Billy Collins in the book, Nine Horses, uses symbolism and metaphors to portray the characters in the poem “The Country”. "I wondered about you when you told me never to leave a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches lying around the house because the mice might get into them and start a fire,”(Collins 9). The wooden, strike anywhere matches symbolizes a drug taken by an innocent child who is oblivious to the outside world. This innocent child is represented by the mouse. Like a child the mouse has no idea of the outcome that will occur due to “taking” the matches. Why did the speaker in the poem “The Country” leave the matches lying around even after the person who he directed the poem to said not to leave the matches lying around. The
In “Marginalia” and “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins uses comparative imagery and aggressive diction to illustrate a reader’s need to protect themselves from enjoying literature they cannot understand through annotations.
Good Old Boy by Willie Morris The book that I chose to read was written by the Mississippi author Willie Morris. The book, Good Old Boy, was written in 1971 and takes place in the small Mississippi town of Yazoo City. The book contains experiences of the author's childhood in this small town. The story began by telling many of the legends of Yazoo City. One of these legends involved a woman who lived by the Yazoo River. She supposedly lured fishermen to her house to kill and bury them in the woods never to be found again. The sheriff eventually found out about her and chased her through the woods into quicksand where she sank and died. Before she was completely under the sand she vowed to return twenty years later to have revenge on the town on May 25, 1904. Her body was retrieved from the quicksand and buried with a giant chain around her grave. On May 25, 1904 the whole town was engulfed in flames. Everything was destroyed in this blaze. The next day, some citizens went to her grave and to their horror the chain had been broken. Another legend was one about Casey Jones, a famous tr...
The mouse’s misfortune illustrates Burns’ view of dreams and plans because the mouse’s house was destroyed just as easily as dreams can be
In Jim Collins book Good to Great, we explore the notion of being rigorous, not ruthless. “To be ruthless means hacking and cutting, especially in difficult times, or wantonly firing people without any thoughtful consideration.” (GTG, p. 52) In stark contrast, rigorous companies are no walk in the park, but the difference between the two styles is night and day. Rigorous companies adopt a top down approach when it comes to hiring management. There is an old saying that says a “fish rots from the head down.” This is analogous to a business hiring the wrong leadership and the business failing as a result of the poor hiring decisions in leadership. I think that successful companies, especially moving forward will
The next theme used by the author to inspire a feeling of despair in this story is the randomness of persecution. By making the villagers draw these slips of paper once a year would provoke a feeling of hopelessness. Because they know that no matter what they do one day they may be subjected to this brutal death. And it woul...
In All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy reveals the limitations of a romantic ideology in the real world. Through his protagonist, John Grady Cole, the author offers three main examples of a man’s attempt to live a romantic life in the face of hostile reality: a failed relationship with an unattainable woman; a romantic and outdated relationship with nature; and an idealistic decision to live as an old-fashioned cowboy in an increasingly modern world. In his compassionate description of John Grady, McCarthy seems to endorse these romantic ideals. At the same time, the author makes clear the harsh reality and disappointments of John Grady’s chosen way of life.
At first glance, the readers have preconceived ideas that the story’s theme is one of a positive nature. One anticipates that there will be a character with good fortune; however, once reading it only becomes evident in the middle of the story. Readers begin to understand that he person who has the misfortune, the colored paper, is stoned to death in front of the whole community. This is evident when it states, “It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before…there was a stir in the crowd” (Jackson 249). This quote emphasis’s the negative connotation related to the black dot, which makes readers aware of the detriments related. Its relevance leads readers to understanding the development of the drama. Within the Hutchinson’s family, the mother, Tessie Hutchinson, is the victim to the lottery that
To the average reader, “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck may initially look very similar, but after carefully critiquing and comparing their abundance of differences, their opinion will change. Steinbeck found his inspiration for writing the novel after reading that poem. His novel is set in Salinas, CA during the 1900s and is about migrant farm wrokers while the poem is about the guilt felt by one man after he inadvertently ruins the “home” of a field mouse with his plow. Even though they are two different genres of literature, they share a similar intent. The poem is written in first person, while the novel is written in third person omniscient. The vocabulary used to provide imagery is also another subtle different. Being two different genres of literature, they are destined to have both differences and similarities, but the amount of differences outweighs the aspects that are the same.
The authors John Steinbeck and Robert Burns approach their ideas in very different ways, while having the same themes the reader comprehends key concepts in a different light. Throughout the short story “Of Mice and Men” and the poem “To a Mouse” the theme of hope is a key concept, even though while in both stories their hope did not bring them their happiness, friendship brought them together. Correspondingly while having similar themes of friendship, loneliness, and hope, this all takes place in different settings with different characters.
Sometimes, it’s almost impossible to explain human behavior, especially the terrible things people do to each other. Southern Gothic writers, however, are able to use certain literary elements that explore this behavior. In their short stories, “Good Country People,” and “A Rose for Emily,” Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner use the elements of violence, imprisonment, and the grotesque to explain why people do the things they do.
In the poem, “Oranges”, Gary Soto expresses his narrator's experience through imagery that appeals to the senses. On a particularly Cold evening in December, a twelve-year-old boy left his perch next to the fire and kept his hands in his winter coat. He was going to brave the cold for a special event. His first date. Nervously, he walked five blocks to his girlfriend’s house with a nickel and two oranges weighing down in his worn pockets.
Flannery O’Connor creates a story that depicts how desire can motivate its characters in “Good Country People.” The 17-page piece can be classified as a southern gothic –
In “Out, Out” we as a class talked about that the boy had a terrible accident and died and how everyone then went back to work. I felt that it was more about nature and the destruction of the trees and forest. The first five lines are just giving you the imagery of what the smells of the wood are like and how so many trees had dropped “Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze
“Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher” is what William Wordsworth has preached to us. We all have places that we can feel at home with. For some, it is a trip to the east coast or the Spice Islands. A place where we can be ourselves and not have to worry about anything else that is going on in our lives. My special place is in the Big Horn Mountains where tons of different species of animals roam the cliffs, plains, and forests that are scattered for miles across. In “Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth has returned there after five long years away. He brings his younger sister whom he wants to appreciate the beauty just as he does. Wordsworth notices how certain things have changed, but it is still the same place that he came to love. Wordsworth is a Romantic poet. He helped start the Romantic Movement around the end of the eighteenth century. In William Wordsworth poem, “Tintern Abbey,” there are three noticeable romantic elements which are, simplicity of language, expression of intensified feelings, and responses to nature that lead to awareness of self.
William Blake’s “Chimney Sweeper” in both his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, portrays his critique on society. He achieves this goal by having not one, but two poems on the same topic of chimney sweeping, and this helps to reinforce his message. He criticizes society for permitting the atrocious child labor to ensue and also the Church, who condones the ill treatment of the young children. The parents are linked as well, being a product of the corrupt society, and for associating with the Church. Irony, is also a tool Blake utilizes to strengthen his objective. The evaluation of both poems together, is the key to understanding Blake’s intent; you can’t have one without the other. Perhaps, now the “unpleasantness” of Blake’s “great poetry” is understood.