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Symbolism in "The Flowers" by Alice Walker
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Symbols and Symbolism - Flowers as a Symbol in John Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums
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The warm spring sun kissed my face as the wind whispered in my ears. As I lay beside the lake I reflect on my surroundings and how this wonder of nature came to be. It is Easter Sunday, a time of reflection and new beginnings. I think about my past few weeks, the places I have traveled and the people and things I have come in contact with. I wonder about my future, and I review my past. I notice a hummingbird delicately landing on a purple flower in the garden. I recall my readings from English class this semester, and I begin to relate to Muir and Wordsworth and the feelings they expressed about nature and themselves in their writings. I enter in to a somewhat trance as I fall in love with the bird dancing and kissing the flower so delicately. …show more content…
The Calypso Borealis, the rarest of rare orchids. It was 1864 when John Muir set out on the adventure of a life time. A journey that started off rather normal, would result in a life changing spiritual encounter that he would never forget, with an unlikely unassuming subject. Muir’s use of syntax to describe his adventure helps the reader to follow the excursion and gain a better understanding of what the flower came to mean for Muir. As John Muir begins his adventure he wanders much like all botanist wonder through the woods, foraging for plants and specimens. He wanders through maple forest, spruce and hemlocks. It was not until he had suffered great challenges such as “wading bogs” and “swamps” that he …show more content…
The author describes his struggle: He was “fording streams”, and “struggling through tangled branches”. He was “Faint and hungry” “bewildered and discouraged”, when he came across the “spiritual” flower. “It seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met.” After his encounter is “hunger and weariness vanished”. Muir appears to be a spiritual religious person who is using his chance encounter with an elusive flower to describe the struggles and rewards of life. He chooses words that cause us to recall and relate. He uses words that strike a meaning that can only be specific to each reader’s experiences. Muir in the beginning of his “adventure” appears to be wandering aimlessly with not much pause. Then he encounters difficulties and challenges. It is not until he finds beauty in an unlikely otherwise dark place he is rejuvenated with new found
In the essay “The Calypso Borealis,” John Muir used imagery and personification to describe his journey within nature to find a flower. Muir shares the deep bond he has with nature when writing about his experience with the Calypso, and the great lengths he went through to find it. As Muir was describing his journey, he used words such as “bewildering” and “discouraging” to show the hardships he faced. Once he had found the Calypso, he wrote that he “cried for joy” to show just how much happiness it brought to him. These words and phrases allow the reader to grasp that even though he faced so many problems and setbacks, it was worth it to find the “rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants.” In paragraph 4, Muir describes the difference
Nature’s beauty has the ability to both entice its audience and frighten them. Mary Oliver in her passage explains her experiences with the two sides of nature. Her experiences with the owls elicit both an awe response and a frightened one. In connection, her experiences with a field of flowers draws a similar response where she is both astonished by them and overwhelmed. Oliver’s complex responses display the two sides of nature. It's ability to be both captivating yet overwhelming in its complexity. In “Owl” Mary Oliver uses descriptions of nature demonstrated by owls and fields of flowers in order to convey her complex responses to the two sides of nature.
According to author Annie Dillard, throughout Teaching a Stone to Talk, nature isn’t only aesthetically-pleasing, but serves a greater purpose. The elements of nature do strike her, often, with beauty, but to her and for her, nature isn’t just something that ‘we’ must rely on for beauty, but is something where we can find answers to our most complex debacles, ones that we -- as a society and as individuals -- often struggle with. It’s evident that nature is of great, paramount importance to her, and isn’t something she just sees physical beauty in, but is something she finds answers and clarity in, and believes that ‘we’ can find that in nature, as well. We can understand life, through nature.
The water was calm, like the morning; both were starting to get ready for the day ahead. The silent water signals that although rough times occurred previously, the new day was a new start for the world. As I went closer to the water, I heard the subtle lapping of the water against the small rocks on the shore. Every sign of nature signals a change in life; no matter how slight, a change is significant. We can learn a lot from nature: whatever happens in the natural world, change comes and starts a new occurrence. I gazed over the water to where the sky met the sea. The body of water seemed to be endless under the clear blue sky. The scope of nature shows endless possibilities. Nature impresses us with the brilliant colors of the sky, the leaves, the water. She keeps us all in our places and warns us when we are careless with her. After all the leaves have fallen from the trees, she will offer us the first snows of the year to coat the earth with a tranquil covering. That will only be after we have recognized the lessons of autumn, the gradual change from warm to cold, rain to snow, summer to winter.
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
As a way to end his last stanza, the speaker creates an image that surpasses his experiences. When the flock rises, the speaker identifies it as a lady’s gray silk scarf, which the woman has at first chosen, then rejected. As the woman carelessly tosses the scarf toward the chair the casual billow fades from view, like the birds. The last image connects nature with a last object in the poet's
In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, John Updike uses a flock of birds to show that man can be uplifted by observing nature. Updike’s conclusion is lead up to with the beauty of autumn and what a binding spell it has on the two men playing golf. In Updike’s conclusion and throughout the poem, he uses metaphors, similes, and diction to show how nature mesmerizes humans.
Jim is an innocent young man, living on the coast of Queensland. In this peaceful town, everybody is happy and at peace with themselves and with nature. The people enjoy the simple pleasures of life - nature, birds, and friendly neighbourly conversations. Their days are filled with peaceful walks in the bush, bird watching and fishing. Jim and his friends especially enjoy the serenity of the sanctuary and the wonders of nature that it holds.
Richard Wilbur's recent poem 'Mayflies' reminds us that the American Romantic tradition that Robert Frost most famously brought into the 20th century has made it safely into the 21st. Like many of Frost's short lyric poems, 'Mayflies' describes one person's encounter with an ordinary but easily overlooked piece of nature'in this case, a cloud of mayflies spotted in a 'sombre forest'(l.1) rising over 'unseen pools'(l.2),'made surprisingly attractive and meaningful by the speaker's special scrutiny of it. The ultimate attraction of Wilbur's mayflies would appear to be the meaning he finds in them. This seems to be an unremittingly positive poem, even as it glimpses the dark subjects of human isolation and mortality, perhaps especially as it glimpses these subjects. In this way the poem may recall that most persistent criticism of Wilbur's work, that it is too optimistic, too safe. The poet-critic Randall Jarrell, though an early admirer of Wilbur, once wrote that 'he obsessively sees, and shows, the bright underside of every dark thing'?something Frost was never accused of (Jarrell 332). Yet, when we examine the poem closely, and in particular the series of comparisons by which Wilbur elevates his mayflies into the realm of beauty and truth, the poem concedes something less ?bright? or felicitous about what it finally calls its 'joyful . . . task' of poetic perception and representation (l.23).
In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of
Fortunately, I wake every morning to the most beautiful sun lit house. I sit on my porch sipping coffee, while I drink in an atmosphere that steals my breath away. Rolling hills lay before me that undulate until they crash into golden purple mountains. Oh how they are covered in spectacular fauna, ever blooming foliage, and trees that are heavy with pungent fruit. Green it is always so green here at my house. Here where the air lays heavy and cool on my skin as does the striking rays of the sun upon my cheeks. I know in my soul why I choose to be here every day. Pocketed in all the nooks and crannies of these valleys and hills are stately homes, rich with architecture resplendent. Diversity is the palate here; ...
I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Not only is this showing the kind of fulfillment he receives from nature, but also the power that nature possesses in his mind.... ... middle of paper ... ...
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them.
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...
“A Bird came down the Walk,” was written in c. 1862 by Emily Dickinson, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886. This easy to understand and timeless poem provides readers with an understanding of the author’s appreciation for nature. Although the poem continues to be read over one hundred years after it was written, there is little sense of the time period within which it was composed. The title and first line, “A Bird came down the Walk,” describes a common familiar observation, but even more so, it demonstrates how its author’s creative ability and artistic use of words are able to transform this everyday event into a picture that results in an awareness of how the beauty in nature can be found in simple observations. In a step like narrative, the poet illustrates the direct relationship between nature and humans. The verse consists of five stanzas that can be broken up into two sections. In the first section, the bird is eating a worm, takes notice of a human in close proximity and essentially becomes frightened. These three stanzas can easily be swapped around because they, for all intents and purposes, describe three events that are able to occur in any order. Dickinson uses these first three stanzas to establish the tone; the tone is established from the poet’s literal description and her interpretive expression of the bird’s actions. The second section describes the narrator feeding the bird some crumbs, the bird’s response and its departure, which Dickinson uses to elaborately illustrate the bird’s immediate escape. The last two stanzas demonstrate the effect of human interaction on nature and more specifically, this little bird, so these stanzas must remain in the specific order they are presented. Whereas most ...