Longfellow- Writing Incorporates Religion

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

Another method for one to grasp the trend of culture would be through analyzing literature. The continual strife within America produced two sets of quite distinct styles of literature. One was Romanticism, which was practiced by many Transcendentalists, who believed in the positivity of life and emphasized progress. In reaction

In his poem “The Tide Rises The Tide Falls”, we can see the use of personification as nature comforts a traveler facing death. The seashores are busy throughout the day and night. Many people stroll by including a traveler moving in haste. In a place crowded by modern society the tides continues to rise and falls even when it is filled with darkness, leading up to the traveler’s death. With many different kind of people that passes by the nature of the waves Longfellow writes, “The little waves, with their soft white hands,/ Efface the footprints in the sands,/ And the tide rises, and the tide falls” (Longfellow lines 7-10). In this we can see the use of personification as he says that the waves have soft white hands. This shows a gentle and soothing effect in which nature has to clear the footprints off the sands with their hands. Death is inevitable as shown in a relatable cycle with nature where the tide rises and falls, giving a comfort to individual to understand that death is just a process. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poetry reflects his ideal on nature and its comforting

Who among us has not been shaped to some degree by our life experiences and religious or moral beliefs? The main character in the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neal Hurston is no exception to this rule, and Hurston demonstrates this very effectively throughout the story with the use of symbolism. The deeply religious, hard-working Delia seems cursed with the burden of a lazy and morally bankrupt husband, however she is able to persevere through the trials of her everyday life because of the strong influence of religion on her life. Hurston shows that Delia is shaped and grows stronger due to her religious beliefs time and time again throughout the story; not only through the biblical references made throughout, such as referring to

The Role of Religion in Early American Literature 1) The role of religion played a major role in early American literature. Many different authors form a variety of time period's incorporate religious ideas and philosophies into their writings. A few authors from different time periods that did this were Johnathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet, and Henry David Thoreau.

As days went by in the concentration camp, many begin to lose their faith in religion just like Elie. The book, Night is written by Elie Wiesel, a winner of the Nobel Peace prize. In the book Night, Elie is the main character who is very religious at first. It begins with his family and him traveling to Auschwitz which his little sister and mother die. With only his father and him, they went through many hardships and moving from camp to camp. Unfortunately, Elie father did not survive the Holocaust but Elie did. By the end of the story, Elie did entirely lose his faith in God because he did not celebrate the important holidays, questioned God and his justice, and tries to forget his existence.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the leaders believe that God is obsolete. Morality does not come from religion in the novel it comes from brainwashing. The leaders do not visualize religion as a necessity in a world where science is the basis of everything. If a society has no evident religion, somehow someone will find a form of religion or a Christ figure to praise and believe in. Real societies cannot survive without religion or science. Regardless of what the leaders in Brave New World promote, there is room for both science and religion in society; it’s a necessity.

At the very beginning of the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer is very religious. Moche the Beadle claims that "man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him"(Wiesel 15).This statement by Moche the Beadle sets the tone for the way Eliezer deals with his faith throughout the rest of the novel. Elie starts denying and questioning if their is a God. When the Nazi’s came and took him to Auschwitz. Throughout the novel Elie has struggled to maintain his belief in God.

Although both men are both devout Christians, they have different views. For instance, William Blake wrote his poems in order to teach children the necessity of being in church and accepting Christ as a personal savior. Many of his poems stress how important it is to know God and how their faith can save them from their worries. An example of this is in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" when the little boy had a dream about an angel setting free men that were trapped in a black coffin. Throughout his poetry, Blake uses many nouns to indicate the biblical meaning of something. For instance, in the poem "The Lamb", he uses the lamb as a metaphor for Jesus Christ to show that he too was a humble lamb. This metaphor showed that Jesus is close to us humans by using the word lamb to describe both children and Jesus Christ. However, in Wordsworth's poems, the topic of religion is seen through a more naturalistic view. In other words, William Wordsworth viewed that in order for religion to be truly appreciated it must be in nature where God truly is. This view is seen in his poem "We are Seven". The setting of the poem takes place outside of a churchyard in which the narrator and a little cottage girl are discussing her family members. Wordsworth did not use his poetry to show the importance of going to church or being a Christian like Blake did, however, he did use children to show that they are the ones closest to God. In Wordsworth's poetry, the child is what is able to be free in nature, and since nature is where God is that meant that the child was the closest to God. Not only were children used to show the importance of religion to Wordsworth but is also shown through the capitalization of some of the words throughout his poems. Words such as Boy, Girl, and Creature were all capitalized to show that God created all things, and these nouns were capitalized to show that God was

Romantic Hero Essay Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882) defined, what is considered today, the true Romantic hero. He associated the Romantic hero with unique characteristics. These characteristics were not found in any other type of hero. In his poem “A Psalm of Life”, Longfellow defined a Romantic hero is while the protagonist in his poem “Excelsior” gives an example of a Romantic hero. According to Longfellow the Romantic hero must be a nonconformist, a man of action, must act in the present, and above all contribute to society.

O Powerful western fallen star! O shades of night-O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeare’d—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! (Whitman 7-10) By repeating “O” throughout the elegy, it creates a sense of rhythm throughout the free verse without creating a constant structure. The repetition of “O” emphasizes the importance of the word, and enacts Whitman’s misery on death. The sound “O” also resembles the sound of wails from grief, correlating to Whitman’s first notion of death, questioning his relationship with it. Because it is a pastoral elegy, Whitman incorporates a thematic imagery of death to address his own grief. One important element he uses is the image of the coffin. It is decorated with “Blossoms and branches green” (Whitman 47), which

In Longfellow’s poem he talks about being afraid towards death. Both Keats and Longfellow change direction of poems and approach death with different mentality. In Keats’s poem line five “When I behold upon the night's starr’d face/Huge cloudy symbols of high romance” which changes the poem to a more soothing and romance of a poem. From that line he doesn't talk about opportunities just about love. But yet it is a depressing part of the poem because he is afraid he isn’t going to meet the love of his life because death will come to him first. Only he seems to be more aware that his time of death will come soon and he is going to take advantage of this chance. Whereas Longfellow talks about not having “passion” or “pleasure” changing his perspective of death. He feels as if he should just give up and not continue to try to accomplish his goals because he is scared of death. He rather wait for death than not try to

Both Gerald Manley Hopkins and William Blake explore the conflicts between one’s opinions and the faith which they devoutly believe. The poems The Garden of Love and Hopkins’ Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord each show the persona doubting the philosophical qualms of life surrounding Catholicism and whether spending “life upon thy cause,” is meaningful. As a child, Blake read the Bible to enhance his reading skills, however developed views correlating to the Swedenborgian church which holds the Catholic church’s views without the institutionalised feeling which Blake despised of in Catholicism. The Garden of Love intertwines his beliefs into the poetry, as depicted with the strong imagery between the vibrant childhood memory of the surroundings in comparison to the older man’s views. However,

American Religion in Long Days Journey into Night               The modernist sentiments throughout Long Days Journey into Night, by Eugene O'Neill, are apparent in many different ways.  Among the methods he used was the portrayal of America's withdrawal from traditional religion and modes of behavior.  He used his immigrant Irish family, the Tyrones, as a pedestal for this idea by highlighting their departure from traditional Irish beliefs and their struggle to form new, uniquely American, ones.  O'Neill did this by repeatedly evoking a drastic difference between his character's conduct and their Irish Catholic counterparts.  He replaced the

To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. That is, he believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they exhibited outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake. Church was evil, as Blake would have put it.