Analysis Of Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms At Night

In the short story “Lullaby” by Leslie Marmon Silko, nature is an evident theme. Nature is a very important part of Native American culture and it heavily influences their beliefs. “Lullaby” is a story about a Native American woman named Ayah. Ayah goes through many hardships and uses nature to get through these traumatic events. Nature is a significant part of the story because Ayah finds comfort within it, nature is symbolic throughout the story and Ayah receives closure from nature when Chato perishes.

Life can feel like lounging on the sand, staring into the cities of roses, however, with such happiness comes a deep, cruel truth called death. In this passage, Oliver’s style conveys the complexity of her response to nature by the double-meaning between the owl, the lie behind the “immobilizing happiness”, and the cold truth of these roses. Oliver’s style strives to show how nature is all but an illusion of life and death.

One of the most important symbols found in the story is the pattern of the wallpaper. “But no one can get through the pattern -- it strangles so; I think that's why it has so many heads” (Gilman). The wallpaper pattern symbolizes the oppression woman went through because of how society used to see gender roles in the 19th century. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled head and bulbous eyes shriek with derision”(Gilman ). The tearing of the wallpaper is symbolic of the narrator going crazy trying to free herself and the women from the roles they are forced to fill. “It must be very humiliating to be caught up creeping in the daylight” (Gilman).The narrator uses the moonlight to creep, symbolizing that no one is who they appear to be on the outside. During night time, people tend to do things they would be embarrassed about in day time, and during that period of time, people were embarrassed and felt it was seen wrong to defend women’s rights. Moonlight has also many connections with women, those include the moon cycle relation to a woman’s menstrual cycle and the greek goddess Artemis, who was the goddess of chastity, virginity, the hunt, the moon, and the natural environment. “ By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still” (Gilman). The Daylight, however,

Dillard also accomplishes to draw a strong parallel between herself and the symbol of this essay. As Dillard reads by candlelight, a “golden female Moth, a biggish one” flies into her candle, bringing itself to its own demise. Dillard closely analyzes this majestic Moth that has suddenly flapped itself to the center of her world. In paragraph five, after she has witnessed the Moth burn into bits and pieces, Dillard says “that candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side”. Dillard then begins to draw similarities between herself and the ill-fated moth. The moth was “golden” and “biggish” before she had flew into the fire, much like the writer that Dillard was like before she became a victim of writer's block. Dillard also draws a connection to religious figures in paragraph six, when she says “She burned... like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God.” A parallel that can be

In the literal sense, Nathaniel Hawthorn's Rappaccini's Daughter is the story about the rivalry between two scientists that ultimately causes the destruction of an innocent young woman. However, when the story is examined on a symbolic level, the reader sees that Rappaccini's Daughter is an allegorical reenactment of the original fall from innocence and purity in the Garden of Eden. Rappaccini's garden sets the stage of this allegory, while the characters of the story each represent the important figures from the Genesis account. Through the literary devices of poetic and descriptive diction, Nathaniel Hawthorne conveys the symbolism of these characters, as well as the setting.

The speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

Language and imagery plays a dramatic role in portraying relationships and feelings/thoughts of the persona. Whilst in ‘Burning Sappho,’ the mother’s attitude towards tasks is portrayed as emotionless (“the child is fed, the dishes are washed, the clothes are ironed and aired,”), language is utilised within ‘Suburban Sonnet’ to construct the mother’s mental state and situation as dire. “Zest and Love drain out with soapy water.” The use of two personal, passionate adjectives and the depiction of them being physically overcome by soapy water directly link the mother’s loss of feelings and fiery emotion to the household chores and duties. For example, she “scours crusted milk,” as a part of her role as mother and housewife as the reader is positioned to reject this requirement as a result of the huge impact to her quality of life (“Veins ache”). The literal image of a dead mouse symbolises the mother’s situation as the ‘soft corpse’ directly represents the mother, that is, emotionally dead as a result of the entrapment by society. The reader is positioned to fully

The imagery in the poem “35/10” also conveys the speaker’s wistfulness and jealousy for her daughter’s youth. The speaker describes her daughter as, “a moist/ precise flower on the tip of a cactus” (9-10) while she says, “my skin shows/ its dry pitting” (8-9). These phrases paint an image of the daughter as blooming and new, whereas the speaker is wilting and used. The word moist is associated with youthfulness and the word dry is associated with old age. The speaker’s use of the contrasting words moist and dry also allows the reader to use visual and tactile senses to picture the physical differences between the

The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and

The setting of Alice Walkers short story” The Flowers” is important for us, the readers to obtain a perspective of how life was like growing up for a 10 year old African American girl by the name of Myop. The title of the story is “The Flowers.” When you think about flowers, you instantly compare them to being beautiful, pure, and innocent. The title of the “The Flowers” is a symbolism that correlates to Myop who is the protagonist of the story. Myop is just like a flower in the beginning of the story. She’s a pure and innocent child but that pure innocence changes when she discovers something that’ll change her life forever.

In his short story, “The Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck’s use of symbolism throughout the story provides the development for the plot which demonstrates that women sometimes suffer from estrangement and solitude while in search for their identity. Steinbeck presents the main character, Elisa Allen, as a frustrated woman who is dissatisfied with her current lifestyle as she yearns for a more adventurous one, instead of living up to society’s expectations of a woman only being a simple housewife. To support the theme, the author uses the fence and the flowers in a symbolic technique to represent the feelings of loneliness and alienation to portray Elisa’s relationship with the outside world.

Linda Pastan made this poem include various forms of figurative language to hide the literal message that it's trying to portray. Figurative language is using figures of speech to make the text be more powerful, persuasive, and meaningful. Figures of speech such as, similes and metaphors, go beyond the literal meanings to give the readers a new way of looking at the text. It can come in multiple ways with different literacy and rhetorical devices such as: alliteration, imageries, onomatopoeias, and etc. With the usage of the literary devices Pastan has used, it introduced the relationship between the mother and the daughter. It shows the memories of how the mother helped her daughter grow from a little girl to a young adult getting ready to go her own way in life.

Stockett incorporates nature imagery in the book to symbolize the bitterness which grows internally day by day. Aibileen, one of the most important characters in the novel, refers to a bitter seed that was nourished inside of her after the horrific death of her son, Treelore. “I feel that bitter seed grow in my chest, the one planted after Treelore died,” (Stockett 14). Since the tragic death, the seed planted inside of her began flourishing after every time she was degraded for the color of her skin. As sweet and genuine Aibileen’s character is, the racism she experienced from her own boss and the cruel remarks about her appearance has made Aibileen use this bitterness in an essential way. As bitter as she was, the seed implanted within Aibileen, giving her the motivation to prove the white people wrong.

“Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” This beautiful and lovely description of the daffodils portrayed in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” helps the reader to envision what Wordsworth saw while he was out walking. Such a description makes a reader’s imagination flow and encaptures a reader. Another story that catches a reader’s attention in a similar way to “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is the text “Calypso Borealis”. Authors William Wordsworth and John Muir both write beautiful descriptions of nature that pull readers in and allow them to see the wonders of nature through the authors’

The child contemplates the river’s flow as he/she personifies the body of water using the sound imagery of laughing and singing (Tanikawa ll. 2, 5). The mother’s response that the sun and the skylark influence the river by tickling and praising recreates the idea of the innocence and happiness that radiates from children generally when they are in a safe community environment, one that is mediated by the mother. The imagery indicates a mother’s impact on her children and their actions. Her actions show well-deserved respect and love for her child because she does her best to keep them happy and light-hearted, sending them into a community where they are tickled by the sun, praised by the skylark, and “loved by snow” (Tanikawa ll. 3, 6, 9). When he/she is scared or needs help, children reflect to happy thoughts, like “being once loved” (Tanikawa l. 9). Finally, a mother’s love can be seen through an emotional/visual form of imagery, where “the mother sea / is waiting for the river to come home,” emphasized not only by the words but by the weight of the extra line in the final stanza (Tanikawa ll. 15-16). A mother demonstrates sheer love for her children by always waiting for them to come home, ensuring that they are safe, and becoming a shelter in which they can finally rest. Tanikawa re-enforces value of the mother-child relationship in showing it as the final resting place of the river/child winding its way