Essay on Adam's Curse - Everyone's Fate, Everyone's Tragedy

In the opening, she shares her childhood encounters with women in prose with the children’s rhyme “a little girl who had a curl”. This personal anecdote introduces the topic of the portrayal of women in literature, as well as establishes a connection with her audience.

As we look deeper into this poem, the metaphors portrayed throughout the poem stress just how improbable these dreams are in the chance of becoming a reality. Santos describes her imagined runway model as “leggy, outworldly as a mantis” (9). While once again hitting on the imagery, also compares this woman to that of the graceful creature that walks around on seemingly the thinnest legs on earth. Picturing this woman is exactly how every Victoria’s Secret model looks, as she glides up and down the runway, inspiring jealousy in every elegant step she takes. This is the type of image we are portraying to the young women of our generation. No wonder our dreams are being overshadowed by the reality we live in. She goes on to portray “a head/ like a Faberge egg on the longest, most elegant neck” (9-10). She compares the face of perfection to Peter Carl Faberge’s most renowned work, his golden jeweled eggs. How much more outlandish can we get? And yet we imagine this to be how we should look, and spend the rest of our lives trying to

In this stanza, Anne Bradstreet grows even more fantastical in her causticity, using phrases such as “If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes” (99), and she also claims that her unskilled writing is like a rough ore and men’s like refined gold, and announces that she only writes in order to further complement the work of the males of that day and age. This is especially clever on her part, because her level of sarcasm may make men give her credit, but is also somewhat of an inside joke, making fun of the enormous egos of men and how they believe that even acknowledging the talent of a woman would somehow make them less of a masculine

The poem makes it clear that Eve is not the sole person to blame for humanities sin of eating the fruit of knowledge. In these lines, “If any Evill did in her remaine, / Beeing made of him, he was the ground of all;”

“For a poem to coalesce, for a character or an action to take shape, there has to be an imaginative transformation of reality which is no way passive…Moreover, if the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at that moment. You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate, nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is

The first notable characteristic of “Women” is the physical form of the poem itself. The shape of the poem strengthens the ideology of the message Swenson is trying to express. At first glance, the particular image of the poem could be a play on women’s curves. However, once the content is further examined, it is clear that Swenson is using the image of the poem to emphasize what women should be. The poem's structure imitates many

Despite the achievements of women in many different fields, society still attempts to limit women to certain roles. Furthermore, in the poem, women “… are defined […] by what [they] never will be,” (lines 19 - 21); once again, the author claims that women are defined by what they are unable to do because of gender bias. Instead of being given the chance to be influential, they are continually limited to staying at home or doing jobs “meant for women.” Finally, Boland tells the tutor that women “…were never on the scene of crime,” (lines 27 - 28). This serves as a metaphor for how women are never allowed to do important jobs; instead, they are left at the sidelines due to the repeatedly ignored restrictions placed on women by our gender-biased society.

A more disturbing perspective that the poem can take on is that the speaker wants to be the slave to this woman he admires. As mentioned before, the speaker considers the girl as a confidante, but then follows on to say that he wants to undress and take her virginity. “O she’ll give pleasure! in future, no grown man will deny it! But tonight, to me, this chaste girl bares unthinking the delicate blush/Of a most secret landscape, her woman’s body” (9-14). These lines also gave me pedophilic vibes because he calls the female figure “a girl” and it was interesting

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return”. In “The Creation Story of Adam and Eve”, those are the words God tells Adam and Eve when they failed to obey God’s only rule, not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Throughout the story we follow their relationship with God, in the events that began with their creation and ended in their exile. Therefore, in my sole opinion based on “The Creation of Adam and Eve”, the story depicts Adam and Eve’s relationship with God and the underlying meaning of their existence and the oedipal conflict that is portrayed. It suggests that maybe the story is a tale told in order to understand why we exist and our personal purpose as well as to recognize the effects of the authoritarian commands God expressed to Adam and Eve.

Ben Lerner makes an assertion in The Hatred of Poetry, that when people come in contact with poets they expect them to create poems that will bring social unification. He continues claiming that if put on the spot he would be unable to meet this “impossible demand”, because it is beyond one humans possibility. Though when poems are unable to do this people are quick to criticize poetry as a whole, whether it be because the poet failed to create, or the reader failed to understand. This stance comes from his previous run ins with non-poets who have put him on the spot, where he has been unable to meet the expectations of the public. Though Learner claims that criticism of poetry comes from it meeting failed expectations of social change, he is generalizing his one experience, with one person, on all of the critiques of poetry.

“From the sphere of my own experience I can bring to my recollection three persons of no every-day powers and acquirements, who had read the poems of others with more and more unallayed pleasure, and had thought more highly of their authors, as poets; who yet have confessed to me, that from no modern work had so many passages started up anew in their minds at different times, and as different occasions had awakened a meditative mood.” (2) (paragraph 31).

The Apostle Paul sees visions of immense human suffering during the apocalypse, all of which are contrasted against miraculously beautiful images of eternal happiness. Perhaps Yeats is snickering at the Bible itself with all it’s little contradictions as it begs people to believe in it. Or perhaps Yeats is bringing out the fear that underlies Christianity--a fear of hell, of losing one’s purpose, of not being included in the rapture and suffering the consequences. Yeats is clearly mocking Christianity and the idea of a Second Coming--as if people are not already living in a consistent state of suffering and happiness already.

To be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to women’s character and concerns (in contrast to men --- whose essence is to be strong, effective, or competent). It does not take someone in the throes (agony) in advanced feminist awareness to perceive that the way women are taught to be involved with beauty encourages narcissism, reinforces dependence and immaturity. Everybody (women and men) knows that.” This quote means that society makes it that it is each woman’s responsibility to make sure she keeps up her exterior appearance. Never considering how brilliant or sweet natured she may be, she will always be judges on how she looks. I agree on what she saying in the quote, from my own personal experience as a woman I know their are diverse suggestions of beauty, specifically for women. In the quote I sense that it’s immature for someone to value a women based on only their looks, than what they can possess, like their abilities.

“The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned\ Til death has bleached their foreheads to the bone, \ And so with me it must be, unless I prove\ Unworthy of the grand adversity, -\ And certainly I would not fail so much.” (161).