Man’s bold facade cloaks his inner conflict, With joy burying each impurity, But misery and bliss still contradict, Pain unseen, him lacking security, When the chaos and furies are revealed, Happiness inflames all that can destroy, Yet black ashes thicken air through the field, Smothering him with an illusion: joy, He yearns to feast on the fruits of Eden, As they bring satisfaction and pleasure, Though they are false and creations of men To crave happiness is like a treasure, For when joy loses its purpose and place, All the mayhem returns and he must brace.
The human condition is described as the characteristics, both negative and positive, events and situations that compose the aspects of a human being. One of the complexities of being human is finding true happiness. As people grow older, they begin to understand the real definition of being happy and contented. On the way to fulfil true happiness, one starts realizing what really matters and what doesn’t. Christopher Marlowe’s “ The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” shows how the shepherd is trying to get his love to go with him by offering her tremendous gifts. He promises to give her gifts that would please her and to prove that he will do anything for her. On the other hand, Sir Walter Raleigh’s “ The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” basically turns down the shepherd’s offer and explains that material gifts just give off temporary happiness. Both Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh use figurative language to help readers understand the sad reality that all things in the world are temporary and true happiness does not come from gifts and tangible things but from our experiences.
“Vacillation” is a poem by William Butler Yeats that explores the source of joy and how it can only be achieved if one understands what grief is. The poem begins with the speaker using extremities to question what exactly joy is. In the second stanza of the poem Yeats introduces a mystic tree that is half burning in flames and is half abounding with foliage. In the third and fourth stanzas the persona advises the readers to gather all possible materialistic wealth, destroy it, lament over it, and then reflect upon those achievements, as genuine happiness can only originate from the grief one receives from acknowledging their achievements of the past. Through personification, ominous imagery, and the imperative tense Yeats accentuates that
The author’s diction heightens the effect of the contrasting emotions of euphoria and dread because he contends with this internal conflict; ultimately, the sentiment of dread weakens his feeling of excitement. When Douglass finally breaks
“Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”pg. 14 This is a theme in this story telling us how real happiness lies with something greater such as knowledge rather than stuff bought. The tone of this quote is very serious to help the reader understand what he is talking about.
In Marjane Satrapi's word-specific panel about refugees fleeing north on page 89, she indicates the perilous situation of the war through taxis escaping flaming iconography. The bombing of border towns in the Iran-Iraq war forces residents to abandon their homes and belongings in the hope of finding refuge in the northern cities. The foreboding, chaotic scene underscores a period of turmoil in Iranian history. The words of the panel state, “After Abadan, every border town was targeted by bombers. Most of the people living in those areas had to flee northward, far away from the Iraqi missiles.” Satrapi sets the backdrop of warfare with intense, slightly militaristic words such as “targeted,” “flee,” and “far away”. This being a word-specific panel, the graphic
Joy, as Reinke explains, is important to the Christian life though. In fact, he goes as far to say that it should be one of the top priorities. But I had never thought about joy as a fight. Before this book, I had always thought of joy as more of an emotion than an actual state of being. But as I read, it finally began to dawn on me how much of a struggle it is to win joy. It is a monthly, daily, hourly
It is not the differences in humanity that bring division, but the inability to recognize, embrace, and celebrate those differences. In Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, his provocative tone is most potent when he attempts to expose the faults within the Church. Greene also using elements such as the setting of the plot to further progress the plot. Take for instance, the climate of Tabasco is either blazingly hot, or wet and muddy. There seems to be no mediation, only extremes.
Complete contentment, religion’s refuge, and a hunger for happiness all drive individuals to believe in ideas and act upon them. People’s desire to gain resources or feelings that provide a satisfying result and that thirst drives inspiration in literature and characters. Because of this, many things can be defined as happiness and the emotion takes on a more personal definition. As a private emotion, happiness overlaps with religion, in both literature and life, and the morals and security it provides to the individual. Religion evokes a refuge to the broken and many individuals consider this to be happiness. Authors often use this idea of providing protection in their writing to produce sympathetic or comfort for the reader. Trusting
paints a picture of temporary joy and external suffering. This can be illustrated with the
Happiness: an idea so abstract and intangible that it requires one usually a lifetime to discover. Many quantify happiness to their monetary wealth, their materialistic empire, or time spent in relationships. However, others qualify happiness as a humble campaign to escape the squalor and dilapidation of oppressive societies, to educate oneself on the anatomy of the human soul, and to locate oneself in a world where being happy dissolves from a number to a spiritual existence. Correspondingly, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Krakauer’s Into the Wild illuminate the struggles of contentment through protagonists, which venture against norms in their dystopian or dissatisfying societies to find the virtuous refuge of happiness. Manifestly, societal assimilation, familial antagonism, and communal ethnocentrism all catalyze one’s ordained crusade to pursuit the empirical element of happiness.
“Change will result in everlasting happiness” is a common axiom utilized among philosophers to explicate that happiness in life can be affected by the notion of change. In the comparison of two religiously imbued authors, and their written works, the inducement of change is expounded on different degrees of understanding. In the spiritually inclined “The Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Sinners” by Jonathan Edwards, both authors employ individual, eloquent main ideas; although when analyzing their communication of point of view, tone, and imagery, only one is exceptionally compelling at displaying and affirming their crux: Jonathan Edwards.
The lines are spoken following an extended lamentation in Plate 6 by Oothoon in which she ascribes the origins of joy to infancy. Thus, it is over the course of one’s lifetime and under the influence of societal “reason” (personified in the form of Urizen) that joy and happiness are subjugated and desecrated. Indeed, this “accursed thing” is “taught” or learned by Theotormon rather than intrinsic in his nature (7.13). This is important to note because out of this perverted perspective comes the misunderstanding of love that Oothoon delineates in my chosen passage.
One of the things that has always puzzled me is human nature, our joys, fears and madness. The very source of the painful cramps of the soul that we call sadness, and the source of the multicolor soft parade that we call happiness. Those feelings have been with us since we saw the light, and are going to be there until the dark and graceful death decides to cover the light of life with her soft wings. They shape everything that makes us, our face, our expression, our spirit, our minds, our future and our past. Those feelings are what drive us to construct and to destroy, make us love something deeply, or with a little bit of poison (like one
People often struggle to face adversity in their life. In their confrontation of these adverse moments and the many obstacles, people formulate opinions about the unhappiness that stems from this. In the world of English literature, authors take this opportunity to express how the evils of the world lead to human suffering and misery through their literary pieces. These authors include John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson. In Paradise Lost, An Essay on Man, and Rasselas, respectively, each author presents his own ideology of the origin of this suffering and how one is to overcome this unhappiness that comes as a result of this suffering. Milton uses the Fall of Adam and Eve and his understanding of Theodicy to express this idea. Both Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson take Milton’s elucidation of worldly evil and the possibility of humanity finding happiness when all is said and done and they expand upon it.
calms the mind/ And makes the happiness she does not find” (lines 367-368). Hope, fear, desire, and hate