This physical setting sets the tone of the poem, as the wall serves as an image of safety for the neighbor, who feels it necessary to have the wall, even if for his own peace of mind. The speaker, however, sees things differently, He states, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / and to whom I was like to give offense" (33-5). When the two are working to "set the wall between us once gain" (14), we understand that the wall is much more important to the neighbor than it is to the speaker. Frost delves into the psyche of the human heart with this poem. What appears to be an ordinary event prompts...
We all have opinions and it is the speaker's opinion that walls or fences are not necessary for any purpose and even believes them to be of no real purpose. He states, "My apple trees will never get across / and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him" (25-6). Here we see how the wall divides the neighbors in that it separates them on an emotional level. The physical separation is obvious but beneath the surface, we discover the complexity of humanity.
Here we see the image of tenderness gain. This is reinforced when the speaker says, "He is meek and he is mild" (13-5). When he states, "He became a little child: / I a child and thou a lamb, / We are called by his name" (16-8), the speaker is incorporating to ideas. One suggestion is of the tenderness of Jesus and the lamb and the other is the
This poem is a favorite of mine because it reminds me to slow down and appreciate everything. It does not take long nor does it take much to renew and revive and that is exactly what the poet wishes to communicate. In Joy Harjo's "Remember," the poet uses imagery and personification to convey points of importance. Because the poet is encouraging someone to remember, she pulls images from experience that will
The vivid imagery of the first lines of the verses make almost anything that is not frozen or cold instantly welcome, and the image of "greasy Joan" keeling the pot (that's "cooling" the pot, to modern readers) is definitely amongst these things. The fact the her pot needs to be "keeled" in the first place also means that it was hot beforehand as well, which is precisely the opposite
Despair in "Hope" by Ariel Dorfman There is not much to hope for in Ariel Dorfman's "Hope." A citizen of Chile when the Pinochet regime led a coup over President Allende, Dorfman experienced what it was like to have friends captured and tortured by the new government. In this poem, Dorfman explores what it must have been like for the family -- in this case the father and mother --
" The narrator fails to convince the little girl that her two dead siblings are any different than the ones who are alive and away from home. Moreover, the narrator fails to destroy the little girl's optimism and sense of innocence. The narrator is a jaded man who clings to a belief that death is final. Although he affirms that a "simple child" "feels its life in every limb," he
Proletarian Portrait" is a poem by William Carlos Williams that presents a brief snapshot of a working class woman, a proletarian. She is bogged down by two stigmas: class and gender. Because the reader has no other cues of the woman's identity, it is also possible that she is not white, either. Being of the non-dominant culture would make the woman an emblem of the underclass, presuming the setting
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