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Themes of guilt, crime and punishment
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Seamus Heany, Rita Dove, and Sherman Alexie wrote three poems that favors punishments from different angles in life. The authors wrote in third person and different styles in each of the stories to help the reader get a better visual. The authors aim was to show a feeling towards the punishment. Everybody deserves punishment at least once in their life either for something they have done unintentionally or by nature. Even though the poems are all about punishments, each author gives the reader their own meaning of the word in their own situations.
Seamus Heany beginnings as a poet started with him meeting the woman whom he was to marry and who was to be the mother of his three children. Marie Heaney has been a central part to Heany's life, both professionally and imaginatively, appearing directly and indirectly in individual poems from all periods of his poems. Heany wrote a poem called Punishment where he describes to the reader how a woman is being tortured because she committed adultery. The narrator also shows some type of affection towards the woman in a couple lines saying, "I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence (1167)." That line proves that he loves the girl but know that everybody, even him has sinned before. Heany's point of view shows sympathy and bitter love towards this act of punishment and shows me that Heany has been either hurt or subliminally receiving the other end of the punishment by describing the pain.
Rita Dove was the youngest person and the first African-American ever named Poet Laureate of the United States. Much of Dove's work concentrates on revealing the beauty and significance of everyday events in ordinary lives. In "The Yellow House on the Corner (1980)" and "Museum (1983)", she shows how such moments make up individuals' history and add to the experiences that human beings share. That explains why she wrote a poem called The Cane Fields. The Cane Fields was about a group of Haitian soldiers who was attacked by the dictator of the Dominican Republic because they could not roll their r's in the word Perijil on Oct 2, 1957. In the story there was a phrase used frequently which was "a parrot imitates spring" meaning, the parrot was a symbol of something beautiful and represented peace.
That phrase was used repeatedly through each line after the narrator describes his horror from the Dominican army to symbolize the gift and the curse of the war.
The poem “Cozy Apologia” by Rita Dove, explores the idea of love, and modern routine, while alluding to the disastrous hurricane Floyd of 1999. This poem was written for her husband, Fred, as mentioned after the title of the poem. In the first stanza of this poem, Rita Dove uses imagery to display her immense love for her husband. Dove writes, “This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue/ My pen exudes” (Dove 2-3). The imagery in these two lines represent items and things that remind Dove of her husband. She says everything makes her think of him, and in these two lines we can see that even just a lamp, or the ink from her pen bring her thoughts of her husband. Her true love for Fred is shown through this. The second stanza, Rita Dove starts to explain how a hurricane brought back memories of her teenage relationships.
The poem “A Poison Tree” by William Blake and the story, “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe writes about revenge. Overall both the poem and the short story share how they developed the overall theme, and to express the act, each of the writings use dramatic irony and sensory
The Punishment Imperative, a book based on the transition from a time when punishment was thought to be necessarily harsh to a time where reform in the prion system is needed, explains the reasons why the grand social experiment of severe punishment did not work. The authors of the book, Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost, strongly argue that the previous mindset of harsh punishment has been replaced due to political shifts, firsthand evidence, and spending issues within the government. Clear and Frost successfully assert their argument throughout the book using quantitative and qualitative information spanning from government policies to the reintegration of previous convicts into society.
"Rita Dove: The Poetry Foundation." Rita Dove. Poetry Foundation, 2011. Web. 27 July 2011. .
Various factors and processes that an individual is exposed to in life, lead him to incarceration. The narrative red as an example, the author talks of a story of three people. He clearly points out that, the three do not know their fate, but the kind of lives they will live will det...
I will discuss the similarities by which these poems explore themes of death and violence through the language, structure and imagery used. In some of the poems I will explore the characters’ motivation for targeting their anger and need to kill towards individuals they know personally whereas others take out their frustration on innocent strangers. On the other hand, the remaining poems I will consider view death in a completely different way by exploring the raw emotions that come with losing a loved one.
The Theme of Loss in Poetry Provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portrays a different character. the theme of loss in some way. Anthology Introduction The object of this collection is to provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portray the theme of ‘loss’ in some way. The ‘Loss’ has been a recurring theme in literature for centuries, from.
Dante is undoubtedly biased in his punishments and rankings of his sins as a result of his personal thoughts and experiences. Although some of his punishments are fairly reasonably and match the crime, there are also some circles that are in the wrong order and have unjustified punishments. A few of the circles that are the most disagreeable include limbo, the lustful, violence against self, and complex fraud. These specific circles are disagreeable because Dante ranks them based on his own experiences and thoughts. Hell could also be redesigned in a completely different way to make it more reasonable. Dante’s divine comedy has some major biased within it, making the sins and punishments arrangements arguable, and able to be completely redesigned.
The Roman poet, Juvenal, once said that, "Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind." Most people would agree with Juvenal that revenge is an abhorrent human need that can only satisfy narrow-minded people. Even though, we know revenge will generally not bring us much satisfaction, we still constantly lust for taking revenge on someone. It is because revenge is such a natural part of human nature that writers so often use it as their theme. Revenge can easily be an awe-inspiring theme for a novel because it is something that all people can relate to, whether they know it or not. The suspense from it will make most people sit on the edge of their seats.
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once declared, “It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it.” In other words, when one is suffering, the desire to reap revenge without consideration as to who is being harmed in the process is innate. This is a common theme within the poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, Euripides tragic play, Medea, and Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Hamlet. Characterization is used in these three works to exemplify the revenge seeker’s disregard for anyone but themselves in order to take vengeance on those who committed an act against them.
Many people find it hard to imagine their death as there are so many questions to be answered-how will it happen, when, where and what comes next. The fact that our last days on Earth is unknown makes the topic of death a popular one for most poets who looks to seek out their own emotions. By them doing that it helps the reader make sense of their own emotions as well. In the two poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, the poets are both capturing their emotion about death and the way that they accepted it. In Dickenson’s poem her feelings towards death are more passionate whereas in Dylan’s poem the feelings
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Literary Theory: An Anthology-Second Edition. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Massachusettes: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 549-566.
Poems reveal many inside thoughts of the speaker that can be interpreted by the reader. Death is expressed quite often in poetic work because of the simplicity to be able to express feelings. Suicide, for an example, is a form of death that may be used in poetry and is usually portrayed in a negative fashion. Surprisingly, some poems that involve death have a positive outcome. There are views found in poetry relating to suicide as a form of death that are both positive and negative. Suicide as a negative perspective is a common form of death displayed in poetry. A very good example of death brought upon by suicide is “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. In the passage, “And he was rich-yes, richer than a king,” Robinson describes the wealth and riches in which he lived. Richard seemed to be a person without problems. Later at the end of the poem in line fifteen the speaker says, “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.” In one’s opinion, it may appear that money, wealth, and power is not everything. Perhaps Richard Cory was miserable because of the way people gazed at him which describes his suicide. Theoretically, the reader has to try to interpret the poem because of the lack of evidence explaining the reason of Cory’s suicide. This poem is an example of death in a negative perspective. Another poem that explains suicide as a form of death, but in a somewhat positive fashion, is “Résumé” by Dorothy Parker.
to describe the funeral of a woman that no one seems very attached to. The three
In Shakespeare, one of the many themes that are seen in nearly all his plays is revenge. In Elizabethan England, revenge was a popular theme that people loved to watch in plays. Many of Shakespeare’s plays have revenge in them. Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet are just a few of them. Revenge is still a popular theme with society, and has a part in many modern television programs, movies, cartoons, even in songs and literature. Most often, the characters want revenge for something silly, such as against an ex-significant for breaking up or cheating, and other times, like in Hamlet, they want revenge for the murder of a family member.