Consolations In Memoriam

In this essay I will discuss the effects of W. H. Auden’s poem ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ upon the tone, and the foreshadowing of plot line of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement. The poem and the novel are both elegiac- it is the contribution of the poem to Atonement at the crucial point before the deaths of the characters Robbie and Cecilia that begins to set the tone of elegy within the novel. This acknowledgement of death and mourning brings a sense of impending doom; the love expressed from Cecilia to Robbie by the inclusion of lines from ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ is matched by the element of tragic loss it also insinuates. The poem, set at a time of great impending disaster within Europe (Norton)

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a

When deconstructing the text ‘W;t’, by Margaret Edson, a comparative study of the poetry of John Donne is necessary for a better conceptual understanding of the values and ideas presented in Edson’s ‘W;t’. Through this comparative study, the audience is able to develop an extended understanding of the ideas surrounding death. This is achieved through the use of the semi-colon in the dramas title, ‘W;t’. Edson also uses juxtapositions and the literary device, wit, to shape and

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.

In Thomas Gunn’s “Memory Unsettled”, the main speaker visits a dying friend in a hospital bed. The poem is delivered in second person which indicates the reader will be pushed to feel personally involved with the poet’s characters. By stating “Your” (76. 1) the poet allows the reader to vividly imagine the pain such character may be feeling. As the visitor intends to comfort his dying friend the reader acknowledges a bittersweet moment, by inferring the “pain” has not “ended” (76. 1-4). By depicting positive characteristics of a legitimate friend through word choice and phrases, as well as using rhyme scheme to show the symbolic meaning of sticking together, the poet establishes a sorrowful yet optimistic mood about dying.

The three authors, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Bradstreet, and Emily Dickinson, had poems in which they explored the common theme of death. Their unique views on death, as reflected in their poems, tells us of the different ways people looked at death during their respective times. In this essay, I will explore and explain three poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and one from Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson respectively, and then compare the differences between the three authors.

Both Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” and Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” are poems that discuss the emotional repercussions of death and dying. Grieving the loss of a loved one can be an extremely excruciating experience. At times one may feel suffocated by the sorrow and are desperate for a way to find relief from these intense emotions that are apparent in the grieving process. This is where works of literature can be therapeutic when dealing with difficult emotions. Poetry can be extremely helpful in this sense as one of its purposes is to emphasize certain feelings, ones that we feel but are not sure how to process. It can bring to life what we wish we could do or say, but are not able to. By cross-referencing

In the first stanza, the third-person semi-omniscient speaking voice establishes the conclusive paradigm of the poem: death by suicide. Though the death of the individual is a highly conventional type of tragic presentation, the way in which this presentation is established in the “Dirge” is. The absent function of any emotional signifiers is replaced by a parody of the numerical fluctuations of the stock market. The unnamed man’s death is never mentioned openly, and the circumstances resulting in his death are highly trivialized. Consistent with the market allusion, the reader is left to speculate exactly what sort of concrete events are occurring within in the first stanza. From the very start, the poem challenges any threnodic conventions by disassociating the “subject” of death from the human subject.

The theme” grief “is supported by the construction of the stanza, there is no rhyme scheme or meter, and the speaker seems to be careless about her work. She is too distressed and not even tries to arrange a rhythm to her words.

This is expressed by the multiple examples of old men whom regret certain aspects of their lives and defy death even when they know their time is up. The speaker is urging his father to fight against old age and death. The meaning and subject of the poem influence the tone and mood. The tone is one of frustration and insistence. Thomas is slightly angry and demanding. His words are not a request, they are an order. The mood of the poem is is serious and solemn due to the poem focusing mainly on the issue of death. This mood and tone is created by words such as “burn”(2), “Grieved”(11) and “rage”(3) along with phrases such as “crying how bright”(7), “forked no lightning”(5), “near death”(13) and “fierce tears”(17). The insistent feeling is also created by the repetition of the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night”(1), and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”(3). The figurative language used also affect how the meaning, tone and mood are interpreted.

51 year old Dr. Nickolas Wolterstorff received a phone call at 3:30 pm that his son Eric has died while climbing a mountain. This incident made him to write this book “Lament for a son” so that others could hear his story. Dr.Wolterstorffs had so many unanswered in his mind. He was asking God why he allowed his son to die at a very young age. He as lamenting that it was not proper for a son to die before the father.

There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many

Discuss the poets’ treatment of any aspect of the theme of loss in at least 6 of the poems you have studied.

Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson are celebrated authors and poets in the field of field of literature. A deeper analysis of some of their works displays particular similarities and distinct differences that make each one of them unique. For instance, Browning’s My Last Duchess and Tennyson’s Ulysses show similarities in the overall theme, death, but each brings it out in different styles. This essay explains the comparison of the two poems in detail and the respective significance of use of stylistic devices.