Guilty: Poem Analysis

Without even needing explanation, these lines burn with the fact that if given the choice of dying or to continue living in enslavement, the outcome would be death. This has no happy tune. It in no way should be misunderstood as gratitude for the life which

I used to be proud of who I was. I used to be free, but I’ve fallen, slowly stripped bare of all I was and could have been. I resent them, those who gruesomely ripped me from my haven and shackled me beneath their feet. I resent the world for abandoning me in this hell, leaving me to suffer. I resent who I have become, a puppet, used only for their entertainment. The devil only grows within me, plaguing my mind during the sleepless nights. Feeding images into my mind. Images of their blood splattered across the walls of their beloved blue and red (tent). My teeth sinking into the fatty flesh of their neck. The horror painted on their faces as I gleefully avenge the loss of my sanity. And I detest myself. I loathe the satisfaction that I feel fantasising about their murder. I fear myself, and what I have become under their control. I yearn for the days I spent in my

In the introduction of the song the culprit questions his life and the choices he has made. But the truth is that we cannot close our eyes and forget about our actions; evil or good. We must deal with the consequences

A strong masculine rhyme consisting of a single stressed syllable “My Tongue is generations dead, My Nose defiles a comely head;”(5-6) gives a weight to these lines and provides rhetorical emphasis. It creates a break by bonding these lines tightly to each other. Because it is a perfect rhyme, it sounds a bit cutesy and childish, so it creates levity to contrast and enlighten the theme of death. The eye rhyme, “For hearkening to carnal evils My Ears have been the very devil’s”(7-8) creates more dissonance and thus disjunction in the reader. This irritation allows passage back into a state where it easier to empathize with the devil and evil. “More furtive then the Hand in low And vicious venery-Not so!”(11-12) exemplifies an imperfect or partial or approximate or slant or pararhyme which supports the theme of deception and dissent articulated by the words, “furtive”(11) and, “Not so!”(12).

That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence But could not,—nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust (Millay

“Her very words,/ and despite our pride and passion we believed her./ So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web--/ by night, by the light of the torches set beside her,/ she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years/ she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme…/ we caught her in the act… she

“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse……… ………… Come, thick night, and pall thee in the

In stanza 1 of “A Poison Tree,” William Blake opens his poem by “ I told my wrath, my wrath did end.” The speaker tells of how they fail

5. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of

In the second stanza in the first three lines “ I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.

God, I’d never meant to kill him. I had never meant to ever use the pocket knife in my purse nestled between a few tubes of lipstick and my wallet. I never knew that the feeling of guilt was an entity, wrapping its arms around you and smothering you until you drowned drowned drowned. If the guilt didn’t drown you, it was the tears, causing a catch in your throat and a stinging in your orbs that later reflected in angry red scars. There’s a pile of my own hair on the ground beside me as my scalp burned, my back resting against the bathroom tub, ignoring the screaming fist on the door. No one should ever see a monster like me, not now, not ever.

By now the victory has worn off, and I am left with both an overbearing feeling of guilt and exhaustion. While in the catacombs, I remember Fortunato saying, “I shall not die of a cough." At the time, he didn’t know how right he was because, in the end, I would be the sinful soul to wrongfully kill him. Day by day, I wake up to a black and white world, even the sunrise has lost its wondrous glow. My mind has led me to try and find a solution at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. Yes, the liquor helps me sleep through the night, but I always wake up the next day recounting how I wrongly handled my jealousy and anger. The weight of burden that I carry on my shoulders is almost unbearable some days. Now, every time I walk down the street, I feel that everyone that looks at me knows what I

The author, Plath, begins her poem with imagery that serves to be both complex and contradictory— she evokes “purity” as an inanimate object that must be able to purge all existence of myriad sins. Continuing the poem Plath remarks, “the aguey tendon, the sin, the sin” (line 7) in order to indicate how the “fires of hell,” which should theoretically be able to burn her clean and pure being, are unable to achieve in doing so. Then, adding direct emphasis on how fire has been depicted through multiple ways, the author uses repetition in the lines that consist of, “love, love, the low smokes roll from me like Isadora’s scarves… anchor in the wheel” (lines 11-13). Love has been duplicated in order to echo “the sin, the sin” in the previous stanza and this instantly enables the reader to notice the speed of the changing metaphors that Plath has incorporated within the few lines; this change is similar to a catastrophic difference, such as radioactive materials to Greek mythology. This shift neutralizes the feverish poem into a gentle and calming idea of simply freeing all sins. The original concept of accomplishing purity through the burning fire then shifts to a rather complex idea of the author’s personal difficulties that also involve the world and its natural disasters. In Plath’s view, “they [the smoke] will

Alliteration also adds to the song-like quality of the poem and makes is seem more harmonic sound. "Burning bright" (line one), "distant deeps" (line five), "what wings" (line seven), "began to beat" (line eleven), "dare its deadly" (line sixteen) and ”he who" (line twenty) all include

The repetitive, compulsive thoughts continue on in stanzas six and seven, but this time the speaker begins to narrow in on her target. She says the following “And