The Mouse's Petition By Anna Barbauld Summary

482 Words1 Page

“The Mouse’s Petition” “The Mouse’s Petition”, written by Anna Barbauld, main character is a mouse who lives in captivity. The mouse’s capturers perform for experiments. On a deeper level, the poem portrays the social and working conditions of the Romantic Period. Barbauld use of vivid details, diction, symbols, and metaphors allude to both the literal and metaphorical meanings of the poem. The first two lines of “The Mouse’s Petition” sets the tone for the poem. “Oh hear a pensive prisoner’s prayer / For liberty that sighs,” (Barbauld 1-2). “For liberty that sighs,” is an example of personification and also, the line is symbolic. A liberty that sighs makes the reader believe that the freedom is a sadness that will never be obtained. The captive mouse has given up hope of ever being free. Likewise, a woman in a male dominated Romantic society never saw an end to her oppression. This sets the tone, despair or hopelessness, of the poem. …show more content…

“For here forlorn and sad I sit / Within the wiry gate; / And tremble at th’ approaching morn, / Which brings impending fate,” (Barbauld 5-8). In these lines, Barbauld used “morn” as a double entendre because it sounds like “mourn”; however, she intended the word to mean morn, a shorten of the word morning. These lines portray the mouse’s notion, that with the rising sun, she will die. The mouse grieves for the mice who have died previously. Likewise, a woman during this time period could not free themselves from their

Show More
Related

  • How Does George Kill Lennie Death In Of Mice And Men

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    Would you be able to kill your lifelong companion? George Milton had to make that choice in John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men. After a whole bunch of misadventures with his mentally handicapped giant, Lennie Small. Lennie accidently murdered a woman out of innocence. While the ranch men search for Lennie, George made the decision to give Lennie a merciful death. I believe that George should have killed Lennie because he would have been put in an institution, Curley would have been cruel to him, and George had to give him a merciful death.

    Read More

  • The Black Rat Essay

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Black Rat” explores the days during and after World War Two. It also honours Iris’s father as a war hero. The poem has described how the soldier lived during the war and the effort he demonstrated when fighting for his land. The phrase, “He lived in a tin hut with a hard dirt floor. He had bags sewn together that was his door,” gives the reader an

    Read More

  • The Rage in Albion - By Cecelia Peters

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    A voice for voiceless which she finds from nowhere. Rarely a "homeless Man under the Bridge" could arouse such an inspiration to make him one of the most widely read poem of recent times. She tries to find the unwritten pages of life of a man who almost delivered a judgment on the masked masses of Britain.

    Read More

  • Contrasting Silko's Yellow Woman and Chopin's Story of an Hour

    499 Words  | 1 Pages

    On the surface, the protagonists of Silko's "Yellow Woman" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour" seem to have little in common. Yet upon closer inspection, both stories relate tales of women who are repressed by the social tenets that define their roles as wives.

    Read More

  • Characteristics And Similes In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    John Steinbeck, the author of the novel Of Mice and Men uses many stylistic devices and description in chapter one to give the reader a deeper understanding of what may occur throughout the novel. Firstly, the name of the city the two protagonists, Lennie and George, are heading to is called “Soledad,” which means loneliness in Spanish; this is symbolism and foreshadowing because it can mean that as they get closer to the city, their relationship as friends may deteriorate and they may end up alone towards the end. Furthermore, this could also mean that there can be major problems in further chapters because of Lennie’s unpredictable behaviour due to his mental disabilities. In relation to Robert Burns’s poem, “To a Mouse,” the author may be

    Read More

  • Of Mice and Men: The Next Chapter

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    As Slim and George arrived at the bar, neither of them said a word. Slim looked at George but George avoided his attempt at making eye contact. They walked in and sat at a round wooden table that looked to be a decade old. George sat down at one end and Slim sat down on the other directly across.

    Read More

  • Human Lot To Try And Fail Analysis

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Of Mice and Men, the author attempts to portray the hardships that a man attempts to face yet fails to withstand. Set in the post-depression era, the book depicts the harsh truth of the

    Read More

  • Social Injustice in the novel Of Mice and Men

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    Firstly, I am going to talk about Lennie who was known as a man with

    Read More

  • To A Mouse, by Robert Burns and Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is not told from the mouse’s perspective, but from the destructive man’s point of view, which becomes apparent when the man refers to himself in one line of the poem, stating, “ But oh! I backward cast my eye.” When a work of literature is told in first person, the reader does not get to see the whole story. The view is very limited.

    Read More

  • Essay Hills Like White Elephants 'And The Story Of An Hour'

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour”, the woman in each story imprisons in the domestic sphere. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the woman in this story conflicts between keeping the baby or getting abortion although the relationship with her boyfriend would not improve as he said. In “The Story of an Hour”, even though Louise Mallard, an intelligent, independent woman understands that she should grieve for Brently, her husband and worry for her future, she cannot help herself from rejoice at her newfound freedom. The author of this story, Kate Chopin suggests that even with a happy marriage, the loss of freedom and the restraint are the results that cannot be avoid.

    Read More

  • Poetry Closed Reading Assignment:Billy Collins

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    Overall, it expresses the love and affection of Collin about this poem. This poem is basically looked at, or listened to, and the rodent tested. Such imagery used in poem supports the central ideas of Collin in poem, that the reading poetry must be, just like a good exploration, a discovery act. The poem has a very conversational effect and scholastic feel in it. First stanza directly linked to the second stanza while the third and fourth stanza of this poem has distinct thoughts in them. Similarly, the six stanzas come in a follow-up way but the mood actually changed in the last two stanzas of the poem. In short, Collin has written this poem in a very special and artistic way which really changes other’s minds about how to better understand a poem by knowing its actual meaning.

    Read More

  • Bigotry's Victim Poem Essay

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    Though the way it relates to people in the 19th century and the way it relates to the modern world greatly differs, the symbolism in the poem and shift in tone throughout it shows a great appeal to human nature, and how desperate one can be to change it. The symbolism in the poem paints a ghastly picture of a man’s life, falling apart as he does his best, and worst, to keep it safe from himself. In lines 1 through 8 (stanza one), he gives a brief description of an incident in his life where things have gone wrong. “When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind/Repose trust in his footsteps of air?/No! Abandoned, he sinks into a trance of despair,” He uses these lines to show the lack of control he has over his actions, how his will to change his circumstances has weakened.

    Read More

  • Of Mice And Men Book Report

    1506 Words  | 4 Pages

    5.) Crooks- Crooks, the black stable-hand, gets his name from his crooked back. He is isolated from the other men because of the color of his skin. Soon, Crooks becomes fond of Lennie, and even though he claims to have seen countless men following empty dreams of buying their own land, he asks Lennie if he can go with them, because he wants to hoe in the garden.

    Read More

  • Feminist Perspectives in a Story of an Hour

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Woman Far Ahead of Her Time, by Ann Bail Howard, discusses the nature of the female characters in Kate Chopin’s novel’s and short stories. Howard suggests that the women in Chopin’s stories are longing for independence and feel torn between the feminine duties of a married woman and the freedom associated with self-reliance. Howard’s view is correct to a point, but Chopin’s female characters can be viewed as more radically feminist than Howard realizes. Rather than simply being torn between independent and dependant versions of her personality, “The Story of an Hour’s” Mrs. Mallard actually rejoices in her newfound freedom, and, in the culmination of the story, the position of the woman has actually been elevated above that of the man, suggesting a much more radically feminist reading than Howard cares to persue.

    Read More

  • Julio Cortazar's Blow-Up and Other Stories

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Cortazar’s Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, Cortazar uses the symbolism of the bunnies to represent repression of the main character and concealment of suck repression. In the story the main character moves into the apartment of a young lady who is away and in Paris. Instead of providing a description of the woman and her connection to the main character, Cortazar provides descriptions of the apartment. Such descriptions act as a representation of the woman herself. For instance, as the main character states, “It hurts me to come into an ambience where someone who lives beautifully has arranged everything like a visible affirmation of her soul…” (Cortazar, 39). With the apartment as a representation of this woman’s soul, the main character feels as if he and the bunnies are encroaching upon this w...

    Read More

More about The Mouse's Petition By Anna Barbauld Summary

Open Document