Dissatisfaction with Society Revealed in Yeats’ Stolen Child

Childhood is arguably the most exciting time of a person’s life. One has few responsibilities or cares, and the smallest events can seem monumentally thrilling. Often, people reflect on the memories of their youth with fondness and appreciation for the lessons they learned. Sarah Orne Jewett captures this essence perfectly in the excerpt from “A White Heron.” Jewett uses many literary devices, including diction, imagery, narrative pace, and point of view to immerse the reader in familiar feelings of nostalgia and wonder, and dramatize the plot.

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

The mood of this poem is very soothing and is a sense of relaxation and security. Grace Nichols is showing that the island mans first home is the Caribbean. “the steady breaking and wombing.” The word “wombing” is a made up word by the writer. It has many associations but it makes us the readers imagine a place of comfort and security but more importantly a sense of home and belonging. The reason why this image is put in to the readers mind is because babies grow in the mothers’ womb, so we could say that the womb is everyone’s “first home”. The word ‘wombing’ can also mean his mother land.

As a child, I was told fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs every night before I went to sleep. Fairytales are an adventurous way to expand a child’s imagination and open their eyes to experience a new perspective. Modernizations of fairytales typically relate to a specific audience, such as adolescence, and put a contemporary spin on the old-aged tale. Instead of using whimsical themes heavily centered in nature, the contemporary poems connect with the reader in a more realistic everyday scenario. Also, many modernizations are written in poetic form to help reconstruct a flow in the piece and to develop or sometimes completely change the meaning from that of the original fairytale. Comparing Grimm’s Fairytale Snow White

This can be linked to The Hunchback in the Park, where several pieces of evidence of animal imagery which have the same effect can be found. Examples of this include ‘Like the park birds he came early’ and ‘Through the loud zoo of the willow groves’. In addition, animals only communicate very basically, without the complexity that humans do. By referring to the two characters as animals in the poems, both poets exemplify how isolated the characters are from a normal society.

There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).

In the next stanza, the line "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay", the poet is now using imagery with the waters, however it can also be a metaphorical representation of life due to

The poet W.B. Yeates wrote, “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.” The quote is an illustration of the loss of innocence which is in one way the theme of this essay. I was told this was an assignment based on a personal narrative that focused on having an obstacle to overcome; however, I could not find a way to do it without spilling frustration and other uncontrolled sentiments. What I am referring to happened to me very recently. I already had a busy summer planned, but does one plan death? Sorry to sound morbid, but I find it ironic. I imagined myself to have an enjoyable summer, yet ended up with one I could never forget. This summer I found a way to fix many conundrums I had been plagued with

For this point, he provides the example of Kenneth Grahame’s animal characters. He argues that these characters are like children in that they have no responsibilities or struggle for existence, yet they are also like adults because they go where they want and do what they please. This example relates to his argument that fairy tales can (and should) be read at all ages; they are not just for young children. He believes that these fairy stories do not ill prepare people for the harshness of reality, rather it serves to strengthen their “relish for real life.” This idea is similar to the example we talked about in class with the green grass; sometimes it takes a whimsical story to realize the absurdity of the fact that grass is

The imagery shows that since the character is young and responsible, he works to support him and his family. We are first introduced to the image of the young boy working as a young adult. Then, in the first 9 lines, the author describes the setting of the poem using imagery such as, “sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it,” “Five mountain ranges one behind the other,” “under the sunset far into

In brief, all of the literary devices in this poem work off of each other to make this poem a whole in different ways. The strange diction is used throughout the work making the poem fun and somewhat easy to understand. The imagery is used to create the image of the horrible creature and the speaker’s depiction of it being slain. It is also used to help the reader visualize the land they are in. The rhyming is used through the poem as well, giving it an exciting and powerful tone.

These three lines are perfect examples of the imagery within the poem because they contain an image of a river with its small peeks and waves trembling and glistening in the afternoon sun. All the while it equates the natural beauty of the river to the beauty that the young man sees in the youthful maiden.

In the last stanza, the composer expresses his sense of loss and uncertainty through the metaphor of the swans having ‘flown away’ from him. The swans symbolising vitality and life, flew away from the persona, reflecting uncertainties of loss. Symbolism is an experimental, modernist technique in poetry at the time. Through symbolism, Yeats encourages more varied interpretations of his message, thus expecting his readers to develop individual perspectives of the reality. Hence, beyond representing persona’s vanishing fertility, the departure of the swans may also denote the losses experienced by the world, yielding to the controversial time of the poem’s creation.

These themes such as love, conflict, ambition and morality, allow the reader to relate to and empathise with the poet. A good example of this is WSC, a poem in which Yeats explores themes such as love, loneliness and the passage of time. The most interesting lines occur in the second half of the poem in which he describes the swans as they "paddle in the cold companionable streams, or climb the air". Once I unravelled the symbolism and understood what they have to say about relationships and the difference between a shared life and a lonely existence, I feel I really got to the core of the poem. There is almost an envious tone in this statement. The streams may be cold, but the swans have one another. They are united, and time does not seem to touch them. ''Their hearts have not grown old''. This is similarly true of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (IAF), when the poet muses on Robert Gregory's decision to volunteer for service in the nascent British Air Force. Speaking as Gregory, he says, "A lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds." The image of a young person knowingly heading into danger and almost certain destruction is poignant, beautiful, and thought provoking. This poem deals with the theme of personal fulfilment, Gregory is bored with having a safe life. Something we can all relate to as it is easy to become entrapped in the mundane tasks of everyday life

At the beginning of the second stanza, Yeats use of the metonymic phrase: “Aged man…A tattered coat upon a stick” poignantly conveys the not only narrator’s image of his own aging mortal form but the insignificance of his existence among his youthful countrymen (Lines 9,10). Most notably, the use of dramatic metaphors in Line 11 and 12, “Soul clap its hands and sing…but studying Monuments of its own magnificence”, personifies the soul as a song. In addition, it articulates the idea that one’s soul achieves perpetuity, not through “sensual” song, but through the erudition of ancient civilization (Yeats, Lines 7, 11,14). Yeats’ use of apostrophe and simile in Lines 17-22: “O sages …As in gold mosaic …Come from the holy fire, perne in gyre…Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal”, illuminates the narrator’s yearning to relinquish earthly chains. Furthermore, his use of assonance in Line 19, by which he accentuates the long ‘i’ sound of the words “fire”