Similarities and Differences in ‘Limbo’ and ‘Hurricane Hits England’. Grace Nichols and Edward Brathwaithe, the poets of ‘Limbo’ and ’Hurricane Hits England’, express many similar and different emotions, throughout their poems. They show feelings of anger, pain, relief and sorrow through the structure and through particular phrases in their poem. In both poems, ‘Limbo ’and ‘Hurricane Hits England’, the poets express the feelings of anger and pain. For example, in ‘Hurricane hit England’, Grace Nichols says ‘Talk to me Huracan, Talk to me Oya’. ‘Huracan’ and ’Oya’ are both gods and Goddesses of some sort of destruction or cause of pain. It suggests that since she wants to ‘talk’ with them, she is begging them to guide her and perhaps cause …show more content…
harm. This indicates that she is angry as, typically, when a person is angry, due to someone’s actions; they wish to make the person feel the way they did or do. The short and sharp sentences suggest an angry and painful tone. The tone of this piece of evidence may mean that she is shouting and that is usually a release of anger or pain. While in ‘Limbo’, Edward Brathwaithe expresses anger and pain through the description of the ‘stick’. ‘Limbo stick’ is repeated throughout the poem and emphasises the hardship. ‘Stick’ has a hard consonant, which suggests a sudden and violent action that causes the pain. Also ‘stick’ as well as ‘hot’ are monosyllabic words, which, again, make them sudden and violent. The repetition of ‘limbo’ and ‘limbo like me’ suggests that there is building anger at being treated the way they are on the Middle Passage. Another similarity is that, in both poems, the poet emphasises the hardship they have dealt with now and the hardship they will face in the future.
In ‘Limbo’, the poet describes the ship by saying the ‘long dark deck.’ The ‘long’ may foreshadow the long days of hardship through working on the sugar plantation, after the middle passage. Near the end of the poem, he states that ‘the music is saving him’, which is followed by the ‘burning ground’. ‘Music’ is usually considered relaxing and for leisure, so this may suggest that the music was the small amount of relief he felt before he was lowered off the ship. The ‘burning ground’ which follows it, seems a painful experience since it may foreshadow the amount of heat and pain they will suffer in the future. The poet seems to indicate that the ‘burning ground’ is only the start and from what we know about the torture that the slaves were put through, they would endure more hardship. While in ‘Hurricane Hits England’, Grace Nichols looks at how a ‘hurricane’ could finally make her feel relief and change things. A ‘hurricane’ is an extremely dangerous type of storm and usually brings some sort of devastation or disaster to an area. Due to its consequences, it could suggest that the ‘hurricane’ represents the disasters and bad events in her life, which she had to suffer through and experienced hardship. ‘Reaping havoc’ indicates the destruction of the ‘hurricane’. The ‘reaping’ is a repetitive action and may indicate that many …show more content…
events have cause hardship and how much difficulty she has been put through, due to her feelings towards her ancestor’s past. It is another example that suggests that she suffered, from chaotic events from her past. There are many differences as well, such as the poet’s feelings at the end.
In ‘Hurricane hits England’, Nichols begins to talk about ‘breaking the frozen lake’. The word ’break’ is a harsh action, which may signify the importance of doing it. The ‘frozen lake’ is something that traps everything beneath it until it melts or breaks. This could mean that the ‘frozen lake’ is the resentment that she has been harbouring a long time. The length of time may be indicated by the fact that it is ‘frozen’. Grace Nichols, at the end, is finally letting go of all the hatred towards those that harmed her ancestors by ‘breaking the frozen lake’. Breaking it may suggest the feelings of relief and happiness, in the end. However, in ‘Limbo’, the poet expresses continuous pain and distraught. Brathwaite states that ‘the music is saving me’ but then, follows it with ‘the burning ground’. The ‘the music saving me’ suggests that there is calmness and some hint of positivity in the end. We can infer this as the word ‘saving’ is seen as a positive and a heroic act and not anything negative. The ‘burning ground’ indicates excruciating pain and torture. This helps us infer that due to the emotions that the poet expresses, the ending is not one of relief but of
distraught. A similarity between the two poems is the sense of sorrow and loss. In ‘Limbo’, it says ‘the darkness is over me’. In ‘darkness’ you can’t see anything and associated with black, which may link up with the word mourning. Black is, usually, worn at sad occasions such as funerals due to its dullness. So, it may suggest that the poet feels sorrow. Also, the ‘over me’ may be similar to a blanket over your head and it is the only thing you can see. Since the ‘darkness’ is the only thing he can see, he may feel a sense of loss as there is nothing else there. In the poem, ‘Hurricane Hits England’, Nichols says ‘the howling ship’. ‘Howling’ might be interpreted as a cry of help or sorrow and since a ship can’t howl, it must mean the slaves inside. So the poet describes the slave’s sorrow through the ship and, also, expresses her own sorrow through it as well. She, also, says ‘short circuit us into further darkness’. The ‘further’ may mean that it is a repeated action, that has caused further harm. Since they are ‘short circuited… into further darkness’, it may suggest that she has experienced a further sense of loss by those of her ancestor’s past as well as hers. Grace Nichols expresses sorrow and loss by describing the ‘howling’ of the slaves through the ship and through her feelings towards the events that have been repeated from the past. In conclusion, the poems ‘Limbo’ and ‘Hurricane Hits England’ both show similar and different feelings. They both show a sense of pain, sorrow and loss throughout their poems. Using the structure and looking at the different techniques or phrases they used we found differences, such as the feelings expressed at the end of each poem.
Poetry has been used for centuries as a means to explore emotions and complex ideas through language, though individuals express similar ideas in wholly different forms. One such idea that has been explored through poetry in numerous ways is that of war and the associated loss, grief, and suffering. Two noted Australian poets shown to have accomplished this are Kenneth Slessor with his work ‘Beach Burial’ and John Schumann’s ‘I Was Only Nineteen’. Both of these works examine the complexities of conflict, but with somewhat different attitudes.
Hughes starts his poem by identifying the victims of the story. Hughes does not use as many rhymes, exact or slant, as Randall. As a result, the poem seemed to take a darker, serious tone. Unlike Randall, who recounted the bombing in the form of a backstory, Hughes took a more broad perspective. Hughes, first focuses on the victims, describing their death with blood on the walls, splattered flesh around the room. By adding these details, readers know that the four girls were the victims and how they died was horrid. Hughes also mentions torn to depict that what happened was painful for the victims, family, and to those who knew them. Hughes changes the direction of the poem, associating the dynamite with China and the red communist flag with the blood on the walls of the Sunday School. Hughes in his poem seems as if he is specifically angry with the Chinese for creating the explosive, dynamite. Hughes ends his poem without a doubt that the victims are dead, unlike Randall who leaves his open for speculation. Hughes also ends his poem saying that his hope is that one day, four girls will wake up to songs on the breeze, unfelt by magnolia trees. Though a magnolia tree is grown in the south, it is also commonly grown indoors in China. So, Hughes could be saying that even though the lives of four girls were taken by explosives created by the
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
The Horror of Pity and War in Regeneration by Pat Barker and Collective Poems of Wilfred Owen
A common person’s knowledge about sea disasters comes from what they have read in books and articles, and what they see on TV and in movies. The average person does not get to experience the fury of a hurricane while on a boat. In order to capture the audience’s attention, consideration to details and vivid descriptions are needed to paint a realistic picture in their minds. For this reason, the stories have to provide all of the intricate details. In The Perfect Storm, the story starts out with a radio call, not a dramatic scene that immediately foreshadows the possibility of danger. Rather than describing the storm and its fury, the only mention of the setting is of the visibility and the height of waves. However, in “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, the poem begins by stating there is a hurricane possible right away. The current weather conditions are pointed out to the reader as shown in the following quote.
The poems facilitate the investigation of human experience through illustrating life’s transience and the longevity of memory.
The first stanza describes the moment before the storm. “A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,” This stanza begins to set up the obstacle that the family must overcome. When Emerson describes the storm as “less than treat” and then goes on about the intense cold it brings he also is describing God. God is caring and loving but he is also vengeful and just.
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
Right from the moment Louise Mallard hears of her husband's death, Kate Chopin dives into a her vivid use of imagery. “When the storm of grief has spent itself” introduces a weather oriented theme (para.3). This imagery depicts a violent and dark setting that denotes death and grief. Her reaction to her husband's death ideally what society would expect. Her acute reaction instantly shows that she is an emotional, demonstrative woman. Even tho...
The Theme of Loss in Poetry Provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portrays a different character. the theme of loss in some way. Anthology Introduction The object of this collection is to provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portray the theme of ‘loss’ in some way. The ‘Loss’ has been a recurring theme in literature for centuries, from.
Grey, Thomas. “Elegy Written in a Church Courtyard.” The Norton Anthology Of Poetry. shorter fifth edition. Ferguson, Margaret W. , Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. New York, New York: W W Norton , 2005. 410-413. Print.
"A man wading lost fields breaks the pane of flood" which starts the second section gives the effect of pain and hurt. The man survives by going along with nature and resisting it, but it also gives the effect of danger at the same time. " Like a cut swaying" carries on the effect of being deliberate, sharp and precise and "it's red spots" and "his hands grub" continues with the theme of the animal sort of.
Perhaps Hopkins has great force for me on a personal level because he was the first poet I studied in my freshman English seminar, where my instructor, a woman from Wales, read selections of “The Wreck of the Deutchland” out loud. The line “Warm laid grave of a womb-life grey” still lilts in my memory. The effect of this line, the smoothness, derived from the soft consonants “w,” “m,” “b,” “l,” etc., combined with the long vowel sounds in “womb,” “grey,” and “grave,” leave me with the feeling of what it must sound like to be floating—and dying—under water. T...
The Themes of Loss and Loneliness in Hardy's Poetry Introduction = == == == ==
In the poem “A song of Despair” Pablo Neruda chronicles the reminiscence of a love between two characters, with the perspective of the speaker being shown in which the changes in their relationship from once fruitful to a now broken and finished past was shown. From this Neruda attempts to showcase the significance of contrasting imagery to demonstrate the Speaker’s various emotions felt throughout experience. This contrasting imagery specifically develops the reader’s understanding of abandonment, sadness, change, and memory. The significant features Neruda uses to accomplish this include: similes, nautical imagery, floral imagery, and apostrophe.