Eugenio Montale's Life

This metaphor is comparing the actual birth of her son to a dangerous journey, which is saying that he was fearless and that the speaker was expecting a very successful life journey for he son. This makes the boy’s death feel even more tragic because the reader gets to see how the speaker felt towards her son and what she expected his future to be like. The second metaphor presented in the poem comes about when the speaker is describing the moments after the boy slipped off the bank into the water and got taken by currents:

Steven Herrick’s verse novel “By the River” is very successful in conveying the significant ideas about human nature. He uses key themes such as grief, environmental influence and coming of age to explore these ideas. To convey the themes Herrick uses multiple techniques such as imagery, repetition, personification and positive and negative influence throughout his text.

Although this is a short poem, there are so many different meanings that can come from the piece. With different literary poetic devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism different people take away different things from the poem. One of my classmates saw it as an extended metaphor after searching for a deeper connection with the author. After some research on the author, we came to learn that the

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 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 speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

In stanza four, “there is still some water left over” alludes that the friendship of the persona and their company will endure and the strength of it will be enough to “refresh them”, even though their time is limited. Harwood comments on the use of the water motif in “Lamplit presences”; “In “At Mornington”, elements of the past, present and future are used in images of water…the first source of the flux of life: the water of the infinity of death”. The concept of the water motif alludes to the ________ of death and rebirth, and of the transitional stages of life. At the beginning of the poem, water represents the innocence of childhood, toying with the childish belief that life is infinite, displaying the persona as a child being saved by her father and tossed amongst the waves; “…and was caught by a wave and rolled/ like a doll among rattling shells/ and I seem to remember my father/ fully clothed, still streaming of water/half comforting, half angry”. Towards the end of the poem, the water is seen as a method of redemption and death, depicting the persona introspectively alluding to their acceptance of death; “…and when I am seized at last/ and rolled in one grinding race/ of dreams, pain, memories, love and grief/ from which no hand will save me…” This central motif of water, and its

In this poem the poet uses many techniques to engage and hook the audience. Dan Ashlin expresses how the ocean has a life of its own through personification, an example is “it dreams, it mopes, it stretches”. I appreciate how the poet has used verbs in this technique as it positions me to feel like I can relate to human emotions, movements and

However, the poem has fluidity despite its apparent scarcity of rhyme. After examining the alteration of syllables in each line, a pattern is revealed in this poem concerning darkness. The first nine lines alternate between 8 and 6 syllables. These lines are concerned, as any narrative is, with exposition. These lines set up darkness as an internal conflict to come. The conflict intensifies in lines 10 and 11 as we are bombarded by an explosion of 8 syllables in each line. These lines present the conflict within one's own mind at its most desperate. After this climax, the syllables in the last nine lines resolve the conflict presented. In these lines, Dickinson presents us with an archetypal figure that is faced with a conflict: the “bravest” hero. These lines present the resolution in lines that alternate between 6 and 7 syllables. Just as the syllables decrease, the falling action presents us with a final insight. This insight discusses how darkness is an insurmountable entity that, like the hero, we must face to continue “straight” through “Life” (line 20).

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

Insignificant droplets of water plunging to the ground, gradually elaborating into a system which proclaims its existence with such scintillation and momentous significance, the river. The river that carries the same inexorable rate which we live our lives by, parallels to the current of an unstoppable river. Shifted to different directions by the different obstacles encountered, the river finds different routes to get to the destination it desires and life mimics its nature as many avenues close and others open. But the river carries on and does not pass through the same obstacle twice, it does not struggle or brawl the happenings opposed to it, it simply takes another path and learns from its mistakes. The river symbolizes life. In the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The river plays a significant role on a reflective surface which redirects his actions into the eyes of the protagonist, Siddhartha.

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

significance of this section in the poem is the underlying relationship between what the narrater

This poem opens with an extreme and vivid simile, “The bright wire rolls like a porpoise” (line 1). This beginning not only grasps the attention of the audience, but the image intensifying language that Kooser has chosen

The poem, “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” by Emily Dickinson is a collaboration of fear and intrigue. The poem is presented through a young boy as he makes his way through cool and damp grassland during the afternoon. The issue the young boy must deal with is the unwelcome encounter with a snake. From the first glimpse of the slithering snake the tone of the poem is set: an uneasiness mood followed by persistent fear. The combination of external conflict and dexterous imagery create the atmosphere of this poem.