To Autumn by John Keates - Critical Analysis
John Keats once said about Lord Byron “He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine, mine is the hardest task” To Autumn is evidence of his way of thinking, as the poem is a vivid, lyrical portrayal of the English autumn, as he imagined it.
The poem celebrates autumn as a season of abundance, a season of reflection, a season of preparation for the winter, and a season worthy of admiration with comparison to what romantic poetry often focuses upon - the spring. The poem is rather literal in its meaning as it does not convey a deeper level of meaning that relates to the reader. The poem fails to “move” the reader in a philosophical, idealistic or moralistic way, and therefore bears no significant message to the reader.
That is not to say that the poem lacks meaning or metaphorical significance, the poem was written to convey a sense of purpose to life and the worth of death. The poem achieves this by using descriptive and vivid expressions to describe the essence of autumn.
The poem uses powerful language to achieve effect. It often makes use of imagery, exaggerated language and onomatopoeia to create an atmosphere of the English autumn, for the reader. Language such as this excerpt from the first stanza,
And fill all fruits with ripeness to the core, To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells This type of language, especially adjectives such as ripeness and plump, provide the reader with an excellent ...
In John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, he uses diction and figurative speech to depict the beautiful autumn season to show how inspiring and uplifting nature is to man. Updike chooses autumn as the season to set his story in because generally, it is the season that has the most vivid vibrant colors in nature such as the ripe apples which are described as “red fish in the nets (limbs)”. (Line 3) Updike paints the picture of the beauty of nature with the simile about the apples to show the reader what a powerful effect nature has on man. Updike goes on to discuss the elm trees that were “swaying in the sky” (Line 7) and the “dramatic straggling v’s” of geese. Updike uses these descriptive portrayals of na...
" The journey to the camps began with a train ride, with Jews packed into pitch-black rail cars, with no room to sit down, no bathrooms, no hope." (Lombardi). This is a quote from a book a man wrote about his time in Auschwitz when he was young. Up to 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, an awful event led by Adolf Hitler and his army based in Germany, the Nazis. One of the horrible things about the Holocaust was the boxcars taking the victims to the camps. Some things that made the boxcars in the Holocaust so bad are; the size of the boxcars, the conditions in the cars, and the deaths that occurred on the journey to the concentration camps.
In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Piece, the main Character, Gene Forrester, has to learn to become friends with his hazardous roommate, Phineas, at his school, Devon, in New Hampshire. The novel is affected by a number of changes, however the largest and most significant change is the change in seasons. In Thomas C. Foster’s novel, How to read literature like a Professor, chapter twenty explains the significance of the seasons. Foster states that, “Summer [symbolizes] adulthood and romance and fulfillment and passion,” while, “ winter [symbolizes] old age and resentment and death.” John Knowles’ book A Separate Peace, all aspects of Summer, Fall, and Winter are excellently represented as explained in Thomas C. Foster’s novel, How to read
In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why?” Edna St. Vincent Millay says that “the summer sang in me” meaning that she was once as bright and lively as the warm summer months. In the winter everyone wants to bundle up and be lazy, but when summer comes along the sunshine tends to take away the limits that the cold once had on us. She uses the metaphor of summer to express the freedom she once felt in her youth, and the winter in contrast to the dull meaningless life she has now. There are many poets that feel a connection with the changing of seasons. In “Odes to the West Wind” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his hopes and his expectations for the seasons to inspire the world.
... with autumn (Brooks, p. 25). This metaphor represents the relationship between Annie and her “tan man,” and is ultimately foreshadowing his death. The seasons of winter and spring depict Annie’s initial reserved and timid manner and her general air of excited expectation (Brooks, p. 19). Summer represents the heat and passion, which were present during intimate moments. Finally, autumn refers to the death of Annie’s partner (Brooks, pgs. 28-29). Similar images of death and decay are found on page 29: “Fuchsias gone or gripped or gray, /All hay-colored that was green” (Brooks, 42. 2-3) and “Think of almost thoroughly/Derelict and dim and done…/Kissing in her kitchenette/The minuets of memory” (Brooks, 43. 1-2, 6-7). The dying plants and images of neglect illustrate that, contrary to our belief, Annie was, in fact, in love and she now grieves for her lost partner.
In “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (391?), the element of poetry that stands out most for me in the poem is connotation. Hopkins gives additional meaning to his words using this method. The author refers to a child crying over the fallen leaves from the trees, referring to her first experience and contact with death. In “Leaves, like the things of man” he compares the leaves with human troubles and although Margaret is still a child “fresh thoughts”, she cares and feel sensitive about it. Then the author says that she will get less thoughtful about these things when she becomes an adult in line 5 “…heart grows older” and line 6 “sights colder.” But finally, the author compares the mortality of the leaves to human mortality “the blight man was born for” and suggests that in reality Margaret is mourning her own death in the last line of the poem, as we are all destined to die one
“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
In his poem “Field of Autumn”, Laurie Lee uses an extended metaphor in order to convey the tranquility of time, as it slowly puts an end to life. Through imagery and syntax, the first two stanzas contrast with the last two ones: The first ones describing the beginning of the end, while the final ones deal with the last moments of the existence of something. Moreover, the middle stanzas work together; creating juxtaposition between past and future whilst they expose the melancholy that attachment to something confers once it's time to move on. Lee’s objective in this poem was to demonstrate the importance of enjoying the present, for the plain reason that worrying about the past and future only brings distress.
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
"Introduction to the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. .
The use of visual imagery in each poem immensely contributed to conveying the theme. In the poem “Reluctance”, Robert Frost used this poetic device to better illustrate the leaves of autumn:
... the government and a majority of states ban homosexual marriage. Although many of these claims tend to be opinions and even falsehoods, the author contributes a strong argument. Many court cases have been issued due to the huge controversy of homosexual marriage. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court concluded “that the Constitution places limits on a State’s right to interfere with a person’s most basic decisions about family and parenthood”(Moss 106). This contradicts with all the rules and regulations that the states place upon marriage and more specifically gay marriage. There have been several cases on the violations of homosexual rights, but laws have not currently been changed so that they have equality in all aspects. In the future, society will hopefully mirror the solution to the 1960’s prohibited interracial marriage and permit homosexual marriage.
We get the idea that the poem starts out in the fall, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (5). The season fall represents the year coming to an end, and e...
The use of the word “heart” emphasises this passion as the heart is considered the most important organ and so demonstrates how his passion (the “summer” in the sentence) is alive. Within these three poems, the use of nature as a mechanism impacted the poems, allowing them to convey meanings in an ambiguous sense yet still get across the general meaning of the poem.
In the poem “To Autumn” the initial impression that we get is that Keats is describing a typical Autumn day with all its colors and images. On deeper reading, it becomes evident that it is more than just that. The poem is rather a celebration of the cycle of life and acceptance that death is part of life. The first stanza begins with Keats painting a picture of Autumn as being a “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness”. This is used in conjunction with the use of the image of a “maturing sun” which ripens the Autumn harvest of views and the fruits.