Loss In Gwilan's Harp, And The Last Leaf

Grief is a natural response to a major loss, though often deeply painful and can have a negative impact on your life. Any loss can cause varied levels of grief often when someone least expects it however, loss is widely varied and is often only perceived as death. Tugendhat (2005) argued that losses such as infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption and divorce can cause grief in everyday life. Throughout our lives we all face loss in one way or another, whether it is being diagnosed with a terminal illness, loss of independence due to a serious accident or illness, gaining a criminal record (identity loss), losing our job, home or ending a relationship; we all experience loss

Everyone has a desire, something that they want to achieve or obtain for them. Whether it is ethical or immoral, having desires is almost inevitable. Sometimes these desires make people go through tough times. Tragic occurrences such as death and broken relationships shape the lives of people positively or negatively. In the following essay, “Many Rivers to Cross” and the short stories, “Two Kinds” and “Everyday Use”, the protagonists of these texts struggle to achieve their desire, but because of those struggles the main characters do eventually come to a revelation.

Grief is a key theme throughout Herrick’s novel “By the River” highlighting the suffering and distress from losing a loved one. Herrick explores this theme through the death of Harry Hodby’s mother and his close friend Linda. The

Authors often create texts that share common themes to teach readers importance of certain aspects and hardships of life. Theme may be expressed through an author’s use of rhetorical devices and many other contributing factors such as figurative language and repetition. The essay, “Once More to the Lake” written by E.B. White and the poem “Forgetfulness” written by Billy Collins, both contain a theme of identity loss. In “Once More to the Lake” E.B White connects to a lake at young age and when returning with his son years later is unable to identify himself. In similar theme “Forgetfulness” describes different factors of human life and everyday things being forgotten and lost. Both White and Collins use repetition and metaphors to further push the theme of identity loss throughout the texts.

The short stories “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, and “Marigolds” by Eugenia W. Collier, are all meaningfully connected through peices and feelings that are felt while reading the stories. Each is unique, but they have the same point behind them. All three of the ‘main’ characters in these stories have all destroyed something. Rather it be important to them or someone else.

Gail Cadwell once said “I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures” In Richard Wagamese’s novel, Ragged Company, the theme of loss is developed through the main characters’ physical strength to face the challenges of life with without a sense of fear regardless of the risk of disappointment, their emotional willpower to overcome adversity and their influential beliefs that allow them to endure hardships. The physical death of loved ones affect the five best friends’ ability to comprehend their losses. The emotional tragedies that each character develops have an expressive impact these characters’ perception of the world around them. The loss of spiritually influences how each individual deals with their own hardships and struggles. As a direct result of loss, the five main characters are forced to cope with their misfortunes and survive in modern day society.

Gwen Harwood’s poetry endures to engage readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation. Gwen Harwood’s seemingly ironic simultaneous examination of the personal and the universal is regarded as holding sufficient textual integrity that it has come to resonate with a broad audience and a number of critical perspectives. This is clearly evident within her poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘A Valediction’, these specific texts have a main focus on motif that once innocence is lost it cannot be reclaimed, and it is only through appreciating the value of what we have lost that we can experience comfort and achieve growth.

In the short story “Sea Oak,” George Saunders presents a family that is struggling with life in the poor neighborhood of Sea Oak. The narrator works as a male stripper in Joysticks, run by Mr. Frendt. The story also revolves around Auntie Bernie, who dies, resurrects, and dies again after advising the narrator, his sister Min, and their cousin Jade to adopt unorthodox and immoral means of making it in life. Two main themes that emerge in Saunders’ work are grief and loss that people suffer in life, and how the society teaches to deal with them, including the loss of a fruitful life, lack of wealth and success, as well as death.

“A Rose for Emily,” “A Worn Path,” and “The Lottery” by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Shirley Jackson all have similar writing styles in their literature. In these three short stories the authors all use contrasting nature within their literature to predict the outcome and to learn for the upcoming events in the readings. The authors take subliminal phrases and subliminal symbolic text to have the reader become more attached and understand more of what the characters, setting and theme of the story has to offer. Using these three stories the reader of this essay will understand and grasp the symbolic meanings in text of each these short stories.

Death by water also plays a large part of Louise Erdrich’s short story “Fleur,” in a much more immediate and dramatic way. The story opens with a drowning in the same way that The Piano opens with a journey by water; the drowning, however, is not only

The grief comes from lost love must be recovered by love. In crow lake, the author Mary Lawson portrays a young successful scholar, 26-year-old Kate Morrison, always is bothered by her anguished past. The innermost struggle not only leads she can’t directly face the problem existing between her and her older brother Matt for years but also becomes an obstacle of the further relationship with Daniel, the men she loves. But all the problems are concealed elaborately before the invitation letter received. While the peaceful life is broken by the invitation coming from Matt’s son, her nephew Simon, Kate suddenly has to face all the problems she doesn’t want to face

Short stories have fully developed themes but appear significantly shorter and less elaborate than novels. A similar theme found in short stories “Winter Dreams” written by Scott F. Fitzgerald and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner included the social and environmental influences that encouraged and controlled the character’s life and decisions. In “Winter Dreams”, the main protagonist-- Dexter-- fell into a fixation over a young, whimsical blueblood, Judy Jones. His obsession led him to believe that Judy Jones reciprocated his feelings for her, leaving him bare and mortal-- despite prior beliefs. Following her father’s death, Miss Emily fell into a dark obscurity due to the pressure and compulsion of having to carry on the honorable family name. While using a unique point of view (first person peripheral), “A Rose for Emily” followed a mysterious and desirable woman named Miss Emily as her hometown tried to understand her peculiar ways and began to find her disgraceful. By comparing and contrasting these two literary pieces, a similar organization-- including the writers’ purpose and themes-- should become clear. By using literary devices-- such as point of view, dramatic irony, detail, and figurative language-- Scott F. Fitzgerald and William Faulkner conducted two short stories similar in aim and reasoning, probable for contrasting and comparing elements within the parallel writings.

In Ngugi wa Thoing'o's “The Return” and Bao Ninh's “A Marker on the Side of the Boat”, the naïve protagonists are subject to events that will shape their character. Whether it is returning to a changed home or to where one experienced much trauma, they are different characters than they were earlier in both the story and their lives. Some things experienced in both of these short stories are losing a loved one or returning to where a hardship occurred, these things help to develop the theme of coming of age. In the stories, the protagonists develop in the theme of maturing through the hardships they endure and the adversity that they face. One of many hardships that is shared between these two stories is when the protagonists lose somebody

Loss, wastefulness, and regret are not words that anyone wants to hear. While reading the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Babylon Revisited” and of Ernest Hemingway in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” these three words seem to connect to two stories together. In these stories loss, wastefulness, and regret intertwine in the stories to better explain the struggles that people have to deal with.

In contrast with Bishop’s poem “One Art, ” the author does a perfect job negating the impact the feeling of loss has in a person. All throughout the poem Bishop tries to convince herself that losing is part of life. Her argumentations are irrational in some sense, with her tone she is trying to be indifferent to what she is feeling deep inside. In the last stanza, she changes her tone and admits that losing the beloved has a profound effect and brings disaster to her soul.