Defying Gravity by Roger McGough and Mort Aux Chats by Peter Porter are two poems that have death as a theme. Although they refer to death in different ways. Mort Aux Chats refers to death to convince you to dislike cats. Whereas Defying Gravity is about a mans “victory” with death. These poems rely on language to emphasise the attitude to death. Defying Gravity is told from the point of view of a dying mans best friend. It uses a lots of metaphors and I think this makes the poem very effective and clever. The first stanza of the poem explains about gravity and its significance to us. 'Gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book' This explains that it’s been around for a long time and everyone knows about it and they will all …show more content…
The way McGough writes this makes it as if he is actually talking to us and it’s like reading between the lines. 'Soon now the man I love (not the armful of bones)' This shows how much the illness can affect someone and the way they feel about someone because clearly the speaker is distressed by seeing his friend in such a way that it then leads them on to say ' freeing himself from the tackle' Using terms which are used in rugby really gives that part of the poem impact because it shows that it is more personal towards the friend that he clearly cares about and the physic affects of the illness have left such obvious affects which reminds him so much of what the person has missed out on.
'A box of left over’s will be lowered into the space on loan from the clay.’ This idea is taken from the bible where humans where created from the earths clay. And now the dead man is being put back. As a dead body in a grave. 'Then, weighed down, the living will walk wearily away.' The last line use alteration and long words make it slower to say and gives it a slow depressive feel which makes you think about it. Mort Aux Chats translates to death to cats. This poem is rhetorical trying to persuade us to dislike cats. Mort Aux Chats is a political poem and it has a persuasive tone. ‘There will be no more cats’ this makes the reader want to read on as they want to know why there will be no more cats. “Cats spread infection, cats pollute the air, and cats
Once I was able to associate these words to emotions and issues present in everyday life, the poem started to make me feel sad. I began thinking about all of the emotions and feelings that everyone hides as they go about life. For example, how the waitress I see once a week may have an eating disorder, or how the singer I look up to just lost her son, or the businessman who got laid off today. Everyone has their own personal battle that they carry everywhere, at any given moment. This explains why the setting is so plain, since the internal struggles people face affect them even at a bus stop. While each person waits, the waitress may be thinking about how much skinnier the person next to her is. The singer could be remembering when she held her baby. And the business man could be planning how to break the news to his wife. No matter how small, everyone experiences a type of trauma or bad experience, and this poem seemed to show what happens when these emotions become bottled up. No one can help each other because they are so stuck within their own issues. The difficulty helping others reminded me of the idea of having to take care of yourself before being able to take care of others.
Dawn revisited is a poem about the new ideas one could have in life and how it is easy to start again if things don’t go too well, as the poem starts with ‘imagine you wake up with a second chance’ which automatically introduces the topic to the reader. The poem is laid-out in a way that – especially ‘hawks his pretty wares’ - gives us an unimaginable image of the beauty of dawn, a description that would want people to manage their time in order to see it. The poet states ‘if you don’t look back the future never happens’ which shows us that one could only learn by making mistakes and that she perhaps learnt from experience and does not want people to miss out on the beauty of nature just like she might have done previously. She suggests
To begin, the speaker of the poem “Thou famished grave” presents a resentful and aggressive attitude towards death. The poem, addressed to a “ famished grave” (1), personifies a grave as a starving beast that can “roar” (2), “gnaw” (3), and has “dismal jaws” (7). This represents death in a negative way because the description of the beast make it seem unpleasant and to be feared. Furthermore, the poem includes words and phrases when addressing the grave that follow the theme of starvation, such as, “famished grave” (1), “Gnaw thine own sides, fast on” (3), and “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey” which emphasizes that the beast of death is starving to take someone’s life. This animal-like aggressiveness adds to the already negative image of the beast. This imagery also shows how the speakers thinks of death since it comes from her words which shows that she sees death in a very negative way. Due to this, the speaker is angry and does not want to give death what it wants, which is to take someone’s life. Additionally, although death is something normally feared, the speaker shows that she is not fearful by saying “I have no fear / of thy dark project” (3-4) when speaking to the grave. She expresses that she does not want to die and her “heart is set / On living” (4-5), which explains her resentfulness towards death. She also understands that death is inevitable as she says, “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey / And thou shalt have me; but I dare defend / That I can stave thee off” (6-8). This shows that even though she knows that she will one day die, she still doesn’t want to give death what it wants and will fight as long as she can
The imagery used in this verse appeals to the sense sight. This helps the reader visualise what the writer is taking about. It also allows the reader to relate and connect more to the poem.
The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death
Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than
Death is often displayed in literature, showing how would people react towards it . Whether its in "The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, or even "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield, death appears to be unavoidable. Although these are different short stories, death is applied, but the author's interpretations differentiate.
Death is part of the human life cycle, approximately 151,600 people die each day. Everyone wonders how they will die, if they suffer, if it’s tragic or if it’s just simply peaceful. In each of the three poems the main focus is death. Each poem shows a different feeling about death. “Thanatopsis” by William Bryant, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult and “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, all have different meanings of death.
Death is a natural cause from the human condition. There are three poems that explore death. “Thanatopsis” by William C. Bryant, “Dust in the wind” by Kansas, and Don't fear the reaper.” by Blue Oyster Cult.
“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”
Imagery played a big role in this poem. It helps the reader get a better understanding on how the dad actually is during the struggle of teaching the boy how to learn how to ride a bicycle. The boy describes his father in detail during the act of him somewhat teaching him to ride his bike. The boy states that “the air around us Sick with scotch, and the challenge Was keeping his own balance” (462), describing how drunk his father actually is.
"Death, Be Not Proud" by John Donne, "Because I could not stop for Death" and "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" by Emily Dickinson all have one theme in common: death. Typically, death is associated with negative connotations, but "Death, Be Not Proud" is a more cheerful tale of how death lost its sting. "Because I could not stop for Death" also has a similar theme because. Like the other two poems, "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" talks about an interruption of a person's death by a fly. "Death. Be Not Proud," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" are all poems revolving around the theme of death.
Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.
Aptly titled, “Dying” reflects on attitudes towards death. The speaker is reflecting on the way people tend to oppose the concept of death. The subject isn’t just dying, but the way people feel about dying, and the definite briefness of life. Line 12 states in reference to death, “The different pace makes the difference absolute,” which is a central idea of the poem. Even though humans are aware from a young age that life must come to an end, it is both difficult and impossible to avoid relating to people who are currently dying. The “someone” in line 10 and the pets in lines 3-4 remind both the speaker and the reader of their own mortality. A theme might be that even though it’s possible to relate to others dying, it’s more likely that people don’t actually confront their own imminent deaths because they perceive their lifespan to be so long and promising. In lines 10-11, “[…] But someone I know is dying- / And though one might say glibly ‘everyone is,’” Pinsky addresses the habit of depersonalizing death. Even though it is the one thing that unites all of humanity, people tend to distance themselves from the idea by brushing it off.
Finally the poem has an emotional appeal. The poems tone is positive in a negative way it is sort of uplifting even though there is nothing encouraging about the situation. This is shown tough the use of words such as " I am the thousand winds that blow/ I am the diamond glints on the snow" these phrases have positive connotation saying that he will always be with us