Amsterdam By Ian Mcewan Analysis

In the story “Nethergrave” by Gloria Skurzynski, lies a boy named Jeremy. Jeremy is a misfit, a person that don’t belong anywhere, or a person that is different. Jeremy is the kind of boy who can memorize a whole book of sports, but can’t physically play any sports. He vaults to the internet for hope of his four friends, but instead he finds something different. Even though, Gloria Skurzynski story “Nethergrave” is a science fiction genre, I believe that the meaning of this story could be that there’s always a place for everyone.

Muir creatively informs the reader just how much the main character truly loves nature. The same marvel and beauty is shared in the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” After a long climb over a high hill he finds his reward a valley shining with a huge field of daffodils. “Besides the lakes, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” As Wordsworth explains the scene. As each scene pops out of the poem, a new addition to the painting in your mind appears each time. The painting may vary from person to person, but I believe the same sense of awe is present with every mind. The portions cited are just the beginning of these two works; enough to splash your mind with colors and emotions, but later parts are what truly makes them worth reading.

The memories in the poem maintain a cohesiveness and continuity of experience through repeated motifs such as the violets and the ‘whistling’. Memories also give us a recovered sense of life, as shown through the final line of the poem ‘faint scent of violets drifts in air’. This example of sensory imagery also creates a rhythmic drifting sense linked closely to the “stone-curlews call from Kedron Brook”. It echoes images of the speaker’s mind drifting into reflection and aurally creates transience between the present and the past.

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure

The poet uses many metaphors, repetition and morbid diction to illicit the response I had to this poem. Firstly, Butson compared the emotions and internal struggles of a

Physicist Albert Einstein showed that fulfillment and understanding come from studying nature when he said, “Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better” Both William Wordsworth and John Meir show how their relationships with nature have led them to a deeper understanding of their lives and the world around them. In The Calypso Borealis, John Meir discovers a sense of freedom when he discovers the simple but beautiful Calypso Borealis. Whereas Wordsworth finds happiness by holding on to the memory of a beautiful field of daisies in I Wandered Lonely as a cloud. William Wordsworth and John Muir used imagery and diction to express their relationships with nature. Muir uses these literary devices to bring the reader on a journey filled with ups and downs. Wordsworth, on the other hand, uses these literary devices to paint a picture of a scene that lifts his spirit. Both authors use of imagery and diction explain their love of nature and how it has impacted their lives.

In the poem “To Paint a Water Lily” by Ted Hughes, the speaker conveys his attitude toward nature as perplexing, complex, and deceiving. He also expresses his opinion of the artist and the difficulties brought on by him trying to paint and recreate not only the picture of a water lily and its natural scene, but also capture the intense environment that is both peaceful and full of constant activity. The author achieves this through literary techniques such as: imagery and juxtaposition.

That night that the Titanic sinks, on board the Olympic on April 12, 1912, Daniel Hudson Burnham search mindfully for quite a while at his years arranging the Chicago World 's Fair of 1893, held to respect the 400th commemoration of Columbus ' disclosure of America.

Buruma provides detailed insight into each character allowing the reader to contemplate the motivation behind actions of each one. Buruma describes Theo Van Gogh, the assassinated, as a “ubiquitous figure” in Holland, but is quick to point put out he is better known for his provocative public statements than his films. Van Gogh’s family was made up of Calvinists, Socialists, and Humanists all of which had an influence Theo Van Gogh in one way or another. Buruma emphasizes Van Gogh’s “desire to shock, to stir things up”, a desire developed at a young age and carried into his adulthood and films known for the shock value. There were to sides to Theo Van Gogh the first characterized by his ability to be generous and gracious and the

The poet also used imagery to appeal to the senses. The puzzling force that abhors the wall "sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun."

I initially tended to consider that Welcome to Holland" is a dehumanizing story where a writer failed to understand that one needs to involve a great deal of emotion in raising a disabled child. However, as the story progressed I learnt that strength of will is one of the most important things that one needs when coming across such a situation. The writer wanted people to comprehend that it is very important for them to be able to react effectively in critical conditions. Losing your temper or simply considering that life is uncruel to you can reflect negatively on your personality and makes it more difficult for you to make the best out of a situation.

The poem “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan is closely similar in context with Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape.” Each of the two poems narrates an ordeal with the persona being the writer of the poem. The persona directly speaks to the audience. However, these two works differ in the number of lines, the length and appearance of each line and the entire apparition of the poems. The two authors employ a similar tone as both use a melancholic and reflective tone. The poets present their thoughts in a simple diction and understandable language. It is evident that both authors have an impeccable interest in narrating their story.

By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that

Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’