Grieving In Doris Smith's A Taste Of Blackberries

Bharati Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief,” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” both illustrate female character’s who struggle when they face the tragic loss of their children. In their short stories, Mukherjee and Lahiri both incorporate the journey of grief a mother faces, however both texts offer a vast difference surrounding each woman’s attitudes toward losing children. While Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief” and Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” both highlight the overwhelming grief that surrounds the loss of children, Mukherjee’s story allows the interpretation of a protagonist holding onto hope, and finding the strength to accept her tragic loss and move forward. In Lahiri’s story, by contrast, no real acceptance

In “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet is inundated in indecision and internal struggles over the virtues and shortfalls of her abilities and the book that she produced. As human beings we associate and sympathize with each other through similar experiences. It is difficult to sympathize with someone when you don’t know where they are coming from and don’t know what they are dealing with. Similar experiences and common bonds are what allow us to extend our sincere appreciation and understanding for another human being’s situation. In this poem an elaborate struggle between pride and shame manifests itself through an extended metaphor in which she equates her book to her own child.

From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tells of his naïve, consuming world of blackberries. Because the

Sonja Livingston is a talented and unique young writer who uses an unusual structure in her work. Structure is the form that an author’s writing takes; how the sentences are formed and how they are placed together to create the work. In Ghostbread, her award-winning novel, Ms. Livingstone uses a freeform chapter structure that, while roughly in chronological order, is not necessarily linear. In chapter 3, Ms. Livingston speaks of her father, “I had no father” (6), and then in chapter 4 she speaks of a childhood friend, “My favorite person should have been Carol Johnson.” (7) Through the course of the book, Ms. Livingston chronicles her life from birth to age 18, but it is not a strict telling; she meanders and explores events as they are remembered, not bound by a rigid timeline. The structure of her work is unconventional and through that unconventional structure she gives the reader an experience that is more like poetry than a conventional novel. Towards the end of Ghostbread, Ms. Livingston contemplates the effect that her miscarriage and the revelation of her sexual activity will have on her relationship with her mother with this passage, “Sex. Pregnancy. Men. What were they to her? Failure? Freedom? Power? Paths she followed, but did not prescribe. At least not aloud.” (212). The use of partial sentences and imagery are elements commonly associated with poetry and it gives

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

Someone will always die and they will have a funeral, but can you imagine losing someone close to you? How about you brother? In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” there are many situations when death is among Doodle and his body. James Hurt wrote the story the “Scarlet Ibis” about a boy that was suppose to be a miscarriage and even the doctor said that he would not survive. He lives on with his brother to help him through his adventurous life. The brother is very ashamed that his young brother came to be disabled and he teaches his to walk. All of this James Hurt creates through his writing. Throughout essay there will be multiple ways the author is expression the tone. Through the use of figurative language, imagery, and symbolism, James Hurst creates a Mournful tone in his short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”.

In the story “Marigolds,” the author, Eugenia Collier, uses voice elements to support the poignant tone of the story. In the story, Collier includes a metaphor that evokes a feeling of sadness when her father cried. Lizabeth heard “[her] father, who was the rock on which the family had been built, was sobbing like the tiniest child,” (Collier 404). This reveals that Lizabeth’s father is the strong foundation that built the family and gave it confidence, love, encouragement, and a role model. Although was the foundation of the family, his wife worked every day making her the breadwinner. The metaphor eventually destroys Lizabeth confidence because her dad is crying and that gives her insecurities that something is going wrong. This relates to the poignant tone because the metaphor evokes the feeling of sadness.

Written in 1980, Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating is a poem which creates a strong metaphoric relationship between the tangible objects of blackberries, and the intangible objects of words. The speaker of the poem feels a strong attraction to the sensory characteristics (the touch, taste, and look) of blackberries. The attraction he feels at the beginning of the poem exclusively for blackberries is paralleled in the end by his appetite and attraction to words. The rush the speaker gets out of blackberry eating is paralleled to the enjoyment he finds in thinking about certain words; words which call up the same sensory images the blackberries embody.

The most merciless aspect of life is that it continues on even in the lives of significant others even after the death of the loved ones. In the novella ‘Kitchen’, the theme of alleviating the pain of losing family members is well illustrated by the author, Banana Yoshimoto. The novella, written in 1988, tells a story about a young girl, Mikage, who heals from the grief of her grandmother’s death, through and by helping her friend, Yuichi, to recover. The author seamlessly expresses significant changes in the characters, from despair to restoration, by depicting how people may look for comfort in such unusual ways.

Reading this book has been interesting and heartbreaking experience. A Year of Magical Thinking, a journey through the grieving process. While dealing with the death of her husband, she is confronted with the sickness of her only child. This book touches me, and it makes me think of what would happen if my loved one died. This paper is a reflection of my thoughts and feelings about this woman’s journey that has been explored by book and video. I will also explore the author’s adjustment process, and how she views her changed self.

John Dunn is a creative poet. Dunn wrote this poem to his girl when he was leaving the country. Love is the main point of the poem. Dunn uses conceits to explain what love is. In the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Dunn, there are three messages his poem give to his women.

Once the reader can passes up the surface meaning of the poem Blackberry-Picking, by Seamus Heaney, past the emotional switch from sheer joy to utter disappointment, past the childhood memories, the underlying meaning can be quite disturbing. Hidden deep within the happy-go-lucky rifts of childhood is a disturbing tale of greed and murder. Seamus Heaney, through clever diction, ghastly imagery, misguided metaphors and abruptly changing forms, ingeniously tells the tale that is understood and rarely spoken aloud.

In the poem Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney, the narrator depicts his greed for summer’s blackberries and how that greed leads to disappointment. Heaney adds meaning to his poem by metaphorically comparing blackberries to pleasurable things in our lives and that they should be savored in the moment rather than stored. The author’s choice of blackberries in the summer has a subtle significance. Because blackberries only ripen in the summer and because they spoil easily, he is able to convey how precious these blackberries are and why the narrator lusts for them. The narrator also addresses the audience during the picking of the first blackberry: “you ate that first one and its flesh was sweet.”

Each of us is defined to some degree by our suffering. When we experience a great loss, the grief can be overwhelming. We can become crippled by our emotions, plagued by questions, our faith is challenged. “On My First Son” by Ben Jonson describes a father’s tortuous conflict caused by the death of his firstborn son. John Milton searches for answers and self worth after he becomes blind in his sonnet [When I consider how my light is spent]. Both poems are powerful messages of pain and affirmation that address our universal need for connection. Each work is as relevant today as it was when it was written in the seventeenth century. Although they differ in form and the nature of their losses, each poem asks the same question: What is

Many times when discussing guilt when it relates to grief people have been known to “lose themselves”, meaning that they act differently than how they have in the past when they feel guilty. In Ava Dellaria’s book “Love Letters to the Dead,” Laurel moves schools after her sister dies and has trouble fitting in. However, she eventually makes friends and even dates an older boy named Sky who helps her discover who she is after the death of her sister. The theme of this novel is that guilt, especially survivor’s guilt, affects one’s identity.