In the poem Grass, the speaker is assumed to be the Grass, a character, or entity of sorts, brought on by the writer. Carl Sanburg uses interrogative adverbs in order to further display the Grass’s view on humanity. Additionally, Sanburg includes the use of proper and concrete nouns to emphasize the Grass’s stability and recall violent military battles. Continually, the imperative verbs shown throughout the poem give the Grass its ultimate air of superiority. In Carl Sanburg’s poem Grass, he skillfully uses interrogative adverbs, proper and concrete nouns, and imperative verbs in order to convey a sense of superiority in the Grass, a result of brute-like human behavior throughout history.
In Sanburg’s Grass, he writes two lines with interrogative adverbs, so to help express the Grass’s clear superior feeling towards humans. The part where these
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By specifically naming historical, and bloody, battles such as Austerlitz and Waterloo—proper nouns—the Grass’s experience is immediately uncovered. The Battle of Austerlitz took place in 1805, and the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815, and the fact that the Grass is talking of them in the sense that it has dealt with the aftermath makes it seem timeless. Generally, those who are older are supposed to be respected, which supports the Grass’s superior nature. In addition, another concrete noun used by Sanburg in this poem is “grass,” where he writes “I am the grass; I cover all” (3). This word choice not only tells who is speaking, but it also reminds one that there is something above the aforementioned bodies, something that is responsible for covering them when they are left. Ultimately, Sanburg’s use of proper and concrete nouns stresses human inferiority to the Grass, a thing that has seen, lived through, and covered up the remnants of gory
...ntion of memories sweeping past, making it seem that the grass is bent by the memories like it is from wind. The grass here is a metaphor for the people, this is clear in the last line, “then learns to again to stand.” No matter what happens it always gets back up.
The author of my essay is Simon Balic and he is a historian and culturologist. The title of the work is, Sunflower Symposium (109-111). Balic wrote this essay thirty years after The Sunflower was written. Balic argues that he does not forgive the sufferer, although he does feel some remorse. The author supports and develops the thesis in a chronological order in order to take the reader through exactly what was seen, heard, and thought of during this time. Both Weisenthal and Balic had a liable reason to not forgive the soldier, “There are crimes whose enormity cannot be measured. Rectifying a misdeed is a matter to be settled between the perpetrator and the victim” (Wiesenthal 54). Through this, Balic was trying to speak to his audience of fellow historians.
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
Every place that is mentioned in the poem is a well-known bloody fight in wars that claimed many lives. The opening stanza of the poem is a command from the grass to soldiers at war in Austerlitz and Waterloo to kill as many people as they can and shovel them under the grass so that it has enough history to pile under itself and wipe out all the marks of combat. Austerlitz is a village where on Dec. 2, 1805; Napoleon escorted an outnumbered French army to vic...
Plot in line three was changed to garden. The feel was slightly changed in line three because while plot means, “A small piece of ground marked out for a purpose such as building or gardening” (oxforddictionaries.com). A garden is more specific. It is a plot set aside for the use of vegetation. Therefore, garden gives the poem more of feel for nature. Line four has three alterations. The first of which is changing rain to precipitation. The author’s use of nouns is better; since rain has a natural feel, and precipitation has more of a scientific feel. The author’s choice of green was better than my choice of vegetation again for the same reason as the last alteration. Green has more of a natural connotation than vegetation. Line four’s last switch was replacing the prepositional phrase “are gone” with “have receded.” The phrase “have receded” gives the feeling that something has fled slowly. Yet, the phrase, “are gone” just states that they/it are/is no longer
"The thing could barely stand." ("The Bull Calf" line 1). The calf is referred to as a thing not an animal or creature. This is the way the author blocks emotion. The first line in the first stanza is a contradiction from the rest of the stanza because the rest of it has a positive attitude and the first sentence shows that the animal is weak. The third and the fourth line show the glory of the animal by hinting to royalty. The last line in the first stanza helps to back this information up by pointing to Richard the second. In the fifth line the narrator uses thee word us this connects him to the event. "The fierce sunlight tugging the maize from the ground" ("The Bull Calf" line 6). This is imagery, the sunlight showing promise and hope, maize is yellow this refers us back to the sun through the similar color. The last line refers to Richard the second this makes the poem flow better into the next stanza, Richard the second was lowered from his rank much like the calf is going to be.
A theme in W.P. Kinsella’s “The Thrill of the Grass” is change, for better or for worse, affords the opportunity for us to acknowledge our emotions and love of memories and encourages us to stand up for what we truly believe in. Change, sentiment, reminiscence and defiance are portrayed through the protagonist and the plot in this admiringly, well written short story.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
He describes how the sun “bakes” the earth, the grasshoppers “consume the parched grass,” and how the prairies are full of “endless desolation.” The word “bakes” exhibits nature’s hostility to its surrounding lands. The grasshoppers eating the “parched grass” convey how on top of the grass slowly starving and dying, it has to deal with the grasshoppers devouring it as well; which emphasizes nature’s unforgivable attitude towards the land. The words “endless desolation” reveal that the land is nothing but despair, and that it is full of endless agony and suffering. This bleak description expresses a miserable tone that deduces the reader’s mind to believe the landscape is barren and
Stephen Crane begins the novel with a description of the fields in the morning: “ As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors” (1). The fog clears to reveal the literal green world of grass. It also reveals another green world, the world of the youth. Like school children, the young soldier tells rumors within the regiment. This natural setting provides an ironic place for killing, just as these men seem to be the wrong ones fighting in the Civil War. Stephen Crane says something on this in the narrative: “ He was aware that these battalions with their commotions were woven red and startling into the gentle fabric of the softened greens and browns. It looked to be a wrong place for the battlefield” (26).
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
...wever, in “The Tuft of Flowers,” the concept of aloneness aids the readers to be cognizant of the idea that humans are all connected somehow. In addition, the speakers in “Mending Wall” and “The Tuft of Flowers” do not choose to be alone, whereas the speaker in “Acquainted with the Night” does. In “Mending Wall,” the speaker wants to get rid of the wall, because it blocks the opportunity of communicating with the neighbor. In “The Tuft of Flowers,” the speaker mentions, “as all must be,” (9) which gives the impression that the speaker has no other choice but to be alone. In sharp contrast, in “Acquainted with the Night,” the speaker purposely avoids human contact and takes a walk at nighttime to be in solitude. Therefore, the concept of loneliness and isolation in the three poems analyzed is used to enhance and make known the poem’s theme in different circumstances.
The poem comprises three stanzas which are patterned in two halves; the rule of three is ingeniously used throughout the poem to create tension and show the progression of the soldiers’ lives. There is a variety of rhyming schemes used – possibly Duffy considered using caesural rhyme, internal rhyme and irregular rhyme to better address the elegiac reality. The rhythm is very powerful and shows Duffy’s technical adroitness. It is slightly disconcerting, and adds to the other worldly ambience of the poem. Duffy uses a powerful comparative in each stanza to exemplify the monstrosity and extent of war, which is much worse than we imagine; it develops throughout each stanza, starting with a syntactical ‘No; worse.’ to ‘worse by far’ and ending on ‘much worse’. Similarly, the verbs used to describe the soldier’s shadow as he falls shows the reader the journey of the shadow, as if it’s the trajectory of soldiers’ lives. At first, the shadow is as an act...
... the faces of the dead and dying, pierced the joyful heart that was Walt Whitman. These experiences Lead to a new book of poetry added to “Leaves of Grass”. “Drum Taps,” contains 43 poems of the glory and tragedy of war. When before he wrote of voices singing in unison, he now questioned, would this song of unity be stifled forever? “Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me! Your summer wind is warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, A thin gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me, Must I change my triumphant song? said I to myself, Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled? And sullen hymns of defeat?(Leaves of Grass, 261)
As the poem progresses, the speaker’s attitude changes in (line 26), where he tells us that his mood is lowered. It is here that the speaker presents himself as “a happy child of earth” in (line 31); as once again Wordsworth... ... middle of paper ... ... / Of the unfinished sheepfold may be seen / Besides the boisterous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,” showing the growth of human beings in relative notion to nature.