In the poem To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe he opens up saying “Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore,” he’s comparing this woman’s beauty to an object. He does this throughout the poem and this is what builds the poem. In the poem Helen by H.D. she opens up by saying “All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face” the speaker lets the reader know that Helen is hated by all Greece but, it seems that she’s still or dead. These poems have different feelings and meanings towards Helen.
Helen is written in free verse, it doesn’t have a regular rhyme scheme or meter. This poem does have repetition of sounds. The repetition of sounds in the poem is “hands” and “stands”, “reviles” and “smiles”, and others that continues throughout the poem. These repetition of sounds has song type feel that gives emphasize on the poem. As to where in To Helen is in a meter of iambic tetrameter but some
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We don’t know if the speaker is male or female. But, the language of the speaker is very direct and sometimes we are getting facts that are horrible. This attitude of the speaker about Helen gives you the understanding and feel for what they think about her and why. The poem speaks about the hatred of a beautiful woman. Throughout the poem, Helen's beauty makes her into a victim of desire. She is talked about by her appearance and beauty. It can be inferred that the speaker is speaking for woman who are subject to objectification. She is reaching out to innocent women and stating that it is wrong to place blame upon their appearance, something that women have no control over. The In To Helen the speaker we know is a male. He is in love with Helen he’s also educated on classical allusions, in each stanza he has some references to Greek mythology, and the classical references parallel to danger or love gone wrong. He mentions her beauty, face, hair, and uses similes to compare her to a
At different points throughout the poem Notley repeats the thesis of the story. The poem reads, “the holy men,” “the wise men,” “are frivolous” “and cruel” Here Notley is blatantly addressing the brutality of patriarchy. (Notley 90) Alette is being told that powerful men and those that are labeled as “holy” are also cruel. Unless this immorality is stopped there will be no truth in this world. Notley is trying to make the reader understand the need for gender equality. In society women are looked at as inferior to men when it comes to strength and power. She is challenging that idea through Alette’s journey to take down the tyrant. Alette is a heroin in this poem, and portrays characteristics far different than how society has identified femininity. Femininism is not a bad thing, it simply calls for gender equality, and that is what Alette is chasing in this story.
The author of this poem is T.S. Eliot a modern poet who is a contemporary of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Much of his work comes from post World War I, a period which was filled with excess and disillusionment with humanity and our ability to create and control civilization. The greatest war in the history of the world up to that point had just been fought. Millions died and the World with all its sadness could do nothing more then try and fill itself with wine and lust. The poem deals partly with this matter, mostly with lust and pursuit of women to find happiness in a world full of dingy sadness.
In the poem written by Edgar Allen Poe, “Annabel Lee”, he uses various tone words to create the mood. The poem is about a man who loved a woman, this woman got sick and was taken away from him and eventually died. He most likely created this poem about how he loved and lost somebody in his life and therefor used these types of word to convey his feelings. The mood that is overall conveyed by these tone words is powerful and dark.
He describes beauty as delicate and rare, unable to be established. He focuses on the lightheartedness of young girls, how they are caught up in beauty, and he warns them to be conscientious of the fact that their beauty will fade and that they cannot put all their hope on their beauty. At the same time, he encourages them to "practice" their beauty until it is gone, and he promises to celebrate that beauty as best he can, with all its value and frailty.
Both Poe and Doolittle's poems portrays Helen in divergent ways. Poe portrays Helen as if she was the god of beauty. While Doolittle displays Helen to have a lust personality. Doolittle feels as if Helen
This, in fact, is an example of “dynamic decomposition” of which the speaker claims she understands nothing. The ironic contradiction of form and content underlines the contradiction between the women’s presentation of her outer self and that of her inner self. The poem concludes with the line “’Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.’” which is a statement made by the man. Hence, it “appears to give the last word to the men” but, in reality, it mirrors the poem’s opening lines and emphasises the role the woman assumes on the outside as well as her inner awareness and criticism. This echoes Loy’s proclamation in her “Feminist Manifesto” in which she states that women should “[l]eave off looking to men to find out what [they] are not [but] seek within [themselves] to find out what [they] are”. Therefore, the poem presents a “new woman” confined in the traditional social order but resisting it as she is aware and critical of
...resent in his poem all specific examples. Therefore, it is interesting to notice that he finds women as representative of humanity as men. Again, this reflects the beliefs of people of his time -- social roles of men and women and social propriety of the past were not held by modern people. Poets must recognize this change and reflect the sensibilities of their audiences.
The speaker’s admiration of Helen brings him home, like Penelope brings Odysseus home in The Odyssey. Poe and H. D. both contain an image of a metaphorical statue in their poems. Poe also describes Helen as “statue-like” (12) which gives off a sense of nobility and confidence. However, this simile is written out of love, whereas in “Helen,” a similar image is made from different origins other than love. Those with rudimentary knowledge of life before tanning beds and spray tans know that being exceptionally pale is a good thing as it reeked of nobility.
The difference in these views is illustrated in the contrasting form and tone of the poems as well as the diction and imagery. The form of the poems, including the speaker and tone, reflect the poet’s differing views of Helen. In “To Helen,” the lyrical form, personal speaker, and worshipful tone indicate an enraptured view of Helen, while in “Helen” the rigid form, detached speaker, and bitter tone reflect the speaker’s deep hatred of her. The format of the text in “To Helen” is stylistically flowing and streamlined. The consistency in spacing and presentation read as an ode, pleasant and so easily put into song.
...y the poem describes the woman in the poem. They may also think that because of how men have such high expectations for women and they feel that they can never do anything to reach that expectation of man. Others may think that the mirror is actually the woman herself because she may have insecurities about themselves. This is said because of the fact that some women wear a massive amount of makeup. They might do this because they are uncomfortable with the way their skin looks. They may wear baggy clothes because they think they are overweight and need to hide their "love handles." Finally, they possibly never put themselves out there because they fear rejection the most. Nevertheless, Sylvia Plath does a remarkable job with how she shows the past present and future perspectives of a woman. Plath does this by using several metaphors, symbolism, and personification.
Homer’s The Iliad gives the audience a mix of images of Helen to represent many of the gender roles and expectations of women in Greek society of that time, as well as to display why Helen as a character is so significant in the Trojan War. We see many interesting moments between Helen and other characters such as Paris and Aphrodite in The Iliad, and many of Helen’s characteristics give a certain twist to the generic Greek woman, contributing to the overall attitude that Homer has towards The Iliad. This display of Helen, despite being a woman and position of royalty, showing a bold and almost submissive attitude in her appearances of the
Edgar Allan Poe and Hilda Doolittle both use tone to convey their perspective and opinion on the Helen of Troy. In Poe’s “To Helen”, he makes several allusions to the “glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” when describing Helen’s beauty. These descriptions refer to the significance of the classical period, where the architecture, arts, and philosophies developed would help shape the rest of civilization. Poe uses a formal and admiring tone when he compares Helen to cultures that are still held in high respect in modern times, deeming her an embodiment of the impact from this specific era. He also references Psyche, a character of Greek mythology in the third stanza, saying “The agate lamp within thy hand!
Helen, then, represents the dangerous beauty of evil, the seduction of the past, and the desire for things pleasurable. Faustus' desire for her, for the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, seems understandable (though not reasonable) to us, because we all have a little bit of Faustus in us. It is, however, unlikely that any of us have a sufficiently Faustian nature to sell our soul to the Devil.
In the first stanza, the "I am not cruel, only truthful" phrase reveals the mirror's personality and charter. Unlike humans a mirror cannot judge her with opinions. Sylvia Plath uses onomatopoeia to give the mirror human characteristics. On line five she writes "The eye of a little god, four-cornered" which shows that the mirror is given God-like powers over the women. It becomes almost an obsessive relationship between the mirror and the women because she looks to the mirror for comfort only to confronted with the truth about your youth wasting away.
poet is enraptured by woman’s beauty and compares her to the beauty of the dark and