Ap English Lit and Comp

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.

In order to put an image in our mind of how harsh this time was the author of this poem uses imagery. He pays attention to the detail and writes “Through the lone night until the last snow-flake/has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast”(McKay 9-10). This gives us a more detailed description of their struggle.

In the first stanza of “Remember”, Rossetti allows the reader to explore the narrator’s thought about death. When she writes “……Gone far away into the silent land;/ When you can no more hold me by the hand….” the narrator believes that death is final because that connection cannot ever be re-established regardless of how much one wants it. The “silent land” and “gone away” are metaphors for death, and when the narrator says that no one will be able to “hold me (her) by the hand”, this symbolises the one thing death takes, the physical presence of the person. Likewise, Auden’s “Stop all of the Clocks”, explores death with imperatives. Auden writes “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,/ Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,/ Silence the pianos and with muffled drum/Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.” Because the narrator wants life to cease, because with the death of their loved one, there is no purpose in life and it simply cannot (……..) .

Coming into AP Lang, I felt as if I was a relatively strong writer. However this year, I have progressed immensely both as a writer, reader and thinker. Immediately confronted with intricate pieces of writing from some of the worlds greatest authors, I was thrusted into a position where I really had to challenge myself. Not only have I felt that I grew at my ability to recognize the implicit argument any piece by “fondling the details”, but I also learned how to use my own personal beliefs to shape the way in which a text impacts me. From my interpretation of “In History” as a indirect bridge towards white academia or the ways in which Walton uses primary sources to personify the oftentimes hidden structures of racism in the South, I feel like

beloved, the speakers in the two poem have very different ways of dealing with their grief. In

The final stanza of the poem represents the woman going into labor and the delivery of her child into the world. “I wither and you break from me;” (16). This line represents the moment the

Often times in life, people begin to appreciate relationships when reflecting on one’s previous actions and regretting what one has done. In “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden describes how a son remembers his father’s sufferings and sacrifices that he did not appreciate in the past. Hayden uses visual and auditory imagery, personification, alliteration, and drastic shifts in tone to show how the son recognizes his father’s physical and emotional pain, and regrets his former indifference.

First, W.H. Auden uses metaphors throughout the poem in order to reveal how the speaker feels for the loved one they lost. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. The first metaphor W.H. Auden uses is “He was my North, my South, my East and West” (9). This metaphor conveys that the person who has died means a lot to the speaker. The directions refer to the direction the speaker’s life is going. This implies that the speaker has lost all direction now that they have lost this loved one. The next metaphor the author uses is “My working week and my Sunday rest” (10). The author uses these words to show that the relationship between the speaker and the person who died had an intimate relationship. The final

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.

‘The Visionary’ by Emily Bronte is a poem about the future, as indicated by its title, and focuses on the feelings of the speaker such as the concern of safety and also the feelings of isolation and loneliness. The dilemmas faced by the speaker are explored through contrasts as well as imagery and structure to convey a tone of indecision but ambition throughout the poem. Bronte uses contrasts in order to portray the polarised feelings between the inside of the house, where the speaker feels safe, and the hostility faced outside. In the first line ‘the house ‘ is personified and said to be ‘silent’ which evokes imagery of serenity and peace, whereas outside she is ‘dreading every breeze’; the determiner ‘every’ implying the relentlessness of

The Third section of the poem, stanzas( 9 to 12), the father moves through “dooms of feel,” instead of “dooms of love”. He learns to receive and show the full range of human emotion . “septembering arms” he describes part of the body of his father. He mentions the September is the nine month of the year, it is symbol to the birthstone and sapphire, like his father arm, he gives a lot free, he opens the mind and the soul of the people. “if every friend became his foe he’d laugh and build a world with snow.” The father is tolerant and respectable person with his friends even they stabbed him, he laugh at them and pardon them. “snow” this word in the last line of this stanza symbolize something bad will happen, sad, death, and despair

A poem is an experience, not a thought. It is an experience both the author and the reader share with one another. Authors of poems use tones, keywords, hidden messages, irony, and diction to create their work. They use these tactics so the reader thinks about what they are reading and try evaluating what the message is that the reader wants to get across. In the poem “Snow” by Louis MacNeice, he uses these same characteristics to get the readers mind active in the words. Let’s examine the poem “Snow” and see what the meaning behind this poem is.

Rossetti displays what is important to her through her humble plea in “Song’. In the poem, she is neither depressed, nor joyful; she simply states what she believes. She believes that memorials and placing flowers on graves are not for the ones who are deceased, but for those they leave behind. She asks them not to show her any special attention, she will be dead and in death, one cannot feel, hear, speak, or think; therefore she will not be able to acknowledge their gestures. Her lack of sympathy towards her loved ones shows her detachment to material items as she rejects the love she will receive at the time of her death. Keeping the memory of a lost loved one is a way for the living to keep the deceased alive. When thinking of death, most are afraid that no one