The theme in Diving into the wreck which I choose is Exploration. Exploration is the activity that takes place in this poem. Whatever else the speaker is doing or feeling or saying, she is diving down into the ocean to explore. We are used to this idea of exploring a shipwreck. Whether it's videos of the sunken Titanic or stories about diving for pirate gold, we know about people in wet suits looking at old ships. What this poem suggests, though, is that exploration might not just refer to looking at a ship. There might be other kinds of emotional, internal exploration going on here. The diver in "Diving into the Wreck" has an amazing, maybe even transcendental, experience underwater. Everything about the ocean world is fascinating, new, and intense. We aren't merely looking at nature in this poem, we are fully plunged into it. This poem is about exploring and changing and feeling, …show more content…
Then we enter the water, a whole new world, with new rules. Petty soon, we don't even know who our speaker is. Is our speaker a man or a woman? Is it even human? How do we deal with changes in our lives? When things change, when our environment shifts, do we become different people? These are tough questions, but important ones too, and Rich is partly using this poem to sort them out. This theme flashes by, but we think it's an important flash. Toward the end of "Diving into the Wreck," the speaker refers to herself or himself as a man and a woman. We often don't know the gender of the speaker of a poem. It's more unusual, though, for a poet to come out and directly confront us with that issue. This becomes one of the big turning points of the poem. Even though it's a little moment, it involves a lot of the other themes in the poem. It's certainly a big transformation, and it forces us to rethink the moments that came before
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the Worldvividly recreates one of the most extraordinary adventure stories in history. In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton and 27 men sailed from England in an attempt to become the first team of explorers to cross the Antarctic continent from one side to the other. Five months later and still 100 miles from land, their ship,Endurance, became trapped. The expedition survived an Antarctic winter in the icebound ship, then, afterEndurancesank, five months camped on the ice followed by a perilous boat journey through storms and icebergs to remote and unvisited Elephnat Island, 600 miles from Cape Horn. From there, their only hope was for someone to fetch help. In a dramatic climax to this amazing survival story, Shackleton
“Under Water is easy to read and understand what is going on the essay. She describe about the struggle of the Gray, drowned in a deep water while adventuring on the green River. He was drowned simply because he “had not brought sneakers and one of his mountaineering boots had become wedged between two two rock” (Fadiman 159). Even the current continuous
Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.
Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.
The young man in the poem loses his identity as he develops into the ruthless world of adulthood with its dehumanizing competition of ‘money-hungry, back-stabbing’ and ‘so-and-so.’ These exaggerated words and clichés
For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that
Evocative and visceral, Irving Layton’s “The Swimmer” follows the impassioned swim of a man as a metaphor for man’s relation to nature. The poem begins with the titular swimmer breaking away from his vessel and into the sea. Layton elaborates upon the swimmer’s journey underwater, as a mystical intercourse between man and Earth. In the final stanza, the man is expelled by the sea and returned to land. In “The Swimmer”, through the description of an incestuous relationship communicated through erotic imagery, Layton expounds on the theme of the connected, yet ultimately detached, relationship between man and nature.
“The Sound of the Sea” is a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, describing the sounds of the sea and relating it to human inspiration. Through only auditory images of the sea and other powerful natural forces, Longfellow effectively alludes to the nature of human inspiration. Through detailed and sensory imagery, Longfellow communicates the subtle details of the human soul and how inspiration functions.
The diver comes upon the wreck and starts to explore it, she has come to see the ship's damage and treasures. The diver states the purpose of her mission in the seventh stanza; she wants to explore the wreck, she does not want to learn the story of the wreck. The persona is not interested in the myth behind the wreck, she has come to witness it herself and see its "threadbare beauty" (Vendler, 504). The diver can be seen as exploring the wreck in the first schema.
Each part was broken up after a noticeable shift and atmospheric changes in the poem. The first part of the poem is during “Sad is the man...with one”(Ln 1-2), and repeats again at “In a room...on his father”(Ln 6-9). These lines create a shift into a narrative stage. It puts a pause on the poem to introduce or explain the scene in the poem. The narrative is important because it shows the point of view of the poem. The second shift is created with “Already the man...should never disappoint”(Ln 10-18). This shift is when the father is thinking about his fears and desires, to be more blunt, the father’s fantasies. It creates an unrealistic tone to the poem an shows the father’s dismay when he cannot remember a story for his son. The last shift begins with “His five-year-old...scratches his ear”(Ln 3-5), and ends with “But the boy...up to silence”(Ln 19-23). This shift bring the poem into reality. In fact the poem states that the “emotional rather than logical equation”(Ln 20) is where most people get confused and frustrated at the world. The poem also states the conflict of fantasy and reality. This conflict is what creates the the multiple shifts and the complicated relationship between the father and the
“And it hits me, not then, but today, thirty years later. Thirty years too late”(91). Those are the words of Jessamyn Hope when speaking about her experience with regret regarding her life’s decisions, the major theme for her essay. Her essay tells the story about how she failed to overcome two life challenges, one having a direct physical impact and the other having a delayed impact. The essay “The Reverse Dive” by Jessamyn Hope is a narrative essay looking to persuade its reader through the use of analogy, empirical evidence, and appeal to emotion that one should face their challenges while they can to avoid regrets.
Rich's tone in the poem is observant and she makes it clear that she does not want to live a life like Aunt Jennifer's. In the poem Rich makes Aunt Jennifer distinct from herself by placing Aunt Jennifer into a different generation, breaking any connection between the author and the character. Rich's writing structure in this poem contains the real life within the fantasy life. The first stanza of the poem is about the proud tigers. The second stanza is about terrified Aunt Jennifer. The third stanza refers to the continuation of the second stanza and then to the tigers. In this way, by starting the poem with the tigers and ending with the tigers, Rich is containing the real life within the fantasy, in reverse of Aunt Jennifer, whose inner life is contained within her outer life. In this poem Rich portrays what can happen to an individual who accepts the fate prescribed by custom. The overall message is that men suppress women.
Imagery along with a touch of irony is found within the poem to pull the reader into the poem. The speakers describe exactly who they are, and what they are looking for in the person who they seek. “Executive in search of something new-Perhaps bisexual woman, arty, young.
He transitions the tone of the poem from one of despair and hopelessness to one of encouragement which adds a realistic effect to the poem while still encouraging the reader. There is a thin line between being completely discouraging and being realistic; the speaker in the story seems to keep the perfect balance between these two lines. With the skillfully organized tone, the author helps the reader better understand the mood of the story as well as the difficult
I take a deep breath, my nostrils are filled with the pleasant aroma of the salty sea air. This is my happy place, this is where I belong. As I sit with my freshly painted pink toes in the sand, I am overwhelmed with all that is happening around me. To my right, there is a family of four; a mother, father, and two little red headed girls that look like twins, laughing and jumping around, taking in the big world around them. The children are in their bright red and purple flowered bathing suits, running and screaming, attempting to get their toes wet in the chilly water that churns back and forth on the shore. After a few attempts they decide to run and jump full force into the crystal clear abyss, unaware of what creatures they could find if they dive deep enough.