The Rhodora

711 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Roles of nature in literature

Emerson’s “The Rhodora” is about a purple flower in the rhododendron family. Unlike its sister plant, Rhododendron ponticum, the Rhodora grows near bogs or unfertile and acidic soil. The Rhodora has no leaves and its blooms sprout directly from the stem. The Rhodora grows in solitude, away from other flowers that are considered to be immensely beautiful. “The Rhodora” contemplates the beauty of a simple flower and its effect on its surroundings. In the poem, Emerson’s speaker discovers that nature is beautiful and needs no excuse for being. This is accomplished by the uses of imagery, personification and apostrophe, and metaphor.

The speaker begins by using descriptive diction to illustrate the Rhodora and its effect on its surroundings. The Rhodora is seen not only as a flower, but as a focal point on the entire scene. The Rhodora is described s fresh in line 2. In lines 3 and 4, the speaker is awestruck at the Rhodora’s solitude. It spreads its leafless blooms in a damp nook, or lonely crevice of the woods. The Rhodora pleases the desert, which is a metaphor of a pla...

Show More
Related

  • Snow Gum, Wombat, And Nature's Beauty By Douglas Stewart

    612 Words  | 2 Pages

    This is amplified in “The Snow Gum”, where Stewart redefines the beauty of the eucalyptus tree. The composer describes the tree as having a “crown” relating that to royalty and regal. Thereafter, the poet extends this personification using “curve”, to reinforce and strengthen his view of the tree being human like and the distinction of it. Stewart expresses a connection to the royalty of the tree. Similarly, the poem “Waterlily” describes the beauty of a peaceful yellow water lily plant floating on water.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of I Dreamed I Moved Among The Elysian Fields

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and

    Read More

  • Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant reveals a very unusual aspect of nature. While most people think of nature as beauty and full of life, Bryant takes a more interesting approach to nature. He exposes a correlation between nature, life, death, and re-birth. Using nature as a foothold, Bryant exercises methods such as tone, setting, and imagery in a very intriguing way while writing “Thanatopsis.”

    Read More

  • Symbolism in The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story opens by embracing the reader with a relaxed setting, giving the anticipation for an optimistic story. “…with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (p.445).”

    Read More

  • The Man Yōshū Themes

    1291 Words  | 3 Pages

    “We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two

    Read More

  • Loss of Innocence in The Flowers, by Alice Walker

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walker uses the positive imagery of “The Flowers” at the beginning of the novel to set up a naïve, sweet world in which a gruesome appearance of the lynched victim turns out to a reasonably unexpected, shocking event that robs Myop of her innocence. The first half of the text focuses on Myop’s childlike innocence with sweet kinesthetic imagery of Myop feeling “good and warm in the sun” to hit specifically on Myop’s childlike inhibitions. In the same case, sweet and gentle visual imagery continues to play in the first few paragraphs of a happy agricultural lifestyle where “each day a golden surprise” and a ten year old girl like Myop could “skip lightly from her house to pigpen” and bounce “this way and that way”. Myop’s joyful rapping of the stick that goes “tat-de-ta-ta-ta” enables auditory imagery to play on a merry sort of onomatopoeia that goes strongly with Myop’s innocence. Imagery had little direct prepa...

    Read More

  • The Monkey Garden

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first images of the garden are seen through the exaggerated imagination of a young child. “” are as “ as flowers on Mars,” and cockscombs “ the deep red fringe of theater curtains.” Fr...

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Disdain for Egotistical Human Beings

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Paul Celan's Aspen Tree

    1709 Words  | 4 Pages

    It portrayed the themes of ephemerality, life in the face of death, and the dastardly characteristics of death. Just like his mother, the dandelion was able to accomplish conveying the emotions and thoughts he held. The dandelion has a brief lifespan, and once it has completed its journey it departs for good. Even though the garden it lived in had poisonous soil, the dandelion was still able to stay alive (if only for a little while) in the wasteland. Finally, the brevity of the weed’s life is shadowed by the remaining beauty in the world, and this portrays the author’s feelings of being cheated by his mother’s untimely death. Her life is gone like a breeze, but her beauty will remain an eternal

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of The Wild Iris By Louise Gluck

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    The theme throughout the poetry collection is the emotion of melancholy and the speaker speaking with a wise and philosophical tone. She has also used the repetition of nature and religion-based implications in her poems. Most of the poem titles is named after a specific plant because it fits in the meaning of her entire poem collection. The title of the poems hold symbolism because of the flower language. You can constantly see the cycle of rebirth through the beautiful description of a nonphysical form of a soul and develop into beautiful flowers in her garden. The vivid imagery of the flowers by describing the color and the personification of these living beings. She is also trying to explore the relationship between humans and their god. The poet is a gardener who tends to the flower and she prefer the flowers in her garden over her god, “knowing nothing of the

    Read More

  • A Critical Analysis of Judith Wright's 'the Killer'

    913 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first stanza, the poet seems to be offering a conventional romanticized view of Nature:

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Written At The Close Of Spring By Charlotte Smith

    1578 Words  | 4 Pages

    She is known for creating radical novels, which stuck discord in many of its early readers, and writing highly respected sonnets. Similar to Behn, Smith also captures the inner thoughts of not just women, but all human beings in the sonnet “Written at the Close of Spring” and juxtaposes the beauty of the annual spring with the frailty of humanity. In the first stanza of this poem, the speaker uses imagery to help readers connect with the beauty and delicacy of spring flowers. In the second stanza, she calls attention to the fact that the spring flowers are dying and, to experience the beauty again, one will have to wait until next spring to enjoy them.

    Read More

  • William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    As Perdita grows older, the shepherdess imparts her “blossoming” image on others, particularly on the courtiers who greet her in the country. After asking Dorcas to “Give [her] those flowers there,” she distributes “rosemary and rue [which] keep / Seeming and savor all the winter long” (IV.iv.73-5). The flowers ...

    Read More

  • Edmund Burke Essay

    1198 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ty of the daffodils. The powerful effect that they have on his mind and body snap him out of depression and cause him to experience such a strong and powerful joy. This poem shows the powerful affect nature can have on the emotions of a person.

    Read More

  • Comparison of the Use of Nature by Shelley and Wordsworth

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Not only is this showing the kind of fulfillment he receives from nature, but also the power that nature possesses in his mind.... ... middle of paper ... ...

    Read More

More about The Rhodora

Open Document