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Beside A Chrysanthemum By Shu Ting

Decent Essays

Have you ever noticed the way people talk about happy, positive things, however they are really meant to sound negative? The same thing happens in short stories, novels, poems, and other forms of writing. Positive objects, such as nature, are personified, in poems, to create a negative context. Throughout poems in East Asian Literature, positive aspects of nature are personified to convey incommensurable negative feelings. One theme that is present when nature is personified in East Asian Literature is suffering. An example of suffering in East Asian Literature is being tied down to one’s homestead. Shu Ting, the author of the poem “Fairy Tales,” says, “A cloud tangled in the tail of a kite,” he is saying that this “cloud” or person is “tied …show more content…

One cause of sadness is death. In the poem “Fairy Tales” by Shu Ting, Ting personifies trees as people dying. “You gazed past ailing trees,” (169). In the poem “Beside a Chrysanthemum”, So Chong-Ju says, “For your yellow petals to open/ last night such a frost fell, / and I could not sleep.” The frost is personified to represent hard times and the struggles that come with them; hard times were and are rough and lead to constant sadness and depression. “Though in my mind there may be an enormous ocean, /What emerges is the sum: a pair of tears,” (167). In the poem “Missing You”, Ting personifies the ocean as the world and how the world is negative and depressing. Sadness and suffering are not the only themes that are present in the personification of nature in poems throughout East Asian …show more content…

When hope is lost it means that there is no strength left. Bei Dao writes in his poem “One Step”, “The sky sways on its foundation of fear,” (145). Dao personifies the foundation as the government and how the government is not sturdy and cannot hold up the people. In Dao’s poem “Language” he writes, “Baskets woven of thoughts/ as flimsy as bamboo splints,” (146). He personifies the basket as the civilization, and the bamboo splits are personified to represent the government; the government holds together the people. “Trampling the flowers/ a dandelion grows secretly/ in a certain corner,” (“Language” 146). Dao personifies the flowers as people being taken over by fear and suffering and no longer having hope. When nature is personified in East Asian poems, it is common for the personification to have a negative context toward the reader. Nature is commonly conveyed as something or someone who has suffered, who has lost hope, or who has been

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