early morning and dew-soaked marigolds spurred me on as I went tearing and mangling and sobbing” (5). She (as the child) is struggling inwardly against being a woman. At the end of her rampage, she is “more woman than child” (1), and the child in her loses the battle. As a woman, she wins “a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood” (5). The second conflict is also symbolic. Elizabeth represents fear. She has the feeling that “ something old and familiar [is] ending and something unknown and therefore terrifying [is] beginning” (1). The marigolds represent hope. The reason for her “great impulse towards destruction” (4) was a combination of fear for the future and bitterness towards the past. In this conflict, fear wins because Miss Lottie “never [plants] marigolds again” (5). The third conflict is the most important. It takes place inside of Elizabeth and is also between fear and hope. At the end of the story, fear may win symbolically, but hope wins inside of Elizabeth: “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion” (5).
Two poems, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop and “The Meadow Mouse” by Theodore Roethke, include characters who experience, learn, and emote with nature. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish,” a fisherman catches a fish, likely with the intention to kill it, but frees it when he sees the world through the eyes of the fish. In Theodore Roethke’s poem “The Meadow Mouse,” a man finds a meadow mouse with the intention of keeping it and shielding it from nature, but it escapes into the wild. These poems, set in different scenarios, highlight two scenarios where men and women interact with nature and experience it in their own ways.
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.
Throughout the many forms and language of literature, responders are able to create and visualise images within their mind. It is through the power of the images one creates, that enables reader’s understandings to be questioned and furthermore, structures meaning towards the array of experiences being evoked. This is, ‘The Distinctively Visual’.
In order to maintain a realistic feel as a first person narrative Jean Rhys turns to setting, both physical and temporal, to describe the way the character sees the world and from here allow emotions, psyches and moods to be drawn from this description. The imagery in each setting provides the reader with more than just a mental image. Rhys makes use of every detail to convey emotion. When reading the Wide Sargasso Sea one sees the world through the eyes of another. It is important the one pays attention to the fine details as they are describing more than just the
In comparison, Voices in the Park is infinitely complex and layered with meaning and symbol, wherever the reader should choose to find it. Moebius’s statement is fully realised here as Browne combines all of the technology of his medium - the words as text and picture, use of symbol, intertextuality and space - to portray ideas that remain intangible, and concepts that are infinitely open to definition. In this he displays the complexity of his and his readers’ experience, in the way that Potter, in her own way, did of hers.