Dreams - Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Analysis:
“Dreams” by Langston Hughes is one of his shorter poems, but contains an important message. Hughes sees dreams as a form of direction and goal setting for people. “Life is a broken-winged bird…That cannot fly.” Hughes points out how plain life is without dreams by using the broken-winged bird as a metaphor. Throughout this poem the writer compares how boring life is and then with dreams anyone can make their lives change.
There is no rhyme scheme for this poem however; there is a consistent repetition of Hughes pointing out dreams being important for two stanzas and then two stanzas after that describing life as something plain. “For when dreams go…Life is a barren field.” This passage is describing how if dreams were lost life would be plain and predictable.
“Hold fast to dreams.” Hughes is saying that when you have a goal or dream in mind, you should hold on to it. The message is clear for what Hughes is trying to portray, dreams create goals and make life for anyone that much more exciting and interesting.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Analysis:
It is a poem written by Lewis Carroll, and was originally a part of his novel “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.” The poem is very bizarre and incorporates many nonsense words intertwined to make a piece of poetry. However, there is somewhat of an “ABAB” rhyme scheme throughout the piece. It is only somewhat of a rhyme scheme because two of the stanzas do not follow the same “ABAB” pattern.
The beginning of the poem repeats itself at the end. This is an interesting form of repetition, the authors emphasizes the stanza to ensure the importance of it. The importance of the beginning and ending stanzas is that Carroll is creating a setting for the reader. Despite the randomness and medieval choice of words, I imagine the setting to be a dark night in a forest. Making the setting a dark forest creates suspense of what will be waiting for you in the forest. Then Carroll warns you by saying: “Beware the Jabberwocky, my son!” The Jabberwocky is a creature unknown and mysterious. The beauty of this poem is that Carroll wants you to interpret what this creature or beast looks like. Every reader will imagine what the Jabberwocky will look like, no matter whether it has hooves, claws, or paws. My belief is that the reader will imagine a creature that will include most of their fears into one imaginary creature.
I view the Jabberwocky huge dragon-like creature that breathes fire and can melt your eyebrows from just being in its presence. As well, it has black scales and a rattle snake tail. You can’t look up into its eyes its yellow eyes pierce your soul and will make you tremble in your boots.
Carroll after the describing the Jabberwocky briefly and continues the story with a duel between a knight and the large creature. The Jabberwocky charges it opponent as it ‘burbled’ through the forest. Burbled meaning so sort of growl or roar to intimidate intruders. “The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.” I interpret this a strike by the knight towards the beast. After being struck, the Jabberwocky runs back into the forest. It’s interesting though because at the end, the death of the Jabberwocky is questioned; “And has thou slain the Jabberwock?” As a reader, you are unsure of what truly happened to the creature after this encounter between the knight and the Jabberwocky. Finally, Carroll finishes off with the same way the poem had begun, giving the image that everything is back to normal.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Analysis:
It is a poem written by Lewis Carroll, and was originally a part of his novel “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.” The poem is very bizarre and incorporates many nonsense words intertwined to make a piece of poetry. However, there is somewhat of an “ABAB” rhyme scheme throughout the piece. It is only somewhat of a rhyme scheme because two of the stanzas do not follow the same “ABAB” pattern.
The beginning of the poem repeats itself at the end. This is an interesting form of repetition, the authors emphasizes the stanza to ensure the importance of it. The importance of the beginning and ending stanzas is that Carroll is creating a setting for the reader. Despite the randomness and medieval choice of words, I imagine the setting to be a dark night in a forest. Making the setting a dark forest creates suspense of what will be waiting for you in the forest. Then Carroll warns you by saying: “Beware the Jabberwocky, my son!” The Jabberwocky is a creature unknown and mysterious. The beauty of this poem is that Carroll wants you to interpret what this creature or beast looks like. Every reader will imagine what the Jabberwocky will look like, no matter whether it has hooves, claws, or paws. My belief is that the reader will imagine a creature that will include most of their fears into one imaginary creature.
I view the Jabberwocky huge dragon-like creature that breathes fire and can melt your eyebrows from just being in its presence. As well, it has black scales and a rattle snake tail. You can’t look up into its eyes its yellow eyes pierce your soul and will make you tremble in your boots.
Carroll after the describing the Jabberwocky briefly and continues the story with a duel between a knight and the large creature. The Jabberwocky charges it opponent as it ‘burbled’ through the forest. Burbled meaning so sort of growl or roar to intimidate intruders. “The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.” I interpret this a strike by the knight towards the beast. After being struck, the Jabberwocky runs back into the forest. It’s interesting though because at the end, the death of the Jabberwocky is questioned; “And has thou slain the Jabberwock?” As a reader, you are unsure of what truly happened to the creature after this encounter between the knight and the Jabberwocky. Finally, Carroll finishes off with the same way the poem had begun, giving the image that everything is back to normal.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Bishop's Man
From only a short excerpt from “The Bishop’s Man” written by Linden MacIntyre, we discover that the protagonist in this novel is Father MacAskill. Reading so little of the actual book itself, Father MacAskill comes off as a character that has a rough past. A past in which he does not want to share, he is a man of mystery. Also, fairly comfortable with his self images as he says: “I was approaching the age of fifty, a psychological threshold only slightly less daunting than death, and found myself not much changed from forty or even thirty. If anything, I was healthier.” This short passage is describing how even though his age the Father is comfortable in his own skin at an older age.
The rough past had all begun at a young age for Father MacAskill, he was the son of a bastard father and his mother had passed away due to tuberculosis. He was isolated as a kid and had nowhere to go. He then finds his future and works as a priest, as well as dean of students at a catholic school. Another characteristic was that not only was he a religious man, but he was very friendly and well liked in his community. An example of this was when he spoke to the fishermen and his son. However, as the chapter approaches the end, Father MacAskill meets up with the Bishop and his mood changes. His mood changed from a relaxed personality to an uptight and worrisome person.
The reader really only gets to know the personality of another character and that is the Bishop in this excerpt. A character who is dedicated to his job and cares about others. He cares for the Father, because he tries to protect him and move him to a safe place in Creignish.
MacIntyre’s direct speech is very well written, as it is easy to imagine the characters and what kind of setting or mood they are in. His writing is especially clear and to the point when he uses direct speech.
“After what you’ve been through down south,” he said, “you’ll probably consider this kind of Mickey Mouse. But things are getting out of hand here. Dear old John the Twenty-third, God rest his soul . . . he had no idea what he was getting us all into.”
This passage creates a good amount of suspense of what is going to happen to Father MacAskill. The direct speech used by the writer is very effective in ineeresting the reader in the novel.
The rough past had all begun at a young age for Father MacAskill, he was the son of a bastard father and his mother had passed away due to tuberculosis. He was isolated as a kid and had nowhere to go. He then finds his future and works as a priest, as well as dean of students at a catholic school. Another characteristic was that not only was he a religious man, but he was very friendly and well liked in his community. An example of this was when he spoke to the fishermen and his son. However, as the chapter approaches the end, Father MacAskill meets up with the Bishop and his mood changes. His mood changed from a relaxed personality to an uptight and worrisome person.
The reader really only gets to know the personality of another character and that is the Bishop in this excerpt. A character who is dedicated to his job and cares about others. He cares for the Father, because he tries to protect him and move him to a safe place in Creignish.
MacIntyre’s direct speech is very well written, as it is easy to imagine the characters and what kind of setting or mood they are in. His writing is especially clear and to the point when he uses direct speech.
“After what you’ve been through down south,” he said, “you’ll probably consider this kind of Mickey Mouse. But things are getting out of hand here. Dear old John the Twenty-third, God rest his soul . . . he had no idea what he was getting us all into.”
This passage creates a good amount of suspense of what is going to happen to Father MacAskill. The direct speech used by the writer is very effective in ineeresting the reader in the novel.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Blog#10 -David Sedaris
“They weren’t loud people and didn’t even sound all that angry, really. This was just the way they spoke, the verbal equivalent of their everyday china. Among company, the wife might remark that she felt a slight hill, but here that translated to ‘I am fucking freezing’”. This passage is very amusing, because he does remark on a type of person there is on this planet, the “potty mouths”. The way he describes them is so elegantly placed and detailed that it has to make you laugh. This chapter is where David was heading to New York from Denver on a flight, where he is sitting behind these people. He overhears most of their conversation and makes the remark in this passage cited above hear.
Sedaris uses hyperbole to describe these people, exaggerating how these people would say certain things. It works effectively, but readers would read this chapter and know some portions were exaggerated in order to create an interest for the reader. Imagery is used, because you can just imagine yourself in David’s shoes in that very tight space in a seat and then overhearing a conversation of people who constantly feel the need to swear. However, it does show that David does have a judgmental side to him. He does not even know these people and is already making these judgments of them. Kind of unfair but makes his voice heard, showing his personality from a different angle.
Sedaris uses hyperbole to describe these people, exaggerating how these people would say certain things. It works effectively, but readers would read this chapter and know some portions were exaggerated in order to create an interest for the reader. Imagery is used, because you can just imagine yourself in David’s shoes in that very tight space in a seat and then overhearing a conversation of people who constantly feel the need to swear. However, it does show that David does have a judgmental side to him. He does not even know these people and is already making these judgments of them. Kind of unfair but makes his voice heard, showing his personality from a different angle.
Blog#9 - David Sedaris
“The roof is covered with metal, and large sheets of corrugated plastics, some green and others milk-colored, have been joined together to form an awning that sags above the front door. It’s so ugly that the No Trespassing sign reads as an insult. ‘As if,’ people say.” This passage describes this house very well, it is a house of a person that affected David when he lived in Normandy. It was a old man and his family that lived in that ugly house, his wife and his daughter who was disabled. The old man only spoke French and was not really a friend of David’s before the man was sent to prison for molesting his daughter. He went to prison for couple of years and returned to the same house after and lived alone. David was the only person in the whole town that accepted the man and actually became friends with him. They talked for awhile until David became bored of him. As years past, the old man told David that he had cancer feeling sorrow for the man David provided the man with a couple days of happiness before his death. This passage above is very funny but as we read later on the chapter, this was place where someone very caring and lonely had passed away.
This chapter, “The Man in the Hut”, is very different from David’s normal humorous writing. He shows a theme of darkness to his stories, by writing about how hard it was for this old man to live alone after being abandoned from his family. The sensor detail in the passage above really does describe visually how ugly and disgusting this house was and then ends the passage with a joke, for the cherry on top. The voice by Sedaris in this chapter does seem to change to a more sympathetic voice. Unlike most of his stories where they were just funny to read, this chapter was different than the rest.
This chapter, “The Man in the Hut”, is very different from David’s normal humorous writing. He shows a theme of darkness to his stories, by writing about how hard it was for this old man to live alone after being abandoned from his family. The sensor detail in the passage above really does describe visually how ugly and disgusting this house was and then ends the passage with a joke, for the cherry on top. The voice by Sedaris in this chapter does seem to change to a more sympathetic voice. Unlike most of his stories where they were just funny to read, this chapter was different than the rest.
Blog#8 - David Sedaris
“At around 7:00 the light settles on the western wall of our house, just catching two of the hijackers and a half-dozen singer-songwriters, who look out from the windows, some smiling, as if they are happy to see e, ad others listening to music, or waiting, halfheartedly, for something to happen.” When reading this at first, you would think to yourself, who does this make sense? The story all begun in Normandy where Hugh and David lived in a little house on the countryside. David had been reading on his couch one day, and heard this annoying racket, this being two magpies pecking at the window. David had though to himself that this would go away after a certain amount of time, this was not the case. First, he tried making a scarecrow and failed miserably. The second was very interesting, he would tape newspaper pictures on the window of big faces preferably. Funny enough he had put up a picture of a hijacker on the window, this worked for a little while, however the birds moved to another window. He ran out of large facial pictures in the newspaper, so he went to the attic. He found all these records and picked out all sorts of album sleeves and ended up covering every window on the west side of the house. The plan was a success, however there would certainly not be as much sunlight coming into the house as before. The passage above is very well written and describes David’s house after being harassed by the birds in a humorous fashion.
I find that David Sedaris is very imaginative in his writing and structures his stories nicely for the reader to tag along. He does a good job in structuring the events he had to go through in order to find a solution in getting rid of the birds. Diction used by Sedaris is very humorous and simple, an example was the passage above. As well the author makes you laugh, but the way he describes events is very witty and to the point.
I find that David Sedaris is very imaginative in his writing and structures his stories nicely for the reader to tag along. He does a good job in structuring the events he had to go through in order to find a solution in getting rid of the birds. Diction used by Sedaris is very humorous and simple, an example was the passage above. As well the author makes you laugh, but the way he describes events is very witty and to the point.
Blog#7 - David Sedaris
From the first day that I saw the cover of this novel, I always wondered: “It’s a humorous novel, but why is there a skeleton on cover?” I wasn’t until I read the chapter “Memento Mori” that questioned had been answered. It was gift for Hugh, David’s lover, see Hugh had his favorite professor and in that classroom there was skeleton. This skeleton was very important to Hugh, that when he received it as a gift, it was hung by string in their bedroom. As anyone’s normal reaction, David was haunted by this skeleton and would always think it was talking to him. “Having been dead for three hundred years, there’s a lot the skeleton doesn’t understand: TV for instance. ‘See’ I told him, ‘you just push this button, and entertainment comes into your home.’ He seemed impressed, and so I took it a step further. ‘I invented it myself, to bring comfort to the old and sick.’ ‘You are going to die.’” This passage is interesting to me, just to see the imagination that Sedaris has and how humorous it is. Who will ever find themselves talking to a skeleton and explain to that skeleton that they invented TV?
David Sedaris really does not have a pace for how he writes his chapters. The only pattern brought up that I noticed was that certain stories have the same theme, other than that most of his stories are not in chronological order to his age. Structure of his writing in these two chapters, is very jumbled as he starts with a story when he was younger and then writes of a story when he was in a totally different country and subject. Again, in these two chapters, “Memento Mori” and “Adult Figures Charging Toward Concrete Toadstool” the diction is very simple to understand and the word choice makes it easy for the reader to picture what was going on.
David Sedaris really does not have a pace for how he writes his chapters. The only pattern brought up that I noticed was that certain stories have the same theme, other than that most of his stories are not in chronological order to his age. Structure of his writing in these two chapters, is very jumbled as he starts with a story when he was younger and then writes of a story when he was in a totally different country and subject. Again, in these two chapters, “Memento Mori” and “Adult Figures Charging Toward Concrete Toadstool” the diction is very simple to understand and the word choice makes it easy for the reader to picture what was going on.
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