Life grows like the unappreciated green grass in a desert-like environment, swiftly springing up, but with overflowing surprises that make humans question in curiosity, because life wants these mere humans who just survive day by day to expect the unexpected without a countdown or warning. These unexpected and ineluctable occurrences happen daily, whether positive or negative, it will paint a new memory and point of view for the individual experiencing it. Some of the joyful unexpected things in life are marriage proposals, employment acceptances and salary increases while in contrast, the most despised unexpectancies might include breakups, unwanted pregnancies and a lost job one truly cherished. In spite of all of these common tears of …show more content…
joy and pain, what seems to personally hurt the most is broken trust and loyal love gone awry. In Dana Giola’s poem, “Thanks for Remembering Us”, the poet describes the home of what can be assumed, an attentive couple, with an arriving and unknown bouquet of roses, ferns, and an iris “signed with a name that no one knew”(2), beginning the relationship’s skepticism.
Although it was proven that “our neighbor says they’re not for her, / and no one has a birthday near”(4-5), it was still a sweet anonymous “blunder” that belonged to nothing but the surface it sat on. The unexpected flowers can be symbolized as the unforeseen events to change an individual’s life and how the neighbors had no relation to the anonymous gift can represent an affected individual feeling alone or without any help from close ones. As the mystery continues, it even escalates to the point where both partners in the relationship start to question, “Is one of us having an affair? / At first we laugh, and then we wonder”(7-8), which they both have the feeling of insecurity or denial behind each other’s …show more content…
backs. Just as fast as the flowers rot, so does the heart of the relationship. “The iris was the first to die, / enshrouded in its sickly-sweet / and lingering perfume”(9-11). In a symbolic meaning, an iris can illustrate as a connection between life and death so as the poet states this, it can demonstrate as the couple’s struggle to maintain their bond as one. In addition, when the poet describes the iris’s death, using a personification, as leaving behind a “perfume” it can symbolize as the broken pieces of the relationship leftover of the distressed couple. Then after the iris, “the roses / fell one petal at a time, / and now the ferns are turning dry”(12-13). Roses are symbolic for love and beauty, perhaps the couple didn’t fall out of love right away but slowly, like baby steps. Lastly, ferns are a symbol of sincerity and to dry up can be the poet’s way of suggesting that the couple is (complete sentence later). Therefore, in a way the poet illustrates, using imagery and personification, the dying bouquet can be used to signify how the couple feels about each other and (complete sentence later). With personification and anthropomorphism, the flowers seem to come alive and point, blaming the couple who took them in. “The room smells like a funeral, / but there they sit, too much at home, / accusing us of some small crime”(14-16). A funeral containing a dead body of a lost, loved one doesn’t always smell pleasant and the poet could be indicating that the air or bond between the two is lifeless. By now, it can be assumed that the bouquet of dried flowers still sits on the same surface where it first arrived with no attention being paid to, only left there to decorate the home until it rotted along with the couple’s feelings or relationship. Perhaps it seems like a crime to just leave the flowers there with no admiration towards them, but the poet describes the flowers as if they’re human beings with feelings. It’s as if the flowers are blaming the couple who took them in unexpectedly, for not loving them like a child. In another perspective, this could be seen as a part of the relationship where an individual feels a one sided behavior of the other. As a result, the poet suggests just like there was an end to the flowers, the couple may feel as if they’re coming to an end also. Can’t live with and without another, “like love forgotten, and we can’t / throw out a gift we’ve never owned”(17-18). This can be related to many individuals who feel a compassion or sympathy for lost things, or at least seems lost. There’s a nature of humans to care, emotionally and physically, no matter how heartless or reckless an individual may be. The tone of these two last lines is heart breaking with hints of uncertain hope, and maybe regret for not understanding or caring like expected. From the unexpected flowers to the couple’s relationship, the poet’s signal at this point is that the gift they never owned, was love. When I first read this poem, I felt as if my heart broke and dried up along with the flowers.
I thought I understood the poem and originally, I believed that it meant to appreciate the unexpected things in life because it can change your own life, for the better or worse, because even though all of these surprises come in, we have a tendency to care for them like it belongs to us. I kept reading it over and over, trying to make connections with the words in my life and that’s what made me believe that this poem was “just right” for me. Only the poet knows the meaning, but since we all think differently, I have an addition to my interpretation, which I think the poet talks about unloyal or suspicious relationships. People who don’t know how to trust each other or feel as if someone who’s more worthy should be kept in a cage or else, someone else is going to sweep them off their feet. I think this is really common, especially for insecure people. This can relate to my life because when I moved to California, I wasn’t ready for it and never intended to live with my mom. It was just a last minute thing because I was afraid of the bullies at the previous middle school I attended in Wisconsin. It was an unexpected action for me to take and I had promised my dad, I’d come back, but I didn’t. I thought it was for best, but now that I think about it, I was just running away from minor problems and that distanced the relationship between me and my dad. Other real life examples that I
won’t go too much into detail include past relationships of people I know that couldn’t trust each other and in the end had gone different ways and because this poem can relate to a variety of situations, it is why I believe this poem is “just right” for me.
Sometimes, helping people is more unrewarding than we would like to think. I believe the speaker relates to this statement a lot throughout the play as she struggles with her famiy and those she loves more than she could ever explain. The first example is when the speaker was faced with the challenge of her daughter cutting ties with her parents. She lost all communication and has evidently changed as a person to the extent that her mother would no longer recognize who she has become or who she was. In order to help her daughter and herself recognize and solve this tragedy, she tries to uncover the truth about why this has occured and how it has changed the speaker and her daughter. However, as soon as she attempts to uncovers that truth, her daughter takes it and recovers it- as shown through the metaphor of her stacking the stones along the side of the fence and off the garden. The second example is when she is faced with the circumstance of her husband not understanding her feelings and not being able to control what is does and does not care about. The speaker is faced with the problem that being mean to her husband is the only way she can open his eyes and make him realize what he is doing to her and his family. Like most people , however, the speaker does not enjoy being rude or mean to her family. The third example is when her daughter’s life got out of control, she forgot and/or ignored everything she was taught as a child which, obviously, caused her to think irrationally and changed who she was as a person. With the struggle of your child leaving you, changing who they are and cutting communication ties with her caused her life to change. Her loyalties, life, love split into pieces realizing this is now her reality and there is not much she can do other that accept it and move on. We
Suspicion, mistrust, and accusations were the first three words that came to mind when reading Dana Gioia’s “Thanks For Remembering Us”. This sarcastic poem brings darkness to an action that would otherwise be deemed as thoughtful and kind-hearted. The title of the poem is deceiving and taunting, the speaker’s fruitless relationship is heavily symbolized by the flowers, and the overall theme is “failing to let go of love”.
trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and
This metaphor showcases how the wife tries to conceal her unloving marriage from the world in hope that it will be resolved, yet she still suffers from the way the man treats her. The small candle on the cake is another metaphor used to portray the loneliness of the wife. This feeling is a common emotion felt by many victims of a detached relationship. The description “...one pink candle burning in the center”, gives the candle a feminine trait which reflects the wife. The cake, which the candle was used for was not well received by the husband and the celebration comes to a halt. Then, the cake is ignored and the candle burns in loneliness. Similar to the cake and the candle, the wife and her efforts have never been appreciated or respected by her husband. Much like the cake, the wife is ignored, and she lives her life in desolation and solitude. Lastly, the setting symbolises the wife’s lack of importance to her husband. The setting is described as “a little narrow restaurant” and with a few
It is the challenges we face that make it look dark and gloomy. The key to a productive existence is not the emotions we feel when presented with adversity, but in our ability to overcome, grow and evolve. In comparison, examine the Spoken Indian searching for hope in hardships, or the extraordinary taste and smell of the wine connoisseur who lacks sight. See the trial & errors or the young man growing to love both parents, and the college student whose heart is blistering with pain from the loss of his mother, but finds healing in his new home as an emerging scholar. We are all exploring methods to handle
Meghan O 'Rourke 's intense and image-rich poem, "Unforced Error," presents the gamut of emotions as its speaker reflects on different moments in his or her life. The poem 's tone is alternately joyful, despairing, and much in between, and it evokes a strong emotional response in readers because of its use of imagery, paradox, strong evocative diction, and deep philosophical reflection. A careful analysis of the poem 's strategies and devices reveals O 'Rourke 's subtle yet devastating poem about the human inability to predict or control life 's outcomes, and the need to savor life. The poem questions human control over the direction of our lives, and asks us to think about whether it is “yellow raspberries,” “bitter plums,” “curtains in wind,” or all three. “Unforced Error” uses vivid imagery, a reminiscing tone, and alternating moods that align with nature to show how precious each living moment can seem when reflecting back on the past.
I think in the beginning, this poem is mocking the façade of happiness that many clean-cut individuals have. It is a mockery of the thoughts in the criminal mind. Many times, a criminal cannot bring himself to commit suicide, so they take someone else's life instead. By doing so, subconsciously, the criminal knows he will be caught and in turn, executed.
The poet tries to appreciate the people, who are always present when their friends and family are in need. She says that when people are in need of help, and/or suffering, all one needs to do is stick by their side, to give them courage to overcome their troubles.
It sounds like her father’s death made her angrier at the fact that she is not able to get anything from him anymore. There are several times in the poem when she switches emotions on her father. She forgives him and then is angry again. It’s hard for her because she does not know whether or not she can forgive him, considering all the pain and hardships the family was put through. She tries to justify her father’s actions by blaming his father, but is still angry because her father didn’t help the situation. At the same time, the daughter is almost as upset with her mother as she is with her father when she says “you were each other’s bad bargain, not mine” (Line 21). By the end of the poem, she is able to accept the fact that the broken relationship with her father and content relationship with her mother has to remain untouched. She is able to see that she cannot fully blame her father for being the reason why she is not emotionally content with their relationship. There’s nothing she can do about it now since both her parents are dead, but she is able to let go of it at this
“Apparently with no surprise” by Emily Dickinson presents the trials and tribulations that a flower must overcome if it is to survive. Dickinson creates a microcosm of the real world and a deep ecological study of human kind. Her word choice betrays a hidden disdain for human beings egotistical aims.
We know that the mind clings to the negative — but research also shows us that 3 times more positive things happen to us than negative things every day. At any given time, a lot of things are going right in our lives. Either in our career or in our personal lives. It could be that you enjoy what you do at work, are grateful for the paycheck, or appreciate your organization’s values or benefits. It could be the joy you derive from your family, hobbies, sports, or community service. When we savor our experiences, we derive more pleasure and satisfaction from them. Spending time enjoying and feeling grateful for what is going right in your life will help you weather the rest. Caroline spent hours every week devoted to a community service activity from which she derived the joy and strength with which to face her other
In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Happy Endings,” the central theme of fiction provides several different kinds of marriages and relationships that ultimately result in the same ending. The “Happy Endings” shows that it’s difficult to have complete control over day-to-day events. No matter how hard society tries to achieve the perfect life, it does not always go as planned. It doesn’t matter if the characters are bored and depressed, confused and guilty, or virtuous and lucky; the gradual path of version A is not always in reach.
Ordinarily, Valentine’s Day conjures up images of exchanging flowers, chocolates, cards, and so on and so forth for most people, except Carol Ann Duffy, who buys her lover’s Valentine’s Day gift in the produce aisle of her local grocery store, an onion. In her poem appropriately titled, “Valentine,” she challenges her lover to adopt her what she deems a realistic notion that if one has true love for another, romance can be found in any gift, even something as unromantic as an onion. In order to convey the message that gifts of love are subjective and do not have to align with tradition; she uses an extended metaphor to compare her love to an onion throughout the poem.
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
One of the more common meanings of success, aside from the superficial materialistic meaning, is being successful in regards to family and other intimate relationships. Many have made the statement that the greatest feeling in somebody’s life is the birth of their children. This feeling that people receive gives a long-lasting feeling of self-satisfaction which provides residual dividends throughout their life. These experiences are all similar by the fact that they possess a deep emotional investment of the individual, unlike shallow experiences like succeeding in a business deal or making a large turn on an investment. It should be mentioned...