In Jesmyn Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing, the matter of death is a contrast. Various characters feel different about death than others. The novel focuses on a family with two small children, Jojo and Kayla, a drug-addict mother, Leonie, an imprisoned father, Michael, and two loving grandparents, Mam and Pop. The family has found themselves faced with death in their pasts, presents, and futures, the novel explores the different sentiments surrounding death and uses elements of Southern Gothic to relate the story to culture, African American history and their surroundings. The death of Given, Leonie’s brother, inspires a long-lasting feeling of insecurity in her. This traumatic event sets her whole life up for collapse. Past violence and topics of …show more content…
Another instance of death and its impact on people appears as the trace that Richie’s death left on Pop and his conscience. Pop feels like, at that moment, he had a choice and this slowly consumes his conscience. When Pop tells Jojo the story of how Richie came to pass, he describes his feelings and how the death of Richie lingered on him: “Pop is working his hands like he doesn’t know how to use them. Like he’s not sure what they can do. ‘I wash my hands every day, Jojo. But that damn blood ain’t never come out.’” (Ward 256) Pop not seeming to know how to use his hands translates a feeling of helplessness on his part. For the entirety of the book Pop has been seen as this tough inside and outside character, yet in this moment, a vulnerable side of Pop that does not come to light often arises. By asserting that the blood on his hand never came out, Pop again, states that the death of Richie lingers. He still feels culpable and does not put the situation into perspective as he finds himself blinded by the main issue, a conduct that seems to appear as a trend in the novel. Putting into perspective Pop’s feelings towards death and comparing them with those of his wife, an insight into the different purposes death serves in the novel arises. However, family means everything to Pop, and having Jojo beside him at this difficult remembrance moment reassures him. He lets himself behave authentically with Jojo, something that has not been seen frequently in the novel. After telling the story about Richie, Pop lets himself go in the arms of his grandchild: “I hold Pop like I hold Kayla. He puts his face on his knees and his back shakes. Both of us bow together as Richie goes darker and darker” (Ward 257) Jojo affirms that his Grandfather feels comfortable around him. They share this intimate moment and Jojo compares Pop with his sister, arguably, the two people he
“Pass On” written by Michael Lee is a free verse poem informing readers on grief, which is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome not only when losing a loved one, but also in life itself. “Pass On” successfully developed this topic through the setting of an unknown character who explains his or her experience of grief. Despite Lee never introducing this character, readers are given enough information to know how they are overcoming this difficult obstacle. In fact, this unknown character is most likely the writer himself, indirectly explaining his moments of grief. One important piece of information Lee provides is the fact that he has experienced loss twice, one with his grandfather and the other a friend who was murdered by the
In the poem “Unveiling” by Linda Pastan, the speaker's point of view is from an older woman who is walking through a cemetery and admiring her deceased family members. Pastan uses allusion, enjambment and imagery to display to the reader what the speaker is feeling and thinking, as she explores her family members’ graves.
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
Spending time with each other, having strong morals and giving a lot of love are a few of the things that give families hope and happiness. In the novel A Death in the Family (1938) by James Agee, a family has to use these advantages in order to make it through a very difficult time. During the middle of one night in 1915, the husband, Jay, and his wife, Mary, receive a phone call saying that Jay's father is dying. Ralph, the person who called, is Jay's brother, and he happens to be drunk. Jay doesn't know if he can trust Ralph in saying that their father is dying, but he doesn't want to take the chance of never seeing his father again, so he decides to go see his father. He kisses his wife goodbye and tells her he might be back for dinner the next day, but not to wait up for him. Dinner comes and goes, but he never arrives. That night, Mary gets awakened by a caller saying that Jay has been in a serious auto accident. She later finds out that he died. The rest of the novel is about Mary and her family's reactions to the death. This experience for Mary and her family is something that changes their lives forever, but it doesn't ruin them. If someone has a close person to them decease, he or she feel as if they cannot go on, but because of the close family ties that Mary, Jay, and their children shared, they know that they will be able to continue on after Jays death.
The presence of death in the novel looms over the characters, making each of them reflect on the
In Natasha Trethewey’s poetry collection “Native Guard”, the reader is exposed to the story of Trethewey’s growing up in the southern United States and the tragedy which she encountered during her younger years, in addition to her experiences with prejudice. Throughout this work, Trethewey often refers to graves and provides compelling imagery regarding the burial of the dead. Within Trethewey’s work, the recurring imagery surrounding graves evolves from the graves simply serving as a personal reminder of the past to a statement on the collective memory of society and comments on what society chooses to remember and that which it chooses to let go of.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved tells a story of a loving mother and ex-slave who takes drastic measures to protect her children which later affect her entire life. In contrast, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying goes through the life of the Bundren’s after their mother passes away and their journey to get her coffin to Jefferson. The bond between a mother and her children is chronicled in these novels. Both Faulkner and Morrison explain how the influence of a mother can affect how a child grows and matures through her love and actions.
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
Many mothers, regardless of age or situation, share sympathetic life ideals. They all share the common goal of raising their children wholesome; they want to create an environment of love, nurture, and support for their children as well. A mother’s effort to implant good values in her children is perpetual; they remain optimistic and hope that their children would eventually become prosperous. However, some women were not fit to be mothers. Thus, two different roles of a mother are portrayed in As I Lay Dying written by William Faulkner. Faulkner uses the literary technique of first person narrative with alternating perspectives. By doing so, Faulkner adds authenticity and the ability to relate (for some) to the two characters Addie Bundren and Cora Tull. The first person narrative acts as an important literary technique because it allows the reader to experience the opposing views of Addie and Cora; they are both mothers who act as foils to each other because of their diverse opinions and outlooks on motherhood, religion and life.
Kenyon’s choice of a first person perspective serves as one of two main techniques she uses in developing the reader’s ability to relate to the poem’s emotional implications and thus further her argument regarding the futility of mankind’s search for closure through the mourning process. By choosing to write the poem in the first person, Kenyon encourages the reader to interpret the poem as a story told by the same person who fell victim to the tragedy it details, rather than as a mere account of events observed by a third party. This insertion of the character into the story allows the reader to carefully interpret the messages expressed through her use of diction in describing the events during and after the burial.
Although “The Grave” seems to be about two children playing in their grandfather’s grave, it is actually about the realization of gender roles, coming of age, and mortality. Katherine Anne Porter wanted the reader to look beneath the surface of the story to find the many different underlying meanings. The main character Miranda is faced with the cold hard truth that life isn’t always sweet and pleasant as she watches her brother kill and skin a pregnant rabbit.
Consistently throughout Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, death is a prevalent and primary concern. Certainly, the death and burial of the matriarch, Addie Bundren, is what centres the novel, but there are many other cases of death throughout the modernist text. Dewey Dell, the only daughter of the Bundren family, longs for the death of her pregnancy, and also suffers from the death of her self-worth through sexual violence. Vardaman, the youngest of the Bundrens, experiences the death of his youth following his mother’s demise, and Darl’s sanity deteriorates along the family’s journey.
A story of family, death, birth, adventure, and sadness, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a truly intricate novel. It is based in the county of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and each chapter is the inner thoughts from one of the 15 characters. The novel is the story of a woman named Addie Bundren, who is withering away. The novel shows the evolution of the grief of the family she left behind when she passed. Her death provided many of her family members with the question “Does everything go away?”
As Beloved’s presence becomes more and more menacing, it is Denver’s rebellion against this restricting violence that allows her to leave the sanctity of her domicile on Bluestone Road and find help for Sethe. With the presence of her dead grandmother, Baby Suggs, urging her on, she is able to escape the confines of historical violence committed by her mother and the psychological violence she inflicts on Denver because of her own fear and guilt and, by extension, escape the increasingly horrifying performance by Beloved who seems set on sucking the life right out of Sethe. Thus, Denver’s “personal stake in retrieving the past […] and her encounter with the past is ‘necessarily painful’” (Krumholz, 1992: 404), as it transforms her into this dominant, multifaceted character.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.