Analysis of Hughes's You Hated Spain

Bruce Dawe’s poems “Katrina”,” A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love”, “Homo Suburbiensis “ and “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” depict life and death through the use of similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, imagery, onomatopoeia, tone and similes, although, with different circumstances. The events in these four poems evoke emotions within the reader, the most common being sadness and frustration. These emotions are explored, in all four poems, through the tone of melancholy.

His face is also “stamped with…the reek of screams” showing how painful his memories are and how they are embedded in him. Furthermore, the reader is told that “none of [it] grows stale” meaning that the memories are too excruciating for the baker to forget. Above all, Cadsby, with the use of a metaphor, compares the baker’s friends that were killed in Auschwitz to “barely brown loaves”. The baker can be seen “remember[ing]/ other barely brown loaves” (10-11) as he bakes the bread. The brown loaves that the baker recalls are actually his friends. Based on the year that the poem was written, the baker and his friends were in Auschwitz about 50 years prior to the persona encountering the baker. When ready and cooked, the bread becomes brown. If compared to a human’s life, the metaphor demonstrates that a person is at the prime of life when they are “browned”. The baker remembers his friends that were “barely brown” when they were killed in the furnaces of Auschwitz and had not yet experienced the joys that life brings. In “The Baker”, Heather Cadsby compares ovens in a bakery to the furnaces in Auschwitz, the tattoos on the baker’s arm to veins and the unbaked loaves in the baker’s oven to his dead friends in order to give a much deeper understanding of just how much the baker suffered.

“‘Race Politics” by Luis J. Rodriguez was about him and his brother living in a place called Watts. They journey over the tracks, trying to get the “good food” for their family. They go to the store, and find themselves face to face with five teenagers who knock the food out of their hands, and beat up the main character’s older brother, causing him to vomit. The teenagers leave, with them on the floor. The purpose for writing this essay is to identify syntax, connotation, and imagery within this poem, and decide what makes it important to the overall poem. The overall impression that Luis conveys within his work is the feeling of separation.

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

In Natasha Trethewey’s poetry collection Native Guard, the reader is exposed to the story of Trethewey’s growing up in the southern United States and the tragedy which she encountered during her younger years, in addition to her experiences with prejudice and to issues surrounding prejudice within the society she is living in. Throughout this work, Trethewey often refers to graves and provides compelling imagery regarding the burial of the dead. Within Trethewey’s work, the recurring imagery surrounding graves evolves from the graves simply serving as a personal reminder of the past, to a statement on the collective memory of society and comments on how Trethewey is troubled with what society has forgotten as it signifies a willingness to overlook the dehumanization of a large group of people.

Throughout this poem there are multiple ways Hall connects the poem to its core meaning. Located within the title, the word ‘dead’ is used to describe the machine. Being dead is the ultimate end of a life and that uncertainty of death sparks fear among many people. The inclusion of this certain word is used to set the tone of the poem as dark and gloomy and obtain the readers interest. Another method used by Hall to convey the theme of death was through imagery. The entire second stanza is a description of the pilot’s skeleton strapped within the crashed plane. Having such a graphic image portrayed, Hall is able to essentially shock his reader with the gruesomeness that death produces. One of the last things the reader may decipher from this poem is that life, just like war, is a trap. Within the third stanza, the pilot is said to be taking a train to work and is “held/ by the firm webbing” of the train. The webbing infers that the pilot, although not trapped in his plane, is trapped in the roles put forth by society.

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is not a tale of ease. Poe’s life was full of personal and fiscal disaster. These disasters help to mold some of the most ominous and intellectually challenging poetry ever written. For the short duration of Poe’s life, he was seen as a literary critic rather than an author. To the modern generation his unbeknown status seems bafflingly inconceivable, considering his now acclaimed publications. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing was very much dictated by his life. The mournful tone of Edgar Allan Poe’s life created his literature; death and all his friends narrated Poe’s life. Edgar Allan Poe shows his life’s constant despair through his poetry and short story writings.

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

It is human nature to strive for comfort, to seek ease in a burdensome situation. When deprived of this sense of comfort, as demonstrated by Cynthia Ozick in “The Shawl”, it is through the suffering that ensues in which humanity is lost. This is made evident in her sparse writing style, the duality of the setting, and the use of illusionary symbolism.

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: there can be many different perspectives seen in a poem. One individual could read a poem as depressing and another can perceive it as a new beginning. One’s views rests on individual perspectives. For example, Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is dark and controversial. In my essay I will argue that Poe was not in his right mind and he was driven mad with evidence throughout his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

“Interested in your father’s glorious family tree? You aren’t included, it only includes men’s names.” In the film ‘Wadjda’, directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, a girl named Wadjda from the male-dominated culture of Saudi Arabia sees a green bike that she strives her hardest to own. Although could the bike be a metaphor for something deeper? Some may say the bike is nothing more than a plain old bike, but in this essay, I will discuss how and why the green bike symbolises more than a mere green bike. The focus will be on the significance of the bike, why it has been chosen to act as the metaphor, and how/why the director has chosen it to show that Wadjda is subversive.

James Joyce, the author of both “Araby” and “The Dead,” exploits a sense of imagery throughout both short stories. “Araby” and “The Dead” both share and differ from each other in the ways the imagery is shown. The vivid imagery in “Araby” is applied to express feelings and expressions from one character to another. The main character, an unnamed boy, has an undying admiration for Mangan’s sister. James Joyce describes the boy’s obsession with Mangan’s sister in vast imagery. “The Dead” also includes many senses of imagery, but shows kinesthetic imagery rather than vivid imagery. Kinesthetic imagery is an imagery that is portrayed through the movement and physical tension. In “The Dead,” Gabriel, the main character, dislikes the country of Ireland he lives in, so he flees. Throughout this, Gabriel describes how Ireland is boring and cold, displaying kinesthetic imagery. “The Dead” and “Araby” both include vivid imagery, kinesthetic imagery, and auditory imagery.

The main characters in both these stories are young adults who call Dublin, Ireland, home. Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of “The Dead,” seems to be at the upper end of the middle class, while the nameless boy in “Araby” is at the lower end. We get an idea of each character’s social status in the opening passages of the stories. The boy in “Araby” lives on a street where all the houses, “conscious of the decent lives within them,” have the same “brown imperturbable faces” (182)—a description which conveys a dull, less fortunate scene. The opening paragraphs of “The Dead” portray a different, more cosmopolitan kind of scene. The setting is an evening party, whose hostesses live a “modest” life, yet keep a servant and believe in eating “the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout” (198).

Joyce uses diction to support the overall tone of “Araby,” through his use of words and phrases such as “had grown somber. . .” (Joyce 400) and “musty. . .” (Joyce 400). The verbiage he uses constructs a dull and increasingly gloomy image as if darkness is enclosing the town being depicted. Word choices like “waste. . .” (Joyce 400) and “useless. . .” (Joyce 400) convey the stagnant environment that encases the lifeless neighborhood the boy lives in. Joyce communicates the dreariness that cloaks Dublin by using dreadful adjectives to describe the setting. The young boy’s short lived “confused adoration” (Joyce 401) for his friend’s sister, is depicted using feminine words in association with her, such as “petticoat. . .” (Joyce 401) and “soft. . .” (Joyce 400). When the speaker is professing Mangan’s sister’s control over him, he proclaims, “[m]y body [is] like a harp and her words and gestures [are] like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce 401). The boy reveals his ignorance by incorrectly calling harp strings, “wires. . .” (Joyce 401). This simple error portrays his confusion about his own feelings and the reasoning behind them. The author uses diction to support the tone of the short story, “Araby,” through his choice of words that reveal both the glum atmosphere of the setting and the naive affection being displayed by the speaker.