Clusters of Images in Daddy
Imagery in literature provides the writer with an instrument for establishing a viewpoint or perspective. The author can use an unlimited amount of symbols, similes, and metaphors that produce an atmosphere for the reader to visualize the story effectively. In the poem "Daddy," written by Sylvia Plath, the author utilizes numerous clusters of images to represent the fury and wrath of a crazed woman haunted by her father's frightening and domineering disposition. Plath uses this imagery to depict the emotional chaos controlling fathers inflict on their offspring.
One of the most prominent groups of images Plath uses to show the turmoil and fear the narrator feels for her father is comparing him with Nazi Germany, the devil's hoofs, and a vampire. Evil, mean-spirited images flourish within "Daddy." The speaker characterizes her father as a Nazi. Phrases like, "With your Luftwaffe" (l. 42), "your neat moustache and your Aryan eye" (l. 43), and "Panzer-man, panzer-man" (l. 45) fill the poem with images of Deuts...
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
"Daddy" is probably Plath’s most famous poem. The critic George Steiner has said that, "It is a poem by which future generations will seek to know us." He has also called it, "the Guernica of modern poetry." The violence of its imagery and tone, the references to concentration camps, torture and fascism certainly evoke Picasso’s most celebrated painting.
My Side of the Mountain is a remarkable novel written by Jean Craighead George (1991). It addresses issues such as nature, independence and adventure. In the book, Sam Gribley, a boy from New York, runs away from home to live in the woods. Throughout this essay, I am going to talk about the things and the character traits that a person such as Sam needs in order to accomplish his or her goals. In the book, Sam’s goals were to reach indepence and to survive using the resources in the woods. For example, when Miss Turner, a close friend of Sam, tried to change Sam’s mind about living in the woods, Sam said to her, “That’s just what I want. I am going to trap animals and eat nuts and bulbs and berries and make myself a house.” (George, 1991, p. 22). Another example is that Sam expressed that he wanted to dress a piece of clothes made by him using the hide of a deer (George, 1991, p. 60). At the end of the book, Sam accomplished his goals, he thought, “I was self-sufficient, I could travel the world over, never needing a penny, never asking anything of anyone.” (George, 1991, p. 173). From my point of view, all human beings have goals. The only difference is the nature of those goals. Goals can be represented in terms of money, love, health, etc. I also think that goals are a necessity for us. They impulse our lives and give it a sense of direction. It is very important knowing your objectives in life because you can focus all your energy on reaching those objectives. In this way, the path towards reaching your goals will be easier to travel as you will see the goal itself and not the pain you have to stand in order to reach it.
Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, is the story of the two fictional characters, Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis, who lose their sons in South Africa in 1948. In his story, Alan Paton used the George Hegel's Dialect of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, in order to expose social injustices in a microcosm of South Africa that correlate to the macrocosm of the issues faced by the entire country and what must be done to fix these injustices. Paton subdivided his story into three books. The first of these books, depicts the Journey of Stephen Kumalo, to try and restore his family, is a cry against injustice. The second book focused mainly on James Jarvis’s plight to understand his deceased son, depicts the yearning for justice. While the final book displays the restoration and repair of the injustices derived from the yearning for justice.
Imagery is a key part of any poem or literary piece and creates an illustration in the mind of the reader by using descriptive and vivid language. Olds creates a vibrant mental picture of the couple’s surroundings, “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood/ the
The use of imagery is very commonly used in fictional literary work, especially poems. Imagery according to Crowder Collage Introduction to Literature’s glossary, “The collective set of images in a poem or other literary work,” (1991). The definition of imagery is rather vague by itself. It is very enlightening on the other hand when the term image is defined, “A word or series of words that refers to any sensory experience (usually sight, although also sound smell, touch or taste). An image is a direct or literal recreation of physical experience and adds immediacy to literary language,” (Gioia 1991).The imagery in Chana Bloch’s “Tired Sex” is a wonderfully helpful in communicating the poem’s general theme.
A good example of imagery can be found at the end of the story in the last paragraph. For this part of imagery, the main character Jackson Jackson has received his grandmother’s regalia from the pawn shop employee without having to pay the total of $999 he originally had to pay. (Alexie) “I took my grandmother’s regalia and walked outside. I knew that solitary yellow bead was part of me. I knew I was that yellow bead in part. Outside, I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing.” This statement made at the end of the story indicates a strong sense of imagery that details Jackson’s emotions towards getting his grandmother’s regalia from the pawn shop. The yellow bead he mentions was his strongest symbol of feeling toward his grandmother, feeling as if he were a part of that yellow bead, in this case, his grandmother. Jackson describes in more detail of how he felt more like his grandmother after he wrapped the regalia around him. The pedestrians, city, everything around him was watching him feel like his grandmother, like some sort of flashback he could be
Arthur, Napoleon, and Msimangu, all characters from Alan Paton’s book, Cry, The Beloved Country, are used to share Paton’s points of view on the future of South Africa and the apartheid. Paton uses these characters to represent specific views; Arthur expresses clearly that the apartheid isn’t the right way to progress as a country, Napoleon exemplifies how Paton thinks people should take the anti-apartheid effort, and Msimangu explicitly expresses Paton’s ideas of an ideal leader.
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In Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, one of the major themes is white destruction of South African's native tribes. In the novel, whites come to South Africa in search of gold and use natives as their source of labor. They break apart the tribe and offer nothing to replace the broken homes. The title of the novel supports the pain that the white man's destruction of the tribe is causing to the beloved country of Africa.
The young man’s predicaments all revolve around his need to satisfy those that will judge him and he becomes trapped between the apartheid rule and humanity’s desire for equality and respect towards others. This is purely a personal issue that can be resolved solely by him, but should take into the consideration of those involved. We see glimpses of this coming through the young man, but being raised in an era of apartheid it overpowers his common understanding of respect.
Another rhetorical strategy incorporated in the poem is imagery. There are many types of images that are in this poem. For example, the story that the young girl shares with the boy about drowning the cat is full of images for the reader to see:
Plath surrounds the character of the father with imagery of Nazism, and pride in the Nazi regime. The audience is told that the daughter feared her father, because of ‘Your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. / And your neat mustache / and your Aryan eye, bright blue.’ The mention of the Luftwaffe, the German airforce, brings forth a sense of military pride in the father, something key to Nazi culture. The ‘neat mustache’ and ‘Aryan eye’ are representative of Nazi ideals, with the ‘mustache’ being symbolic of Hitler himself. In addition to this, the daughter later envi...
The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath is about the author and her feelings towards being in a male dominant world. To demonstrate these feelings to the reader, Plath uses multiple examples of allusions throughout the poem. To start, the entire poem refers to WWII and the actions of the Nazis. Plath is describing how she was abused as a child and the way her father treated her as a prisoner. She compares this experience to being a “Jew” during the times of WWII and her father being a “Nazi”. Throughout the poem, Plath refers to various concentration camps and the German Air Force to demonstrate what she feels about how her father treated her. This allusion is very powerful, as the events that occurred during WWII are well known allowing the reader
Many debates have been sparked by Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country. Even the essence of the book's title examines South Africa and declares the presence of the inner conflict of its citizens. The importance and meaning of the title of Cry, the Beloved Country is visible in Paton's efforts to link the reader to forthcoming ideas in the novel, Paton's description of South Africa's problems, and Paton's prayer for the solution of South Africa's difficulties with race and racial oppression.