...Reality vs. Unreality While analyzing Mary Oliver’s poem "Singapore" I established her assembling a relationship between nature and a life- learned lesson. The poem is about a woman doing menial, everyday tasks as a cleaning lady at the Singapore airport, but Oliver chooses to idealize her toils and make them seem more beautiful than in, Oliver uses imagery to compare the way she perceives the woman before her versus the real world. The author was disgusted with what she saw, so she brings in visions from nature to ease the discomfort. The configuration of this poem is structured to differentiate from the reality and the fantasy of everyday life. In Oliver’s poem “Singapore” she speaks of how the woman cleaning the ashtrays in the airport and the toilets can be blissful and nurturing. For example, Oliver writes a “poem should always have birds in it” (8). Oliver uses her writing to convey the way she hopes life would be; she wishes it was beautiful and as blissful as birds are. Then she states other aspects of nature as a form of peacefulness and happiness. For instance, Oliver states “rivers are pleasant” (10). Oliver uses the river as a form of serenity because of the flow of the water and the sound of water that soothes us. Furthermore, Oliver demonstrates that poems should always be a gate to happiness by stating, “A person wants to stand in a happy place” (13). Oliver wants to be in a happy place instead of seeing this woman in front of her in this humiliating situation...
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...Happiness Poem Happiness ORQ There are lots of themes in the poem, ”Happiness” by Priscilla Leonard. One theme is that happiness is both hard and easy to achieve. Another example is that you should be thankful for what you have or how much you have. The next lesson found in this poem is that happiness comes in many different ways for many different people. In stanza one the poem says happiness is, ”Broken in a million pieces, shattered, scattered far and near. Now and then along life’s pathway.” There are lots of happiness to be discovered along the pathway of life. It is also saying that there is no way that anyone would be able have more than a couple fragments of happiness at the time. As it says in the poem, “But there are so many pieces, No one ever finds them all” Leonard is also saying that even if it feels like there is no happiness left in your life, you are wrong because happiness is scattered along your journey of life and no one can every find all of the fragments to complete the perfect, crystal ball. The ball symbolizes perfect happiness or Utopia. The poem states in stanza two, ”You might find a bit of beauty or honest share of wealth, While another just beside you, fathers honor, love, or wealth.” This explains that happiness is encountered in all different ways because you might get happiness from beauty and wealth while somebody gets happiness from honor, love, and health. Leonard is also saying that happiness is found in many different things in the...
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...Wheeler Wilcox In the poems Solitude and It might have been by Ella Wheeler Wilcox there are strong comparisons that can be made between the two by using both the style used in each poem and the substance. The poems are almost complete opposites, yet are very similar, Solitude is about being alone in the world or feeling isolated, while It might have been is meant to be empowering because the author encourages the readers to not regret anything or to not let chances slip by. Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born November 5, 1850 in Johnstown, Wisconsin. She began writing poetry at a very young age and was a recognized poet before she had even graduated high school. She was constantly compared to Walt Whitman because of their way of writing; her poetry was sentimental and romantic. Something that set them apart though was their form; Ella Wheeler Wilcox maintained a very traditional form unlike Walt Whitman. Her most famous work was the Poems of Passion. She married Robert Wilcox in 1884. Soon after her husband’s passing in 1916, Ella passed away due to cancer on October 30, 1919. Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death. The poem Solitude talks about being isolated from the world when you are feeling down and enjoying everything around you when you are feeling happy. Laugh and the world laughs with you; / Weep and you weep alone (Solitude. Lines 1 and 2) these two lines in the poem, I believe, show best what the poet...
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...Literature Through Time Literature depicts the morals of time it shift and morphs into less power in the divine and more faith in man. Stories began being written by monks and the clergy which in time turned into regular men with stores that focused on more secular matters. English literature fills up the gap between wars, between societal change, you can see time progressing, you can see our values and morals changing, you can see history passing by. In the beginning there was Bede, a philosopher, speaker of many languages, a man who looked around him and saw a world in peril that only God could save, a man full of faith. Time passes and we see Shakespeare, a genius, a man with a queen, a man who rallied against the common, Shakespeare was a man with deep loves and a strong voice. “The Story of Caedmon”, was written during a time when Christian religious dogma was primarily hagiography, “the telling of the life of virtuous men and women that represents what it means to be a good Christian.” These stories are used as a form of reflections on one’s life as to make it better in the future. Religious dogma needed to be made more accessible to the congregation which was widely illiterate, so the stories were written with easy points and then acted out so that the congregation would not only be awake and attentive, but so that these stories of morality and faith would really sink in. “Caedmon” is probably the earliest extant of Old English poetry, Bede tells about Caedmon, an...
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...1590’s, to the fashion for sonnets, he moved closer to the cultural and literary dominance of the court’s taste—to the fashionable modes of Ovid, Petrarch, and Neoplatonism—and to the need for patronage. Although the power of the sonnets goes far beyond their sociocultural roots, Shakespeare nevertheless adopts the culturally inferior role of the petitioner for favor, and there is an undercurrent of social and economic powerlessness in the sonnets, especially when a rival poet seems likely to supplant the poet. In short, Shakespeare’s nondramatic poems grow out of and articulate the strains of the 1590’s, when, like many ambitious writers and intellectuals on the fringe of the court, Shakespeare clearly needed to find a language in which to speak—and that was, necessarily, given to him by the court. What he achieved within this shared framework, however, goes far beyond any other collection of poems in the age. Shakespeare’s occasional poems are unquestionably minor, interesting primarily because he wrote them; his sonnets, on the other hand, constitute perhaps the language’s greatest collection of lyrics. They are love lyrics, and...
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...The Eagle- Alfred Lord Tennyson This poem is about an eagle, sitting atop a lonely cliff watching the sea. It also describes an eagle’s habitat as well as its hunting technique (presumably). The eagle has been described by the poet in an appealing way. Its surroundings come alive in the reader’s imagination immediately upon reading the poem. I imagined the majestic eagle sitting on a perch high upon a lonely mountain watching the sea very intently, and then without any warning, diving down (like a thunderbolt). This crisp description gives the reader a sense of thrill- of watching an eagle in its patient and abrupt action. The crisp and precise style in which the poem has been written is also appealing to me. The poet has captured the reality about an eagle’s behavior well, hence the reader is able to see the eagle in his mind’s eye. I Saw a Jolly Hunter- Charles Causely This poem states in a funny way the mishap of a hunter who goes after a hare in the country one hot sunny day. As the hunter takes aim, he fails to notice the gun pointing the wrong way and ends up shooting himself. This poem is written in a very jolly and casual way, describing the failure of this silly and careless hunter. The scene of the poem are imaginable; a very focused hunter walking in the sunny country, spotting the hare, forgetting to adjust the gun and shooting himself . This imaginative and catchy poem appeals to the reader’s humerous side. The usage of “jolly” in each phrase was another...
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...Running Head: Final Project: Time Capsule Final Project: Time Capsule Sally Hall August 9, 2011 HU300-02 Art & Humanities: Twentieth Century and Beyond Professor: Christine Richardson Kaplan University Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explain the contents I would add to a time capsule to be opened in the future. The paper will include an introduction, how I define happiness and examples of a piece of literary work, a song, a piece of art, film, and pop culture items and why each would benefit adding to the capsule. Final Project: Time Capsule My name is Sally Hall and I live in Dallas, TX. I am married with three children (two boys and one step-daughter), two daughters-in-law and one son-in-law, one grandson and one grandchild on the way of which is due in October of 2011. My day-to-day life consists of driving my son-in-law back and forth to work at Wal-Mart, working in my garden, work, and college. I work from home in my home based business Sally Hall’s Herbal Info Depot researching herbs (cosmetics labeling, what the herbs can be used for, and chemical properties of the herbs) for cosmetic companies. I spend about six hours a day for work five days a week and around four hours a day for college. I am currently in college working towards my Bachelor’s in Accounting. There are many things I like to do with my family and on my own of which I consider to be hobbies. With my family I love going to...
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...My Mother and her Sister Happiness is a key factor in life. Weather happiness is found in love, in career, in family - everybody deserves to experience true happiness sometime in life. Life is not complete without this key factor. This is true in the case of the mother in the short story “My Mother and her Sister” who does not seem to find true happiness in life before her days are over. This assignment will begin with an analysis and interpretation of the short story “My Mother and her Sister” by Jane Rogers. To put the story into perspective the assignment includes a discussion of the text, “Their Social Duties and Domestic habits” by Sarah Stickney Ellis and the picture, “The kiss” by Gustav Klimt. The assignment ends with a short essay about the poem “Affirmation” by Donald Hall to conclude the paper. A: The short story by Jane Rogers from 2006 is about a mother, Dorothy and her sister, Lucy. When Dorothy dies her sister temporarily moves in with her niece, the narrator. They don’t communicate that well but when they start talking about Dorothy they open up and the narrator expands her knowledge about her mother and her aunt. The main characters in the story are Lucy and the narrator. Lucy is the sister of Dorothy who died. She is 75 years old and has become a widow after 49 years of marriage. She has 5 children and used to be the perfect old fashioned stay at home mother making homemade jam, knitting cardigans and making huge home cooked meals. As she has gotten older...
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...Happiness in Fahrenheit 451 The book Fahrenheit 451 is a dark book. The people that live in the city are very awkward towards each other. This is a result of them not truly being happy. The society is very unsocial and spend most of their time watching their 3 wall tv’s. They rarely talk to each other even if they are married. True happiness is when two or more people show compassion for each other. These people can be married, siblings, cousins, family, and neighbors. In modern society true happiness is when a couple gets married or when a family has a reunion. True happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you...
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...against whom there was no official complaint.” In Auden’s poem, “The Unknown Citizen,” he describes an individual who has been found to be without any fault. This persona is described through the perspective of a Statistician from the U.S Government. The unknown citizen served the government perfectly; when there was peace he supported it and when there was war he was ready to fight. He served the Greater Community and paid his dues to the Union. But, this man, has no identity— there is no name used to identify him. Auden then proceeds to ask the important questions in his tonal shift: “Was this man free? Was he happy?” No government statistics can ever answer these kinds of questions. Auden makes his theme clear by showing the blatant difference between the complete statistical information about the citizen compiled by the State and the lack of personal information on him. The poet conveys that statistics cannot sum up an individual and physical facts are an insufficient way to evaluate human happiness. The poet is drawing in our attention by asking these questions, the questions of freedom and happiness. He suggests that the average man is a slave to routine because he follows all the government’s standards: he buys a paper everyday, he’s married and has five children, he has everything necessary to the modern man. And because of this, it can be true that he is incapable of understanding such concepts of freedom and happiness. Therefore, such a question in this context would be...
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...The View of Happiness in the Society of Fahrenheit 451 The dictionary states that Happiness in a state of well-being or contemptment. In our world we know happiness as a feeling when something good happens. Happiness is different for everyone. For example, to some it can be materialistic like getting new items. To others it could be just the ability to spend time with family and friends. Now how is happiness seen in Fahrenheit 451? At the beginning of the book after Clarisse and Montag meet, Clarisse asks if he is happy. He laughs if off but after a little starts rethinking it. On page 59, Captain Beatty says “People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.” In this quote Captain Beatty is stating that the way to make people happy is to provide them with pleasure and fun. What happens in society when the pleasurable and fun things end? No one knows because people are always being provided with the supplies to keep them happy or busy enough that they think...
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...Happiness’ definition is not a motionless feeling; it evolves as people age. While we are young we see happiness as living life with excitement and adventure; however, when we get old we see happiness with inter-peace. Since the definition of happiness varies there are no overall elements that should be required for something to be considered happiness. The definition of happiness is done on an individual feeling of how happiness is defined in their lives. I think it all starts with the way we are raised and how our parent view life is stamped into our physic that brings us to our conclusions of happiness. Cultural myths I think are not much a factor as cultural beliefs of what brings happiness to a cultural as a whole. Additionally, a cultural definition of happiness is an evolving emotion that never stops defining itself in any culture. Happiness has been distorted by American media should be mostly used as a vehicle of selling products and services, not used to define happiness in our society; that if this was a perfect world. Regrettably, Americans uses the media and advertising as a guideline for happiness. Americans are told for a woman to be successful she must look like a model, so many of our young girls are making themselves sick or even worst killing themselves to find the happiness that is portrayed in the media and in advertising. In addition, for the young boys the media and advertising is portraying that the only way to be happy is to be an...
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...TASK 2: Second Blended Learning Task John Keat’s Ode To A Nightingale features the themes of nature and its beautiful qualities, as symbolized by the nightingale, and the pain of leaving it, as symbolized by death. I choose the first three stanzas because its draw my attention to keep on reading this poem. The first stanza shows us that the poet feels two different feelings which is pain as we can see in the first line “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains”. He also feels joy and happy in his line “But being too happy in thine happiness”. The poet heard and enjoyed bird’s singing a song. The bird represents art, while the poet describes to us that the bird like a Greek word nymph make us think that the bird represents and symbolizes nature. Let’s move on to the second stanza, the poet mentioned about wine in his line “O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been, Cool’d a long age in the deep delved earth”. He wishes he had a whole “beaker full” of wine so that he could get drunk and lose consciousness. He also wishes to disappear into another world that can make him happy than the real one. That happier world is represented by the nightingale. In the stanza three, the bird’s world is different and contrasted to all the pain such as getting old, disease and despair that every single human will experience it. The poet wants to be in the nightingale’s world that are happy. He continues explain why the world of the human is such a bad place. Both of a beauty and a lover...
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...appears to be angry towards life in America but also can not love the country. They both use various literary tools to portray their self view on America. In the poem, "I Hear America Singing" Walt Whitman shows many different ways of positive living in the everyday life of American citizens. In this poem, Whitman uses phrases like "strong melodious songs" to show the gratitude towards the ability to working hard labor and well support a family. It also shows how hard working men use their imagination and physical strength of well mixing the beauty and happiness with the songs that they sing. The "varied carols" refers to the culture and life of America.The attitude that Whitman has towards America is that he sees it as his way of the ideal part of human life. Claude Mckay's poem "America" expresses the hardship of living in a country full of hate and Mckay acknowledges this by using words like "bitterness," "hate," and "sinking." "Sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, stealing my breath of life" shows how the unequal treatment of people effect the spirit of proud citizens in America. "Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate." He writes how America gives him strength to stand up to to go against the racism in the country. These lines stated are very significant in this poem because he expresses that their is a clear and strong hatred of racism...
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..."The Arena" is a short story written by Martin Golan. I am going through this task to analyze and interpret this text. The text sheds light on several different areas. This means that the text comes in on topics, such as nervousness, stress, discomfort, family, children, etc. In rough outline deals with text around a father who has promised her that drive him over to an arena where ice hockey is played. The majority of the novel takes place in the car where the danger and the son sit and talk and discuss how far they will achieve it or not. For the son's point of view, it is not a disaster, whether they reach it or not, but in the father's heart, it is different. But getting through the text hints that there is a reason to believe that this incident has happened something cruel. In the text do you get as a reader to know that the father in the past have lost a son, and that he has gone to therapy. You may be able to call it his earlier life when this occurred. Through the short story will be told that the father has got a new wife, and thus also a new child. Although he is married, and "happy" there are still some different traits that makes you as a reader, becomes aware that he is not happy. It will be told in the short story, to his father's new wife is very similar to his previous wife. This can be a symbol of unrequited love and need. I believe that his new wife is a symbol of his old wife. He would like to have the Lady, which he lost, and the closest he comes to this is...
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