A Person A Paper A Promise Summary

It’s easy to feel worthless. Almost every person feels this deep emotion at some time in life, but people handle it different. Everywhere people are always judging. Judgement from parents, from family, and even from friends is inescapable. People can tear themselves down in many ways, such as through school, not feeling they look good enough, and even just not feeling like they’re ever good enough to be living on Earth. In Janice Mirikitani’s poem “Suicide Note,” it talks about an Asian-American student currently in college. She tries her hardest, she wants to succeed and make her parents proud. Her parents have high standards for her, as they want her to receive a 4.0 grade point average. Although she gives her best effort, her grade point average is still less than a 4.0, and for that reason her parents are not proud of her, she’s not their perfect, ideal daughter. So she enters that point where she no longer feels proud of her accomplishments, she feels worthless, and unintelligent. She decides to commit suicide by jumping out of a window in her college dorm. In her suicide note she apologizes to her parents for not being good enough. “Suicide Note” is a free form poem, it has no set stanzaic pattern, the sentences break in unexpected places, and the structure varies throughout the poem. It uses imagery to connect with the reader, and the stanzas are set up in way that make the lines to appear as they are falling. Through the use of enjambment, and end-stopped line the

I’m very connected to this poem because I’ve had times in life where I have had to choose between two paths to take. I ended up not taking either path instead creating my own path. During high school I always thought I’d be like every other cliché American teenager and move off to college and experience life away from home. However, as I was making this decision my father was diagnosed with three types of cancer which redirected my path. I currently live at home and attend a smaller campus rather than a large university because it allowed me to be involved with my father during this time in his life. The path I chose was not an easy decision, but sometimes we have to make decisions and create new paths that will not only affect us but others that we are connected to. Whether it’s a choice in life or not life happens.

There are times when we feel like we must be perfect in other to please others. No matter if we did the best we could, if it isn’t perfect, we felt like a failure. We want the approval that comes with perfectness but perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it 's a shield. Perfectionism is refusal to accept any standard short of perfection. “Suicide Note,” by Janice Mirikitani, is about an Asian American college student who commits suicide by jumping from her dormitory window. This poem is read as the suicide note that was left behind by this young woman to apologize to her parent s for having received less than a perfect four point grade average and not being perfect in life. Her last thoughts and feelings were left on this note, describing why she did what she did. The pressure to succeed that this student felt from herself and her parents was far too much to overcome. Even though the girl worked really hard and did her very best, it wasn’t good enough in her mind and maybe in her parents’ minds to be worthy of her parents’ love or life itself and so her only option was death to atone for her sin of imperfection. Sometimes pressure to succeed that a student feels from herself and her parents is far too much to overcome.

Although this is a short poem, there are so many different meanings that can come from the piece. With different literary poetic devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism different people take away different things from the poem. One of my classmates saw it as an extended metaphor after searching for a deeper connection with the author. After some research on the author, we came to learn that the

This poem is basically about being thankful for having the simple cherished things in life, and how it could be different. It is in two

Remembering memories is preferred, rather than living in reality. In the poem, we witness a woman remembering her high school idol, and she decides in the end to not go and talk to him. It is evident that the woman in the poem prefers her memory rather than the view that reality is showing her, this is shown when the woman refuses to go and meet the “hero she had as a girl”, despite giving herself a realistic reason why she should go and greet him, “you think how easy it would be to walk right over and tap him on the shoulder[, and] say hello” but she doesn’t. She doesn’t go and greet him because her memory remembers him as someone amazing, and admirable, “taller than the boys in your own class[,] taller even than your brothers”; where height is a reflection of her admiration. But her hero is now “fat and balding”, and to go greet him now would warp her perspective of her hero, from someone to idolise, to someone pathetic. In the end, she chooses to just remember him just the way she wants to, rather than remembering him the way reality does, showing that memories are preferred over reality. The woman also chooses not to talk to him because of her personal desire to retain her views and opinions of not only how she sees her hero, but also how

The speaker is the voice of the poem, since “I” is used alot in this poem, it is in first person. I imagined the speaker’s

This poem is written in free verse. My paraphrase of this poem is: I am fourteen, and now my skin is marked with acne. The boy that I love is still immature. How come my skin is so dry? What if I was gone before morning? Even so, my mother leaves me isolated. I have to learn how to dance before the upcoming party. I cannot practice in my cramped room. Maybe if I die before graduation, they will chant melancholy tunes. There’s nothing I want to do, but there are too many things to be done. Even so, my mother leaves me isolated. Nobody wants to listen to what I have to say. I should've gotten into the math team, I had better grades than him. How come I have to be the one with braces? I don’t even have anything to wear tomorrow. Would I even live long enough to grow up? Even so, my mother leaves me isolated.

‘Murder’ can be compared to the movie The Fault In Our Stars because like the poem, the main character goes through a heart break that they thought would ruin their life, but in the end the character was able to get through the rough patch and keep it in their memory. Even though the characters in the poem are not as clear as

The poem “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” by Amiri Baraka uses vivid images of sights, sounds, and daily activities to symbolize a heartfelt story. In the poem, Amiri, is one of the African American slaves who is frustrated about the discriminatory treatment by whites. So frustrated he wants to commit suicide. The writer used transition words starting with “lately”, “now”, and “then” for each stanza. He was imagining how he acted before his death and how his daughter reacted to his death.

This poem has a true meaning behind it. The meaning of it is of Antwone when he was little. He would cry himself to sleep. He would get beaten over an over again. It just kept building up and finally he cried for help on the inside. Luckily he got help from his psychiatrist before it was too late.

sturdy while the child falls – his feet is not big enough for him to

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

I find this poem to be interesting because the ideas and meaning of the poem are simple, but they can easily be interpreted in another meaning. This poem did not have the effect on me that I thought it would have, although I did think it was fascinating to read and listen to. The words seem to blend together, and it makes it smooth to hear. The diction is simple and easily understood, but the some of the concepts may not make sense the first time. I had to read the poem multiple times to attempt to grasp the gist of the

The way he incorporated the different characteristics of the poem are amazing. He uses tone, scene, and imagery to act as camouflage to hide the true purpose of the poem. The scene that is presented in this poem would make you think the son is just reliving a time he had with his father. For a reader to figure out the message that this poem has they must know how to look further than just the words in the poem. The fact that I know Ortiz was an Acoma Indian helps me get a better understanding of what kind of childhood he would write about. It also shows me that the father himself was taught the song of life when he was a boy and is just passing it down to his son. I believe in this poem the father was hard on his son, but all he ever wanted was the very best for him. The father tries to do everything in his power to teach his son lessons that will help him become a good man someday. I can make the assessment from my findings in the poem that the father was successful in doing so. You can tell by the demeanor that the narrator tells this story that he appreciates his father, and values the lessons he was taught. So, next time you read this poem just don’t read the words. Put yourself in the son’s shoes and relate this poem to the life that you live. Doing this will help you understand that this poem is not just about a song or story, but that this poem is about how an individual