The wall, serving as a painful and vivid reminder of the war, pulls the speaker back to the war. We can almost see the reflection of this man fading into the granite as his memories flood his mind. The wall and the memory of war are so powerful that the speaker must turn his head away and resist the urge to break down in tears. The wall as a symbol of the war is gripping and dramatic and helps the speaker get his point across. The symbolism of the wall as war reinforces the poet's somber tone of the poem. The speaker resists crying and he wants to be like the wall itself -- stone cold. Instead, he sees objects reflected in the wall that only take him back and confuse his mind. He is anxious and everyone around him is, too. Here we see the angst of a past war in the present. The past and the present merge into one. Another writer that empresses the same tone as Komunyakaa is Tim O'Brien, author of the Things They Carried. The character in his novel is also a disillusioned soldier among many who had "no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look...
. . (O'Brien 15). This sense of being lost is the same we see in "Facing it."
"She relaxed limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I don't." Her face was turned away from him. "It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty." She turned up her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly -- like an old woman" (Steinbeck). There are a number of fairly eminent points to be
Wyche agrees with this notion, adding that the station's position "between two sets of rails, whose significance lies 'in their figurative implications' (Renner qtd in Wyche 34), and between two contrasting landscapes that symbolize the couple's options" (Wyche). One side of the tracks, the landscape gives the couple the scene of the hills and the valley and on the other side of the tracks trees and grain flourish on
Death in "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is one of Dylan Thomas's most recognizable poems. Written for Thomas's dying father, this poem is 19 lines and is structured like a villanelle where only two sounds are rhymed. Through the use of imagery, Thomas is able to vividly explore the theme of death and resistance to it. "Do Not Go Gentle Into
Talented Mr. Ripley The story of Patricia Highsmith's Mr. Ripley is one about a man who is very adept at pretending to be something that he is not. The original novel of The Talented Mr. Ripley tells the story of a man who is on the outside of the upper class system. More than anything, he wants to become part of the elite and is able to do so through
poetry of John Keats inspires readers because of their lyricism, accessibility, and imagery. Many of Keats' poems focus on beauty as subject and theme, for beauty is a source of inspiration. Flowers and other natural objects like birds, trees, and supernatural creatures appear frequently in the works of John Keats to convey the theme of beauty. As one of the threads tying Keats' poems together, the theme of beauty
Woolf / Women in Violence and War The current paper deals with the use of stream of consciousness and narrative technique by Virginia Wolf. The author has discussed how Woolf comes and goes in time and space to reveal her inside feelings, and why she used them especially in time of war and domestic violence. Much has been written about Woolf's use of the stream-of-consciousness technique used widely by other Modernist writers
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