Johnny's Poem 'I Look Into The Mirror'

The poetic devices I used are alliteration which is when all the words in a sentence start with the same letter, I used ‘Breathe basketball battle to beat.’ When people read this line I want them to think of someone trying their absolute best when they are trying to play against their opponent. Secondly I used onomatopoeia when I said The ball bounces on the floor, boom, boom, boom. When I used this line I wanted people to think in their head of a ball bouncing slowly on the ground. Lastly I used a simile when a compared the bright lights to the sun. When people read

The universe is created for society to cherish all God’s creations; it could be anything to admiring nature to loving all animals. The expectations for the world are difficult to maintain, so unfortunately, society often leads to major destruction. There is unnecessary homicides, animal cruelty, toxic waste in the rivers and many more heart-wrenching actions that deteriorates the world. As a society, we have to turn a negative into a positive, but firstly, we have to change ourselves before we help others. Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”, exposes all of the humanity issues and suggests that we should fix the world by recognizing our flaws first. The theme of the song is about self-improvement and imagery, tone and repetition are the poetic devices that are used in the song.

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 second stanza shows that there’s no emotion reflected to the character’s mood when everything is blank in the mirror.

describing the characters and objects throughout the poem and in creating the atmosphere of the

1. What do you notice about this poem? (where is the repetition...remember this from Module 2 on speeches). What is different about the free verse of this poem and the rhymed poems you studied in Module 4 with Edgar Allen Poe? When you write your own poems, do you use rhyme or free verse? What I have noticed about this poem is that Whitman continuously repeats the word “singing” as he introduces all of the people, based on their occupation, from all over “America”. Whitman and Poe write about completely different things. I think that choosing between writing in free verse and rhymed depends on the subject that you are writing about. I like writing in both.

James believed that his true self was the reflection he saw in the mirror. He believed the boy there was locked inside. James would play with boy and tell him his problems. Despite this, James hated him. He hated that the boy didn’t feel the ache that James felt. He was free, never hungry, had his own bed and had a mother who wasn’t white.

Johnny Cade comes from a broken home, his dad hits him, his mom does not care about Johnny, the only thing he has are his friends, the greasers. Ponyboy, one of his closest friends, is talking about everyone in the gang and when he came to Johnny he said, “Johnny had it awful rough at home”(4). Johnny unlike everyone else in the gang, except Dally, does not have someone in his family that truly cares for him. This affects him because it makes him upset that his parents do not care for him. If Johnny did not have it so hard at home, he would be more content and joyful, and even less scared. Johnny is a little bothered that his parents did not ask about Johnny so Dally goes on and says, “‘my old man don’t give a hang whether i’m in jail or dead in a car wreck or drunk in the gutter’” (88). When Dally is 10, he gets arrested and is on the streets of New York, which shows how little Dally’s father cares about him. Maybe if his father did care, Dally would be more kind and caring, and like Johnny, more joyful. If Dally’s dad cared, he may still be living with his parents and would not be a greaser. Dally and Johnny are

“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me,” (pg. 115, Wiesel). The author’s message is revealing how someone should be able to overcome their struggles if they truly have confidence in themselves. Being that almost everyone goes through struggles at least once a day, the message about looking pass through the obstacles that seem really hard by thinking that it is achievable. It connects to everyone because of how people go through hardships in their life time varying in their age drawing out the conclusion that everything is achievable if only you believe that it is possible to do.

Ponyboy, Johnny, Sodapop, Darry are all a part of the unruly gang, the Greasers. S.E Hinton is writing these characters as rebellious young men, with a harsh background, who takes their anger and hardship out on gang fighting. These roles play an important part in this book because it shows that even though they nothing physically, they have a heart stronger than gold for each other and others mentally. Hinton use these characters to show prejudice leads to wrong conclusions, violence and oppression because these “poor” young men are getting beat up by the rich Socs who have never felt the feeling of being in poverty. “ You take up for your buddies, no matter what they do. When you’re in a gang, you stick up for the members. If you don’t stick up for them, stick together, make

To start off I’m going to read a section of the poem and find some techniques that Banjo Patterson has used. If you want you can read along on the board as well.

He draws on his own traumatic past experiences as he pieces together Zampano’s pages of the Navidson Record. Johnny’s personal experiences and

Along with this, a vast majority of the rhymed words are negative. He uses negative words to show his slight anger to society because he feels that the rest of the world has to know what they are doing. This ties into “pain” words. Words such as “vile, lies, tortured” are used throughout this piece, and it shows that there is also a sadness in Dunbar’s tone.

In my preparation for this essay I thought that there was going to be very little that I would learn about the elements of poetry. This is not because I am an expert and have nothing new to learn, but rather the opposite. I have never really spent the time to break down and appreciate poetry. One of the reasons I think that I haven’t spent the time on poetry is due to my reading habits. I usually read to gather information and poetry is on the other end of the spectrum. Fredrick Gruber sums this up, “Poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.” (Gruber) Having said all of this though, I did see a couple of things that I could apply to my own writing. I will first start off with some elements of poetry that I