In the first stanza of the poem, Williams paints a picture of a sea. However, Williams’ beach is not a stereotypical Hawaiian paradise, with ladies tanning in the hot sun, children splashing in the warm water, and floral towels lined up in rows along the soft white sand. Instead, Williams places himself in a beach in Labrador, as suggested by the title. He describes a setting where jagged rocks cast dark shadows in the cold water. Grey waves break against cliffs with crushing force and ice begins to top it’s bottomless pool. Williams uses this scene because it breaks the connotation of a regular beach. He almost shocks people with the image. He makes the reader feel small and insignificant, compared to the magnitude of the sea. He uses alliteration in the third and fourth line, when he writes “about which wash the waters of the world”, to further evoke these feelings. He brings attention to this sentence because the immense size of the ocean, coming from all around the earth. However, although this would typically be considered an ugly scene, Williams describes it as not only not ugly, but even beautiful and surreal. …show more content…
He depicts his body floating in the waves. The words “straining” and “pallors” (in lines 6 and 11 respectively) show that he describes himself as weak and frail. This contrasts to the strong ocean, which seems to almost drown the body. He emphasizes the idea of helplessness and fragility in a place where such power is seen. He depersonalizes himself, speaking about his body almost as if he isn’t in it, but observing it from above. He uses phrases like “this body” (in line 5), “it’s pallors” (line 6), “this straining mind” (line 10-11), and “these limbs” (lines 11-12). This anomalous self awareness adds to the almost whimsical and dreamlike scene that Williams portrays in the
This swimmer is in a race and he wants to win, the author shows us that the swimmer was well trained and ready for this. The author uses many imagery in his poem and it lets us picture in our head what is going on. When you read the poem you picture everything, nothing is a blur and you know what exactly is going on in this poem. To me it was like watching the whole thing in my head while I was reading it, without the imagery the author put in I would understand a thing about what was going on. “He flips, converts, and is gone all in one.
The distinctive experience of power and survival is shown in Kenneth Slessor’s poem, ‘Beach Burial’ The use of colour imagery and similes of the men’s inscription being ‘as blue as drowned men’s lips’ and “vast number of dead sailors” “the blue lips of the drowned bodies” is disturbing as it vividly paints a picture of their lifelessness in the audiences mind. Colour and death is used in the line “the breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions”
Burroughs talks about how the sea is contradictory on its own, in its immensity. It mocks its victims “with the most horrible thirst”, and it smites everything like a hammer, while sometimes caressing like the hand of a lady. The breaking of its waves is violent, yet as it reaches the sands it reminds us of the rustle of a child's
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
The second most important image is the “surf-tormented shore”(line 13) as the speaker himself is standing next to one, and is unable to control the waves, thus becoming a metaphor again for time and life. The unpredictable quality of life and the chaos within his life demonstrate how little he can do to manipulate it as a very inactive verb “standing” is used. In the following lines as he loses the “golden sand” (line 15), the “pitiless waves”(line 22) represent life again as he’s asking God why he can’t do anything to stop these “pitiless waves”(line 22) that he knows are pitiless because they will not stop for him. This extended metaphor conveys the deeper meaning of life that passes by really fast and is just an illusion. These metaphors lead back to the main argument of life being nothing more than a dream, meaning the outer dream, which is what we see is life, and the inner dream, which is what we seem is our memories, and are all just dreams and illusions that we are unable to manipulate.
“Far on the sands” is a reflective poem that emphasizes Smith’s heartache. Smith expresses her feelings of anguish through her interpretation of the landscape. The beautiful image of “The sighing summer wind forgets to blow. / As sinks the daystar in the rosy West, / The silent wave, with rich reflection glows;” (ll. 3-5). should inspire some feeling of serenity. Instead, Smith feels bitter that even this beautiful scene cannot soothe her. She states, “Alas! Can tranquil Nature give me rest, / Or scenes of beauty, soothe me to repose?” (ll. 7-8). The focus on Smith’s feelings of torment when viewing the
The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea has engendered some lively debate in literary circles. Critics have concentrated on everything in the novella from the verity of Rigel's early evening appearance over Cuban skies in September (Weeks 192) to William Faulkner's judgment that Hemingway discovered God while writing The Old Man and the Sea (Bradford 158-62). Yet the most insightful commentary has gravitated invariably toward biblical, natural, and classical imagery in the novel. These images turn an otherwise simple fishing tale into a sublime narrative of human endurance. A reading that examines these images will serve to clarify the hidden significance in
I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea sand.” (Coleridge, 124-127, pt IV). The Mariner assures him that his is not a dead person. The Mariner then goes on to say that, ”The Many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie:...” (Coleridge, 236-237, pt IV) In that beginning sentence he now begins to realize that totality of his mistakes. He is taking in all of what is happening, and is putting together to say in the rest of the sentence, “And a thousand thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I.” (Coleridge, 238-239, pt IV.) “I looked upon the rotting sea, and drew my eyes away… and there the dead men lay.” (Coleridge, 240-243, pt IV) Things are deteriorating onboard the ship, still the Mariner is facing his decision. The author uses the word rotting to symbolize the rottenness of the choice that was made, and the effects that are brought about. The Mariner continues to think about what is happening, and then he says, “O happy, living things! No tongue their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, and I blessed them unaware:...” (Coleridge, 282-285, pt IV) What that shows is that he is trying to fix rationalize what is happening. He then see the true beauty of what he took for granted. After that happened this happened the, “...Albatross fell off…”
He illustrates his belief that he does not need the good luck of the Albatross. He decides to severe his bonds with the universal cycle of life and love. Following the execution of the Albatross, the Mariner’s luck suddenly changes. He experiences the punishment that comes with the moral error of killing the Albatross. The punishment is isolation and alienation from everything but himself. Thereafter, the "Nightmare," the life in death, kills his crew. He is lost at sea, left alone in the night to suffer, and he has detached from his natural cycle. The Mariner proclaims his misery when he says, "Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! / And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony". To the Mariner, nature has become foreign. The execution of the Albatross causes physical and spiritual decay.
I think the artist is able to communicate the bad condition of the ship and its crew is in. The mood of the work is scary and gloomy. The design and intensity of the waves, the changing weather, and the ships in the ocean seem to make the scene come alive. It really conveys a since of naturalism in the painting the way it depicts the environment around the ship.
Hancock states her mother's mind is “festooned with weeds” (18-19) . This quote paints us a picture of her mother's watery mind that has been taken over by the sea monsters in the form of depression. Imagery was used previously when Hancock mentions “Kraken, Leviathan” (7). By doing this, she invited us to visualize frightening sea creatures. This stylistic device helped in depicting the grief and suffering the author, author's mother, and authors husband are undergoing.
To elaborate, the reader can not truly hear what is taking place in the poem, but does get a sense of being able to hear what they are reading. For instance when the speaker says “While his gills were breathing in” (22), the reader can almost hear the fish breathing. The speaker again stimulates the auditory senses when she says “and a fine black thread, / still crimped from the strain and snap” (58-59). Again the reader can virtually hear the sound of the line snapping. The next aspect of imagery that needs to be examined is the sensory imagery. An excellent example of sensory imagery is found when reading the lines “It was more like the tipping, / of an object toward light” (43-44). These lines can give an almost unbalanced feeling to the reader as they conceptualize these words. Imagery is not the only important element used in this poem. As stated earlier, irony is an important component involved in “The Fish”.
The style of writing is quite repetitive; this is a typical trait of Ernest Hemmingway. It gives sense of rhythm to the text. “Anyway, I want a cat,’ she said, ‘I want a cat. I want a cat now,” or, “The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain.” The last quote is beautiful. It is simple and minimalistic. Hemmingway could easily have used many adjectives to describe the sea, but he chooses to use verbs and repetition, to emphasize the style of
The warm breeze of the ocean air flies past my face. The heat of the yellow sun was sizzling, beating down against my skin, tanning and burning it within seconds. Beach goers were crowded around in all directions. Seagulls gliding past the groups of people, scouting for dropped or forgotten food to eat. Their little footprints marking a trail in the sand all over the place, going in a million different directions, searching for their next meal. I take in the exquisiteness of it all, the blue-green waves crashing into the sandy shore, making white foam and bubbles wash into the sea, little boys and girls that are digging in the bright white sand running away from the small waves before they get wet. The beach is a stunning place to be; there's just something about the ocean waves and the sand between my toes that makes me just want to stay there forever.