In Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do,” the speaker deals with the death of her brother Johnny and the effect it has on her perspective of life. At the start of the poem, the speaker speaks to her brother, telling him about issues at home that she is unable to manage due to grief from his death. Constantly, things go wrong in her life, and she realizes that all her problems cause what her brother had called yearning – the constant human want to have more. However, occasionally she realizes that the significance of life is in fact the small daily things that aren’t perfect, and that through remembering her brother and his death, she is embracing the fact that she is alive. Death is a significant event, and especially the loss of a loved one can …show more content…
leave people in denial due to grief. Initially the speaker is unable to cope with Johnny’s death, choosing to completely ignore it and likewise her own life matters. However, as the poem progresses, she ultimately recognizes that although Johnny is gone, she should still harbor an appreciation for even the imperfections of her life. At the start of the poem, the speaker is unable to come to terms with the death of Johnny, causing her to ignore her responsibilities due to her inability to handle her own life.
Because of her grief over Johnny, the speaker no longer feels compelled to interfere in her own life. The speaker begins by addressing Johnny directly by name (1), who we later learn has died, directly. Her use of apostrophe implies that she has not yet come to terms with his death, as she still wants to refer to Johnny as if he is alive. After describing the broken kitchen sink, the speaker mentions to Johnny that “the crusty dishes have piled up // waiting for the plumber” (2-3). The description of the dishes suggests leftover food that has dried up, but with the connotation of being dirty, implying that the speaker has a lack of care for the cleanliness of her own home and for the quality of her own life. The speaker doesn’t take the time to stack the dishes neatly; they have just formed a heap in the kitchen sink, suggesting again that the speaker has lost order in her daily life. In addition, the dishes have been personified as waiting for the plumber, pushing the action away from the speaker and onto the inanimate objects. She is so unwilling to maintain even necessities that even something realistically incapable of thought wants the sink to be fixed. Yet she recalls this while talking to Johnny, implying that her inability to control her life is due to her grief over his …show more content…
death. Although in the beginning the speaker has trouble coming to terms with the death of Johnny, as the poem progresses, the speaker slowly starts to perceive Johnny’s death and take command of her life.
In contrasting herself, alive, with Johnny, dead, the speaker realizes a strong desire for more in her life. The speaker continues to describe daily activities going badly, like the bag of groceries breaking in the street, and she tells Johnny, “I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do” (7). This is the first time she implies that Johnny is not alive, since although she is addressing him directly she makes the distinction between what people that are alive and not alive do. She is beginning to acknowledge that Johnny is not alive, although she still refers to him directly in conversation as if he is still alive, suggesting that she wishes he was still alive, although he is not. As she continues to live her everyday life, spilling coffee and buying items and parking, the speaker tells Johnny that this is “What you called that yearning. // What you finally gave up” (10-11). “That yearning” are the only italicized words in the poem, signifying their importance to the speaker. To the speaker, her meaningless daily actions now evoke the thought of an urgent and strong ambition. She can single out desire, recognizing that she needs to do something more in life, regardless of what it is, contrasting with when she had no will to do anything in her life. However, the poet uses a
stanza break to contrast her motive to live with her complete understanding of Johnny’s death. The speaker realizes that Johnny has permanently abandoned that want to live, stating for the first time in this poem a definite declaration of his death and allowing herself to start to break free from the effect of the anguish of his death on her life. By the end of the poem, the speaker comes to feel that the grief and longing from Johnny’s death is a norm of life, and recognizes that her misery does not need to overpower the other aspects of life. Life itself isn’t perfect, she realizes, and so she should appreciate those happier moments of living. The speaker describes moments where, in the middle of the day, she looks at her image in a window and she states, “I’m gripped by a cherishing” (14). The speaker is held onto strongly by a deep and fond love. She displays a strength of emotion never seen in the poem, suggesting that she is no longer unfeeling about life. Instead, she has overcome the sorrow of Johnny’s death and has found the ability to love. In the window, the speaker sees and loves the parts of her imperfect self, and she realizes, “I am living. I remember you” (16). The speaker addresses Johnny directly, implying she still longs for him; yet, she recalls him as someone from her past, signifying that she has come to terms with his death and knows he cannot come back. The memory of Johnny comes right after the speaker’s awareness that she is in the process of living. The poet has separated these two short statements onto a different line, making this the only short line of the poem and emphasizing the impact of these words. By connecting her awareness of life with her remembrance of Johnny, the speaker demonstrates that she has finally realized that the process of living is coming to terms with those unhappy things in life.
Erin George’s A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women sheds light on her life at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) where she was sentenced for the rest of her life for first-degree murder. It is one of the few books that take the reader on a journey of a lifer, from the day of sentencing to the day of hoping to being bunked adjacent to her best friend in the geriatric ward.
In “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us”, by Anna Quindlen, she brings forth the discussion grief's grip on the lives of the living. Wounds of death can heal with the passing of time, but in this instance, the hurt lives on. Published in New York, New York on June 5, 1994, this is one of many Quindlen published in the New York Times, centered on death's aftermath. This article, written in response to the death of Quindlen’s sister-in-law, and is focused on an audience who has, currently is, or will experience death. Quindlen-a columnist for the New York Times and Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize winner and author-has written six bestselling novels (Every Last One, Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue) and has been published in the New York Times and Newsweek.
Sometimes all one needs to create a better condition is putting in a little effort. However, as the poem implies, it is easier to do nothing for staying in a comfort zone is better than achieving a better condition. She complains of the heat in the room because the sun for sunlight pours through the open living-room windows. All she needs to do is get up and close the windows, but she won't do it either. She also reveals the futility of trying to get out of the meaningless routine that people adopt. In an attempt to be proactive, she thinks about the essence of living and is almost convinced that routine is the nature of life. She thinks for a long time and thinks again but ironically, the same routine chores distract her yet again. She goes to buying a hairbrush, parking, and slamming doors. At the end, she gives up on finding the essence of living; she wants to do things like she has always done
Frantically reliving and watching her previous life, Emily inquires to her parents, ““Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” (Wilder, 182). Emily is terrified on Earth because she knows her future. She is not disappointed with the actions she made on Earth, but she is disappointed that she didn’t appreciate the little actions in life. She carried herself through life like it would never end and she never needed to acknowledge the importance of those little actions. Being an example of the theme that life is a series of thoughtless events that make up one impactful life, Emily wishes she appreciated her small actions instead of taking them for
passed away” holds a significantly sombre and melancholy tone. This is juxtaposed to the living
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
The theme of this novel is to look at the good you do in life and how it carries over after your death. The moral of the book is; "People can make changes in their lives whenever they really want to, even right up to the end."
The two women were left in the kitchen while the men were investigating inthe crime scene. Mrs. Hale noticed the half done work in the kitchen. She hated unfinished things. For example, her unfinished kitchen that she had to leave. Therefore, she made a connection between her unfinished business and the one at hand.
Richard Taylor, an American philosopher and author of, “The Meaning of Life” believes you can live a meaningful life as long as you realize your will and are completely involved in it and enjoy it, then you are no longer needed and your life was a successful one. “This is surely the way to look at all of life- at one’s own life, and each day and moment it contains; of the life of a nation; of the species; of the life of the world; and of everything that breathes” (Taylor p 27). He proves this through the ancient myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was sentenced by the Gods to spend an eternity rolling a stone repeatedly to the top of a hill and once it reached the top, it would roll right back down once again. Taylor calls Sisyphus’ life as an “endless pointlessness.” Taylor relates human life to Sisyphus’ life. He believes that both of our lives can have meaning. Taylor asks us to look at Sisyphus’ story in a different way. For example, while the Gods sentenced him to rolling this stone up a hill for an eternity, what if they gave him a “strange and irrational impulse” to roll the stone repeatedly. Now, according to Richard Taylor, Sisyphus’ life would now have meaning and if we were to be as invested as Sisyphus in rolling the stone, then our lives have meaning as well.
... loss of loved ones like Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Andi in Revolution or faced your own inevitable passing like Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars, you are not alone. In confronting and facing death, these characters learn that death is merely a small part of living. It is an element of the human experience. To return to the wise words of the late Steve Jobs, “Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important…There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Living is the adventure. In facing their fears and sadness, these characters learn how to be courageous, how to hope, how to love, and how to live. Join them on their journeys by checking out one of the spotlighted books at your local library.
The funeral was supposed to be a family affair. She had not wanted to invite so many people, most of them strangers to her, to be there at the moment she said goodbye. Yet, she was not the only person who had a right to his last moments above the earth, it seemed. Everyone, from the family who knew nothing of the anguish he had suffered in his last years, to the colleagues who saw him every day but hadn’t actually seen him, to the long-lost friends and passing acquaintances who were surprised to find that he was married, let alone dead, wanted to have a last chance to gaze upon him in his open coffin and say goodbye.
On the surface, "life" is a late 19th century poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem illustrates the amount of comfort and somber there is in life. Unfortunately, according to Paul Laurence Dunbar, there is more soberness in life than the joyous moments in our existence. In more detail, Paul Laurence Dunbar demonstrates how without companionship our existence is a series of joys and sorrows in the poem, "Life" through concrete and abstract diction.
Overall, dwell on this process of changing throughout the poem, it can be understood that the poet is demonstrating a particular attitude towards life. Everyone declines and dies eventually, but it would be better to embrace an optimistic, opened mind than a pessimistic, giving-up attitude; face the approach of death unflinchingly, calmly.
The speaker’s language towards the woman’s death in “The Last Night that she lived” portrays a yearning attitude that leads to disappointment; which reiterates human discontent with the imperfections of life. The description of woman’s death creates an image of tranquility that causes the speaker to aspire towards death. Her death compares to a reed floating in water without any struggle. The simile paradoxically juxtaposes nature and death because nature’s connotation living things, while death refers to dead things, but death becomes a part of nature. She consents to death, so she quietly dies while those around her refuse to accept her imminent death. The speaker’s description of death sounds like a peaceful experience, like going to sleep, but for eternity. These lines describe her tranquil death, “We waited while She passed—It was a narrow time—Too jostled were Our Souls to speak. At length the notice came. She mentioned, and forgot—Then lightly as a Reed Bent to the water, struggled scarce- Consented, and was dead-“ .Alliteration in “We waited”, emphasizes their impatience of the arrival of her death because of their curiosity about death. The woman’s suffering will be over soon. This is exhibited through the employment of dashes figuratively that form a narrow sentence to show the narrowing time remaining in her life, which creates suspense for the speaker, and also foreshadows that she dies quickly. The line also includes a pun because “notice” refers to the information of her death, and also announcement, which parallels to the soul’s inability to speak. “She mentioned, and forgot—“, refers to her attempt to announce her farewell to everyone, which connects to the previous line’s announcement. The dashes fig...
The speaker believes that sleep and dreams are preferable to wakening life, depicting a man too depressed to even get out of bed. During the final stage of grief, acceptance, an individual begins accepting the reality that their loved one is actually gone and realizing that this new reality is permanent.