Doe Season: Andy's Epiphany

My character I’ll pick is from the story, “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” Andy is a high schooler with high standards for what he did at the end. Andy was a normal guy with a loving girlfriend named Laura. Andy seemed like a well behaved, educated kid but something he was apart of changed his life for the bad. At the beginning of the story Andy was minding his business until a member of the Guardians stabbed Andy, a member of the Royals gang, in a dark alley without even seeing Andy’s face. As Andy goes through the depressed stage/thoughts and what he will do next, a few people walk by and don’t help him. A couple even casted upon Andy laying down accepting any help he can get but instead, the couple leaves Andy where he was because he was a “Royal”.

The atmospheric conditions may represent the hardships that the couple had to go through in their relationship, and may also be used contrast the unpredictability of the outside world compared to the steady relationship that the couple have. ‘A Youth Mowing’ is also a poem about relationships, this time it is between a younger couple. The river ‘Isar’ is a symbol of freedom, it represents the way that the men’s lives are. However, this sense of liberty is broken by the ‘swish of the scythe-strokes’ as the girl takes ‘four sharp breaths.’ Sibilance is used to show that there is a sinister undertone to the freedom that the boy has which will be broken by the news that his girlfriend is bringing. She feels guilty for ‘what’s in store,’ as now the boy will have to be committed to spending the rest of his life with her, and paying the price for the fun that they had.

The seasons in the poem also can be seen as symbols of time passing in her life. Saying that in the height of her life she was much in love and knew what love was she says this all with four words “summer sang in me.” And as her life is in decline her lovers left her, this can be told by using “winter” as a symbol because it is the season of death and decline from life and the birds left the tree in winter. The “birds” can be seen as a literal symbol of the lovers that have left her or flown away or it can have the deeper meaning that in the last stages of our life all of our memories leave us tittering to our selves.

The river represents the period between life and death. Another part of this symbol is the air representing life and under the rocks and waterfall representing death. Just as the transition from life to death is in motion, so is the rushing of the water. Both have a beginning and an ending point, but the part in the middle is constantly moving, swirling and churning. As the girl loses hope for survival and the waterfall is approaching, the narrator states, “[S]he becomes part of the river” (45). The girl now crosses over the borderline of life and death, and she is about to be swallowed up by the falls of death and can never return to life. However, when the diver goes into the river to save her, he comes out saying that “he’d never enter that river again” (47). He encounters the spiritual eccentricity of the edge of death when he looks into lifeless girl’s animated eyes, and he can not fathom that experience. Another symbol that is introduced twice is the gurgle of the aquarium, which symbolizes the attempt to understand nature’s cycle of life. As she floats downstream, the girl remembers “her sixth-grade science class, the gurgle of the aquarium at the back of the room”(45). During this moment, all of her thoughts are puzzled, and she cannot understand the death awaiting her. Later on, after sleepless nights, the diver is in the empty school where “the only sound the gurgle of the aquarium” (48). This moment is the point at which he decides

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

The effect that the landscape has on the characters is very significant. Through the use of figurative language, Kent is able to covey the landscape and how it emphasizes many of the emotions felt by the characters. In the text characters live in Icelandic society where long distance communication is hard and fast communication is even harder. With the weather being the way it is; bitterly cold and oppressive, it reflects on each character and their emotions felt through the book. Particularly the oppressive snowfall throughout the text leaves the characters feeling claustrophobic and confined. In turn this allows each character to express these feelings in their own individual way. Margaret, the mother is trapped in her own house in a repetitive cycle of her own making. Agnes is caught in her own inner turmoil, and Margaret’s daughters are also trapped in a cycle, fated to live a

Kenyon uses yonic and phallic symbols to describe how something is changing in the relationship. Kenyon uses a female symbol when she writes, “Tender ferns unfurl/ in the ditches” (Kenyon 6-4) The ditch represents a yonic symbol. The yonic symbol is female imagery so it must indicate something about the woman in the relationship. Kenyon describes the ferns that uncurling, and expanding as tender so this could indicate a new side to the woman. A softer side that she really has not showed to anyone. This part of her was maybe just under the surface and now as the “ferns unfurl” this new, not submissive side of her is being discovered. On the other hand, Kenyon also uses phallic symbols. She writes using phallic symbols when she says, “Budding leaves/ push past last year’s spectral leaves from the tips/ of the twigs” (Kenyon 7-9) The twigs indicate male imagery and, therefore, this line could be about the man in the relationship. Just like the female this could be about a

The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much

In the novel, “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, the seasons develop actions and characters in the story. The story takes place at an all-boys boarding school in New Hampshire during World War II based off of the author’s previous experiences at a boarding school. The two main characters, Finny and Gene, experience character development alongside different seasons. In written works, seasons are commonly used to symbolically represent a change in the character’s personalities. The nature or setting of the story is used to specifically evolve Finny and Gene in seasons such as the summer, autumn, and winter. Each season change also generates an entirely different mood.

The thoughts and emotions that occur in connection with water are triggered by the lake, and they help Ruth choose transience over any other form of existence. When water floods Fingerbone, the boundaries are overrun, exposing the impermanence of the physical world, and the world’s own natural push towards transience. Water shifts the margins, warning us that the visible world only shows us part of the whole--or perhaps even a mere reflection of a false reality. After the fantastic train wreck in which Ruth’s grandfather perished, the lake sealed itself over in ice, changing boundaries again, while it concealed, like a secret, the last traces of the victims with the illusion of its calm surface. The lake, a source of beauty and darkness, life and death, is “the accumulated past, which vanishes but does not vanish, which perishes and remains” (172). Water carries the symbolic possibility for rebirth– the flood causes the graves in the town cemetery to sink, “so that they looked a little like…empty bellies," suggesting that the dead were born into the receding waters (62). As water and death are so pre-eminent in Sylvie’s consciousness, in dream, she teaches Ruth to dance underwater, to live a life of transience to be

The theme of the novel is that everything is not what it seems. This was demonstrated when the author wrote “I didn't know there was a sketch on my painting. I flip over the paper, to see what dad has written on the back. Theres the date, 5 years ago. And the words Eloise, Les Deux Chemins. Wait. I don't understand”(Friedman 158). This quote demonstrates the theme because she thought the skech was of her but it was really something else. The sketch was of her secret sister Eloise that she did not know she had. When Summer found out that the painting of what she thought was her for the past 5 years was actually someone else she was shocked and she was also upset with her dad for not telling her.

As she is developing, she is tantalized by the societal norms he represents. She is ready to give up the backwoods (a symbol of herself) for all he (a symbol of society) has to offer. Convinced of that, she sets off to find the secret of the elusive white heron and in order to find the heron, she had to climb to what was literally the top of the world for her, the top of the pine tree. The world from the top was different than the city and it was different from the woods at ground level. From the top her perspective about the world changed, it was vast and awesome, and she understood her place in it more than before. She understood it to mean more than to sacrifice her own self for the gifts this man had to offer that were tantalizing but incapitable with her personality and true self.

It is present in the beginnings of the story that Andy is naïve and very innocent when it comes to her feminine nature in general. As the story progresses Andy continues to push away the general labels and actions that define a young female, and her women sexuality. She thinks to herself as her mother’s top falls in the ocean, “The nipples like two dark eyes,” this statement emphasizes and encaptures Andy's continued mask and neglect of her feminine side and nature that frankly embarrasses her; making her feel uncomfortable and disgusted. Andy’s father is more than appreciative of Andy’s masculinity, and seems to embrace it rather degrade

Few metaphors she used in the story for this part is “ He has a bright look, having reaped fruits, blooming. He stalks around sure shouldered and you have the feeling he's got more in him, more stories to tell. For a girl each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time”. She mean that boys in a way guys don't care as much about things but for girls they do. Boys have a hard time expressing them self. Girls are more open at times about things. Most relationships now a days with teens there's a disconnect at times with the pair because they both want different

The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a novel full of symbolism which reveals much of the deeper meaning in the story. Within each narrative segment there is often a symbol that helps to add meaning to the text, and the understanding of these symbols is essential to a full appreciation of the story. These symbolic elements help the reader to make a connection between Edna’s world and her eventual awakening. Throughout the novel there are a huge number of symbols but three of the most meaningful symbols used are birds, houses and the ocean.