Analysis Of ' Thoughts On Capital Punishment ' Essay

Williams describes the context and story behind this poem which is important, especially relating it to visual art and culture. He

In “Traveling through the Dark” by William Stafford and “Woodchucks” Maxine Kumin, man vs. natural death situations are present. Both poems share some similarities and differences. In “Traveling through the Dark”, the speaker is compassionate and considerate towards the dead deer and whose main goal is to get it off the road to prevent future deaths. However, in “Woodchucks” the speaker shows violence in killing the woodchuck, to the point of killing the whole bird family. In both poems by William Stafford and Maxine Kumin, the poets each emphasize different attitudes toward animals; Stafford showing compassion while Kumin shows vengeance, through the use of vivid imagery, explicit diction, and metaphors.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.

After reading several different poems, "The Great Figure" really stood out to me. Although the poem is short in length, I feel like it has a story hidden within each word, phrase and verse.

Death is the issue at the heart of Richard Wilbur's poem "The Pardon." This is apparent from the opening line, "My dog lay dead five days without a grave." What is not immediately apparent, however, is that this is not simply a poem about a young boy's sadness over the loss of his dog. What Wilbur discusses in this piece is much more profound, cutting through the superficialities of death and confronting fears and doubts that all of us experience at different points in our lives. This is a poem about atonement, about facing the mistakes of the past and confronting them directly. More specifically, it is about reconciling ourselves with death and everything that life's deepest tragedies

In the poem, Traveling Through the Dark, Stafford describes how he was moved by the death of a pregnant fawn while driving his car on the mountain road at night. Whiling traveling on the road at night, the narrator found a deer. He thought it would be better if the deer to be moved and stopped his car to move it back. He found the deer recently killed and her body was almost cold. He pulled the body over to the side and saw her large belly. He touched the belly and he thought the deer was pregnant with its baby still alive and never to be born. The narrator could no nothing. The lights of the car were on and the engine was making a continuous sound, as if it sounded pleased. He felt that the cry in the wilderness was heard and after thinking he pushed the deer into the river. This poem shows a contrast between machine and animal. In the first three stanzas, he describes his encounter with the deer and its unborn baby. Then,

The personification further plays towards the central image of the living that are killing and moving aside the dead in order to keep “[aiming] ahead.” The “steady engine” that “purred” under the hood portrays a brain inside the skull rather than a heart or a soul, steady and calculating, lacking in real grief and cold like a car. He then hears “the wilderness listen,” even though he is alone, expressing that there is still someone or something watching the actions and decisions that are made when nobody else is within sight. Lastly, in the final, shortened fifth stanza, the speaker “thought hard for us all,” as in all of humanity, suffers from one last doubt: “–my only swerving–” and pushes the doe into the river, taking responsibility and choosing what is right over what is

It is also reminiscent of a sonnet, often a love poem. The love in this poem is of a father who is trying to protect his son but who realises the futility of this. Every other line rhymes in this poem which has the effect of making the poem seem more intense as the rhyme is not overly obvious. It is also written in the first person which makes it seem so much more personal, “my son,” “I saw” and shows Scannal wanting to make the reader sympathies for the child. He reminds us in the last two lines our lives are exposed to physical and negative pain.

“The Cow” by Andrew Hudgins is a poem about a boy who genuinely loves his cow and is amazed at home much this cow has produced for the family, but to society as a whole. Although the reader understands this is a normal part of farm life, Andrew uses this verbal irony to show the reality of many situations. The cow at one point gave them “fresh cream” and they end up hanging her from a piece of wood (Line 11-13). This is ironic because this poem makes humans look like murders to innocent animals. The significance and message behind this poem is not to just state the normal stages of a cow’s life, but to demonstrate how humans are capable of hurting something that does not deserve harm. The counterargument for this claim is that in that age and time people survived off livestock and it became a normal thing to slaughter and kill innocent animals. However, the bigger picture does revolve around how life can sometimes end up being a downhill slope no matter how much good a person does in this world. Similarly, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” also talks about the harsh realities of life and essentially death. The writer of this poem uses imagery as well to portray a dark scene, but the writer is very optimistic in his writing. He repeats with “rage, rage against the dying light” (Line 19). This is a very important line because it sends out a clear message not only to the writer’s father but to anyone reading this poem. Perseverance is key in times of trouble. In Andrew Hudgins poem, the cow was pretty much hopeless but the readers learned about cruelties that animals and humans can face. Dylans poem advocates for people to fight for life and not go gentle into the good night. The writer knows that his father is losing his sight and eventually his health but he looks for every ounce of hope he can find. This poem is also similar to “the Cow” poem because it is written in

The description and image painted in my head was why I got attracted to the poem and different interpretations that there is. “The Red Wheelbarrow” drives to bring out imagery and description with words such as: red, glazed, rain, white, and wheelbarrow. The image of the wheelbarrow and the chickens really stood out because of how bright they were. It was not a dull wheelbarrow instead a very vibrant one. The chickens also were not just typically chickens they were white and just the word shows how bright and alive they are. Before having the picture of the objects used in the poem I noticed how the speaker was trying to make the reader get the sense of urgency and duty. When he says “so much”, I imaged it was going to be something really important. Then depends made me think it was going to be an essential. An essential is something you must have or need. From just those two lines we see what kind of message the poem is sending. It is serious. After that I see he is talking about a red wheel barrow and was surprised from how an object could have a huge significance.

However, it shows the misunderstanding of the ‘River God’ as she is drowned, ‘Oh who would guess what a beautiful white face lies there’, ‘white face’ implying she is dead, leading you to feel sympathetic again towards him as he is totally ignorant of everything going on around him. ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’, the writer uses the deaf man to display what exactly he/she has lost through his death, ‘He knew the names of ev’ry bird’. This shows how caring he was and this would presumably translate to how he acts to people – kind and caring – and lead to sympathy as you would never want to lose a person so good to die. The poem also describes what further potential to do good he had if he knew what was coming, ‘He would have liked to say good-bye/Shake hands with many friends.’ This causes a sympathetic response from the reader because again even though he was dying he would have wanted to show respect to his friends rather than just leaving. It also creates sympathy because the person who has lost this ‘kind’ man would be very upset about his/her death. We see this when he/she blames God for his death as he didn’t save him/her, ‘’Save his soul and pray.’/ You ask me to believe You and/ I only see decay.’ – this shows a stage of mourning in which you blame others for the death you have experienced.

Just in the United States alone around 253,000 animal deaths with vehicles occur annually according to High Country News. In the poem “Traveling Through The dark” by William Stafford the speaker is faced to deal with one of the animals but ended up having to decide for another fawn’s life. The speaker is traveling in a narrow canyon road where he comes upon a dead mother deer. He must decide whether to try and save the fawn or let nature take it's course. The speaker decides to push the mother deer into the river down below. Although the speaker’s decision might appear inhumane, the speaker made the right choice by pushing the dead pregnant doe off the road into the river because the speaker was not prepared to perform a C-section, he saves

With so much poetry coming out of Britain it can be hard for any of it to stand out from the rest, but “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning and “A Poison Tree” by William Blake manage to stand out from other poems. These two poems differ in structure, writing style, and voice but both have something that sticks them out from the rest; murderers without a moral compass. While murder isn’t new to poetry it is rare to find it as nonchalant as it is in these two poems. These killers were not killing just because they hated their victims; they were killing because they could and the fact that a life was ended meant nothing to them. This is why these poems stick out from the rest.

In both poems, William Stafford and Maxine Kumin use first person to directly show their attitudes towards the animals; however, through the use of vivid imagery and symbolism, the poets show their different attitudes towards the animals.

Welcome to America, the land of the free, of the prosperous, of the opulent. America the Beautiful, one of the only places in the world where all citizens regardless of race, background, or social class are constitutionally guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that is unless you're on death row. In modern day America we are still faced with the antiquated ritual of capital punishment, a practice that interferes directly with the law of the land. The same forms of punishment used during the middle ages are still in effect today, the same ideas that should have been abolished had the U.S. government revised it's penology. Capital punishment is cruel as well as unusual and inadequate for our advanced society. The United