Through the process of ‘selfhood’, the sum of personal feats and experiences, are the greatest motivators which propel individuals to become the best that they can be within their immediate paradigm. J.C Burke’s ‘The Story Of Tom Brennan’ is a lucid eponymous text that portrays the transitional process from a cataclysmic event to a beneficial situation of change. Hindered by intellectual and emotional responses, Tom Brennan explores early explorations of transition opposed to the personal crisis of Daniel’s mistake. Alternatively, ‘Margaret Atwood’s Death Of A Young Son By Drowning’, conveys the geographical transitioning and physical journey which portrays the psychological transition within the poem. Both texts explore the transition within …show more content…
the individuals negative experience allowing for a deepened understanding of themselves and others surrounding. JC Burke, conveys several notions of transition through the bildungsroman novel of The Story Of Tom Brennan as the eponymous narrator. However, due to the first person narration, the capacity of discoveries is limited to Tom’s view purely due to the lack of omniscient perspectives. The new phases of life (transition from the crash) and social contexts (Brennan family) explore the confronting, challenging and transformative nature of the eponymous narrator through the growth and change of consequences for the individual and others. Throughout the non- linear, eponymous story that is ‘Tom Brennan’, the extensive amount of diction choice suggests and foreshadows how the story of Brennan will portray a rapid decline of events. This is made apparent through the deliberate polypoptonic diction choice of “down, silence and don’t”. Through the diction of declining adjectives using suffix’ as a present participles, the author is deliberately conveying how the transition is through a series of bad decisions and consequences. JC Burke exhibits concepts of impetuousness, loss and regret, guilt and insight and growth all collectively detail the lives of the Brennan family through mistakes. The concept of alienation however is constantly portrayed through the anaphoric repetition of “Down down we glided in silence’...’past the ungy words that told us we were no longer wanted” detailing the description of a secret escape, mirrors their psychological descent into depressive alienation.Through the use of the polypoptonic verbs of “silence and down”, JC Burke is detailing the stagnation of the Brennan family thus acts a catalyst for transition through the use of present continuous verbs in the future. Margaret Atwood’s ‘Death of a Young Son by drowning’, effectively explores early transitions of new phases of life and social contexts.
Transitions through these experiences if venturing into new worlds can be confronting, challenging, exciting or transformative of the growth and change within the characters of the poem. The poem significantly details transitional concepts of individuals into new phases of life through the death of a young son and social contexts of the country that Sue plants the son in. Firstly, Atwood immediately identifies the third person objective, omniscient narration of the son “He” however towards the epigrammatic ending, Atwood indicates through a different persona the first person subjective, limited narration of “I was tired”. The structure of the poem mirrors the content of the poem through the nine tercets and epigrammatic ending of “I planted him in this country like a flag”,thus signifying the balance within nature also an indication of her actively participating into an unknown land signifying an identity “country”. Through the balanced amount of tercet lengths, Atwood uses enjambment to psychologically unrestrain and unbound just like the wilderness of the landscape. Atwood is conveying the geographical transitioning and physical journey which portrays the psychological transition. Similarly conveyed in The Story Of Tom Brennan, the concept of alienation is portrayed through the reference of a “landscape stranger than Uranus” to convey the …show more content…
“strange” unnamed land they “venture”. Throughout J.C Burke’ text, sport is appreciated highly in the towns of Mumbilli and Coghill and from which sporting heroes including “The legends of the brennan brothers” were above the legal system. Consequently, the climax is diminished when Daniel is sentenced to gaol for reckless driving and endangerment. Sport was considered above the legal system as they were leaders among their communities and henceforth they “should’ve known better”. The link between football and the violence is conveyed in the language, the “sudden death” match foreshadows the sudden death of Finn, the hero of the game, signifying the downfall of Daniel. The infatic use of prophetic ploce of ‘sudden death’, is a comparative link from a sports terminology to a stagnating moment within the text for Daniel. Evidently, football is linked with vitality and vigour, yet in the novel’s first flashback, ploce is used to define the ‘sudden death’ football game as a prophetic symbol of doom. Through a series of consequences explored through the family’s struggles, imagery is used in which connects darkness, the ‘dull and dark’ with depression and loss and a lack of progression further demonstrating that they are stagnating “Mum looked up, her blue eyes grey and dull’. ‘Here in my grandmother’s dark. Mum’s bent head revealed grey roots bleeding into her dark hair’.” The visual representation and imagery of darkness details the impact of the mothers psychological journey of recovery. The psychological descent from Daniel’s crash being a peripeteia for change further exemplars how the Brennan family individually must ‘face their demons’ and transition towards a new page. Additionally, the stagnation of the mother through the inability to transition is made evident through Toms comment “I could see Mom sitting on the bed probably planning her twenty-fifth attempt at coming back to life”. Through the extended metaphoric statement of loss relating to death, the mother has been stupefied by Daniel’s action, thereby she cannot transition and this clause demonstrates that she is as if deadened by Daniel’s actions. Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Death of a Young Son By Drowning’, comprises of numerous tercet stanzas.
Throughout the fourth tercet, the poem details of a psychological journey descending into a geographical journey through landscape “plunged into distant regions, his head a bathysphere, through his eyes’ thin glass bubbles”. The use of diction for “bathysphere” is conveyed as the son to represent the fragility indicating human frailty, thus also conveying through imagery and the metaphorical representation of his head a “bathysphere” being a “thin, glass bubble”. The concept of nature’s relationship to humanity, further makes detail through personifying features such as “he looked out, reckless adventurer” which is conveying a innocent story. Additionally, emphasising in another tercet, the sibilance of “spring, sun, shining, grass, solidity, hands and glistened represents a new beginning and a sense of identity and belonging through “hands”. Furthermore, the new phases of life demonstrated through the sibilance for the rebirth in nature suggests that individuals gain a deepened understanding of themselves and others through nature’ relationship with
humanity. Collectively ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’ and ‘Death Of A Young Son By Drowning’ convey the transitional process from a cataclysmic event to a beneficial situation of change. Whilst ‘Tom Brennan’ explores early explorations of transition from the events of Daniels crash, Atwood conveys the geographical transitioning and physical journey which portrays the psychological transition within the poem. Atwood explores the human frailty hindered by nature of the death of Sue’ son whereas J.C Burke explores the entirety of the Brennan family transitioning from Coghill’s crash into Mumbilli’ revelations. Both texts explore the transition within the individuals negative experience allowing for a deepened understanding of themselves and others surrounding.
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
Life is like an ascent, the more you climb, the higher you will get. J. C. Burke skilfully undertakes this philosophy as a source of inspiration for ‘The story of Tom Brennan’. It is not another crazy adventurous tale with a heroic storyline that seems unrealistic; the novel is about individual representation as Burke insightfully illustrates the long and slow journey of Tom Brennan, navigating through his road of self-discovery that eventually leads to his destination and achieves his “ticket out of the past” (Burke, pg 182).
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
From the combination of enjambed and end-stopped lines, the reader almost physically feels the emphasis on certain lines, but also feels confusion where a line does not end. Although the poem lacks a rhyme scheme, lines like “…not long after the disaster / as our train was passing Astor” and “…my eyes and ears…I couldn't think or hear,” display internal rhyme. The tone of the narrator changes multiple times throughout the poem. It begins with a seemingly sad train ride, but quickly escalates when “a girl came flying down the aisle.” During the grand entrance, imagery helps show the importance of the girl and how her visit took place in a short period of time. After the girl’s entrance, the narrator describes the girl as a “spector,” or ghost-like figure in a calm, but confused tone. The turning point of the poem occurs when the girl “stopped for me [the narrator]” and then “we [the girl and the narrator] dove under the river.” The narrator speaks in a fast, hectic tone because the girl “squeez[ed] till the birds began to stir” and causes her to not “think or hear / or breathe or see.” Then, the tone dramatically changes, and becomes calm when the narrator says, “so silently I thanked her,” showing the moment of
The new phases of life and social context is predicated through the sum of feats and experiences as crises and adversity are usually the greatest motivator which propel individuals to become better than they were before. J.C. Burke’s ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’ (TSTB) is an example of the transitional process through entering a new, unknown area which acts as a catalyst for beneficial change. Obstructed by turmoil both mentally and physically, the protagonist Tom Brennan relieves his severe life in the town of Coghill achieving new standards in conjunction to Lisa Forrest’s article ‘Testing new waters after leaving the swimming pool’ (TNWALTS) is another type towards transitional change that explores the personal crisis and career changes over
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
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
We all experience a rite of passage in our lives, whether it be the time we learned to swim or perhaps the day we received our driver’s license. A rite of passage marks an important stage in someone’s life, and one often times comes with a lesson learned. Three selections that provide fine examples of rites of passage that individuals confront include “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins” and “First Lesson” by Philip Booth.
“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.
In the poem there is an ABAB rhyme scheme along with use of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and imagery. By using all of these techniques, it helps the reader to better understand the message which is being relayed in the poem. Some of the subjects of this poem include, urbanization, dystopia, nature, dying and the fall of man. The reader gets a vivid image of a huge industrial city built in “valleys huge of Tartarus”(4).
The opening paragraph of the story emphasizes the limitations of the individual’s vision of nature. From the beginning, the four characters in the dingy do not know “the colors of the sky,” but all of them know “the colors of the sea.” This opening strongly suggests the symbolic situations in which average peo...
The poem, “Field of Autumn”, by Laurie Lee exposes the languorous passage of time along with the unavoidability of closure, more precisely; death, by describing a shift of seasons. In six stanzas, with four sentences each, the author also contrasts two different branches of time; past and future. Death and slowness are the main motifs of this literary work, and are efficiently portrayed through the overall assonance of the letter “o”, which helps the reader understand the tranquility of the poem by creating an equally calmed atmosphere. This poem is to be analyzed by stanzas, one per paragraph, with the exception of the third and fourth stanzas, which will be analyzed as one for a better understanding of Lee’s poem.
The Author presents the poem in a narrative argumentative point view from a son to his dying father upon his final moments. The imagery and symbolism of the Thomas’s reflections on his feelings of childhood and death become evident the approach the poem through psychological analysis. Thomas is addressing his father from the perspective of why he should fight death, giving valid reasons that the father cannot refuse. The imagery and symbolism show the connection between nature and the soul, whereas psychological aspects of Dylan Thomas’s life must be evaluated from his relationship with his father.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
The speaker’s personal emotions emphasizes the poem’s theme since although his father is no longer with him in this world, the memory of his father will always live in his heart. Throughout the poem, Lee uses the sky, underground, and the heart to symbolize imagination, reality, and memory—emphasizing the poem’s theme of the remembrance of a loved one. Lee also uses repetition to convey the meaning of Little Father. The speaker repeatedly mentions “I buried my father…Since then…” This repetition displays the similarity in concepts, however the contrast in ideas. The first stanza focuses on the spiritual location of the speaker’s father, the second stanza focuses on the physical location of the father, and the third stanza focuses on the mental location of the speaker’s father. This allows the reader to understand and identify the shift in ideas between each stanza, and to connect these different ideas together—leading to the message of despite where the loved one is (spiritually or physically), they’ll always be in your heart. The usage of word choice also enables the reader to read in first person—the voice of the speaker. Reading in the voice of the speaker allows the reader to see in the perspective of the speaker and to connect with the speaker—understand