Essay On Byatt's Inpiratory Moment For Possession

The narrator in Louise Erdrich’s The Strange People is characterized as a doe, a “lean gray witch” (i, 20) and finally, a “shadowy body.”(i, 25) Her own actions ultimately trigger this transformation, and are further emphasized through three jarring shifts within the poem. Despite portraying the narrator as prey in the beginning, she is not faultless. By placing double meanings on the word “burning,” (i, 6) it allows the self-destructive actions of the narrator to be evident. Also, by juxtaposing the cold and warmth described in the poem, the reasoning behind the doe’s self-destructive actions is explained, and ultimately paints her in a more nuanced light. Even so, her self-destructive actions highlight the consequences resulting from her attempt at self-preservation. She transforms into a “lean gray witch” to save herself, and yet it destroys her self-identity. The poem exposes the bleak yet nuanced consequences of destructive desires and self-preservation, and how even when necessary and justified, leads to the unfortunate loss of one’s identity.

In Patricia Seed’s Ceremonies of Possession in the Europe’s Conquest of the New World: 1492-1640, several different “possession methods” were displayed from the different groups that conquered the new world. Ranging from artwork, to astrological maps, to a reading of submission, each group devised their own technique when claiming a new land.

Robert Browning uses descriptive details to portray a theme of how darkness rises from warmth and happiness by showing us on how a man’s love for someone makes him turn to savagery. The narrator of the poem has very deep feelings for his lover, but he only thinks of himself and he never wants the girl to leave his side so he does the unthinkable. In the times that the girl was not home or was not with the narrator then there was coldness and darkness, but when she was with the man then the house would “blaze up, and all the cottage warm”. She created hope and the narrator needed that constantly, so he realized that his love was too strong to put on hold everyday when she would leave. The fact that the narrator had to watch his lover leave everyday

In both, Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” the protagonists, Young Goodman Brown and the narrator experience a journey into the subconscious. Both stories have an overlap that blurs the boundaries of reality and fantasy. It is truly the supernatural aspects of these two stories that force the protagonists and the reader to delve into the realm of the subconscious and to scrutinize good versus evil and real versus imaginary.

Since Romanticism often places emphasis on the importance of emotion, Romantics may use dream imagery to display the overflow of abundant feelings. Such is the case with Edgar Allen Poe’s “Ligeia”. While Poe’s themes are usually Romantic, “Ligeia” uses dreams to “[dramatize] the romantic's disenchantment with a world drained of its power to arouse joy and a sense of elevated being” (Gargano 338). The fine line of fantasy vs reality is blurred and bestows multiple versions of reality as the narrator slowly descends into madness. Poe’s use of dream imagery is prominent during the descriptions of the house, the narrators reminiscences of his first wife Ligeia, and his opium induced hallucinations. The use of this literary device demonstrates how the loss of Ligeia messes with the narrator's sanity and sense of fulfillment in his life. These dreams enable him to revisit Ligeia“out of [his] own self-consciousness” (Lawrence).

This man suffers, as many have, from the pangs of a pierced heart. He has been left alone after the death of his only true infatuation and has undoubtedly found that, contrary to the old adage, it is not better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. The “rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore” (95)- in fact a type and shadow of Poe’s own young bride, who at the time of this poem’s publication was suffering from fatal attack of tuberculosis- was no longer at his side, and our story-teller wonders if, however impossibly, he would ever clasp her to himself again.

The seclusion endured by the narrator causes a dramatic change in her mental state. Her surroundings are now coming alive within the walls around her. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (736). Initially, the figure witnessed around the walls was merely just the shadow projected from the narrator creeping around the paper. Now this shadow is taking on not just any life form but ironically the form of a woman. Just like the narrator is trapped within the barred windows of the mansion, the woman is trapped within the patterns of the paper. This parallel view is transforming the narrator’s identity within the walls of the paper. However, this obsession begins to heighten. She begins to see the woman through every window in the bedroom. She appears to be creeping not only around the walls but now outside in the garden and along the

The nature of their illnesses also reflect the gender roles of the era. While Roderick’s illness amplifies his senses, Madeline’s disease, described as “a settle apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person”, dampens hers, reducing her into an ‘barely-there’, almost ghostly, individual. Roderick is able to isolate himself from the outside world to spare him from the torture

The two Browning poems, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ were written to convey to the reader how women were treated in that era; as possession, as assets. Both of these poems can be read from different points of view and they also both are what is

Many Elizabethan bedsides were haunted from “the terrors of the night”. Back then their ghosts were nothing like the pasty blobs we call ghosts now. Theirs were quite gruesome. Ghostly visitations were claimed to have been very unpleasant. Not only this, but they claimed it cast them into a state of spiritual confusion.

In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue, "Porphyria's Lover," the love-stricken frustrations of a nameless speaker end in a passionate, annihilating response to society's scrutiny towards human sensuality. Cleverly juxtaposing Porphyria's innocent femininity and her sexual transgression, Browning succeeds in displaying society's contradictory embrace of morality next to its rejection of sensual pleasure. In an ironically tranquil domestic setting, warm comfort and affection come to reveal burning emotional perversions within confining social structures. The speaker's violent display of passion ends not with external condemnation, but with the matter-of-fact sense of

This abnormal phenomenon significantly affects the narrator and robs him of his rest. The faint sound of a spirit will only add to his inability to sleep through the storm. Distraught and scared by these events that he cannot rationalize, he decides desert his efforts of sleep and attempt to walk them away. As the narrator’s efforts to suppress his fears fail him he decides to read a story to his old friend Usher, by paranormal activity, the sounds that are written in the book begin to occur parallel in the Usher residence. He finds himself agitated “by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant…” (Poe).

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate;” Poe’s palace has suddenly been invaded by the “evil things,” that can easily stand for macabre thoughts and unpure desires. He then pauses to “mourn” over the “desolate” landscape that’s never to return to its once “stately” place in the first stanza. The “glory” soon disappears from the palace, that is now nothing more than an old past memory that is “entombed.” The mind has now become troubled and amoral to the narrator a place that can never regain its past life.

The general public knows Robert Browning as the writer of “The Pied Piper” a beloved children’s tale, and the hero of the film The Barrett’s of Wimpole Street. Most recognize him for little else. The literary world recognizes him as one of the most prolific poets of all time. However, his grave in Westminster Abbey stands among the great figures in English history. At his death at age seventy-seven, Robert Browning had produced volumes of poetry. He had risen to the heights of literary greatness. Robert Browning received little acknowledgement for his work until he was in his fifties. “He had been following a blind

Robert Browning’s poems “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess” depict a mastery of the dramatic monologue style. Said style contains a narrative told by a character’s point of view that differs from that of the poet.The character’s monologue consists of them discussing their particular situation that they find themselves within, this is meant to convey their internal information to the reader or audience. This in turn allows the reader a glimpse into the personality of the narrating character. Within “Porphyria’s Lover” and My Last Duchess” these monologues are used along with poetic devices to develop unique male personas. Between these two personas there are evident differences in class and within each class social issues arise within each work.