Essay about Morning in the Burned House

“Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666” is one of Anne Bradstreet’s most effective poems. Part of that effectiveness comes from the poignant tension between her worldly concerns, as represented by her household furnishings and her spiritual aspirations.

He uses the brightness of light to show the personalities of the households. The text explains the houses as, “... the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard and where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.” This is demonstrating how little of individuality there is in the people of this city. The author says how it is like walking through a graveyard but there is a little bit of light, perhaps the light is to symbolizing how alive the people are; how joyous it is to live their lives. Compared to a graveyard technically the people are still “living” in this story to where a graveyard people are literally dead. Once they begin to talk about Leonard Mead’s house it explains the amounts of light, “They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of the electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.” The author explains his house as bright but the rest on the city dark concluding this overwhelming idea of how different he is, how lively he is, giving an answer about why he was walking and why in the beginning in the story it was saying how he was the only one walking and that he would choose a route to take and endure this path

“It must have done something to the sky” (14) demonstrates how alienated this house is. There are no trees, no houses, no people, and even the sky doesn't want to look at it because there is something shameful about the house. Stanza five states that there are only the train tracks around the house and even the train tracks, the main mode of transportation at the time of the painting, were empty and no train ever passed by. Throughout the poem the feeling of emptiness is prevalent in the fact that the house feels empty, the house knows for itself that it is vacant and wonders why, much like people do. This poem comments on the emptiness that many humans feel at some points in their lives. The loneliness and emptiness sometimes felt by a person comes from the people around them (or lack thereof) and the situations they face every day much how the house feels alienated because no one is living in

Barn Burning “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner was written in the ebb of the 1930’s in a decade of social, economic, and cultural decline. This story offers insight into the past years for students to learn of the nation and the South. This story shows the racial segregation that took place in these times between the white landowners and white tenant farmers, the blacks and the whites, and the poor white trash class and the blacks. The Snopes’s family was in the social class of the poor, white tenant farmers. The father, Abner Snopes, had to struggle to provide for his family.

Why are children so loyal to their parents, even if their parents do not meet the moral standards of the child? Throughout the text of “Barn Burning”, Sarty seems to have repetitive feelings of grief and despair, yet he hesitates to out his father for his crimes. He hates his father’s crimes and his father’s way of life. Yet, Sarty is hesitant to out his father for his crimes. Mainly because he hopes his father will change, he fears his father will harm him physically or emotionally, and he places a priority on his family’s wellbeing before his own.

metaphors are used to symbolize the turbulence in the house and how rapidly it spreads throughout the house. In line 4, “greasy stains spreading on the cloth”, the ‘greasy stains’ refer to schizophrenia and how it spreads through the family. In lines (4-6) “Certain doors were locked at night, feet stood for hours outside them…” this is a metaphor for paranoia. It could also show how family members would shut themselves off from the rest of the world. The use of diction sets up the tone of anger throughout the poem by using words such as: slammed, shouting, threats, cracking, broken and madhouse. (2) “It had begun with slamming doors..” the use of slamming shows how infuriated the family was and how they took their anger out of the house. (11) “...reconciliations, the sobbing that followed.” Reconciliations

After being crushed with deep sorrow over the death of his beloved Ligeia, the narrator moves into a decaying abbey to leave behind his lonesome house. Although he leaves the exterior of the house untouched, the narrator decorates the interior with strange but lavish furniture. “The furnishings take on the shapes and colors of his fantastic dreams” as he attempts to cope with his loss (Kincheloe). This supports the idea that the narrator would rather live in his own colorful fantasy (like the inside of his house), than engage in the dark reality (as represented by the outside of the house). Losing Ligeia meant the narrator lost his fulfillment in life; which is why his reality is now gloomy and undesirable. Not only does is the furniture an example of dream imagery, the walls of the desolate house also have a dream effect. The moving images on the walls cause the house itself to seem restless and alive. The narrator imagines this because it represents himself; always on the edge of monstrosity with each changing mood. As he hallucinates on opium, his sense of reality and fantasy is put together as one. With each furnishing, a looming memory of Ligeia haunts him as he reminances her during his opium dreams.

For days he stayed there, curled up by the wall. The sun would rise, somewhere, illumine the mouth of his pitiful den, grace the cold rock in front of him with a soft blue sheen, and set again, immersing his life in empty darkness. One day, two, three, he stopped counting, buried his mind in the chambers of his soul where a soft dim warmth still glowed. Waves of grief passed through, turned him over in riptides of hungriest despair, roaring death pounded nightly at his door, and then, hearing no answer, tore away again, letting warm comfort envelop him and soothe his damaged

Every person reaches a point in their lives when they must define themselves in relation to their parents. We all come through this experience differently, depending on our parents and the situation that we are in. For some people the experience comes very early in their lives, and can be a significant life changing experience. In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” Colonel Sartoris Snopes must decide either to stand with his father and compromise his integrity, or embrace honesty and morality and condemn his family. This is a difficult decision to make, especially for a ten year old boy that has nothing outside of what his father provides. Sarty’s decision to ultimately betray his father is dependent on his observation of Abner’s character

The saying, “blood is thicker than water” is a term used to imply that family relationships are always more important than friends. However, at times it may be hard to choose between family and friends based on right and wrong. In the short story, Barn Burning, written by “William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize winning novelist of the American South”(“William Faulkner”), choosing between family and doing what is right for honor and justice is highly expressed. The main character, Colonel Sartoris Snopes, nicknamed Sarty, battles his thoughts of doing what is right or wrong throughout the story. After following the orders of his father for ten years, Sarty eventually decides to make his own choice and go against the pull of blood.

Hayden utilizes diction to set a dark and solemn tone throughout the poem. Like the various examples of imagery, there is also a strong use of underlying symbolism. In the first stanza, the words “cold” (1. 2) and “fires blaze” (1. 5) are used, which introduces a conflict. This is emphasized in the second stanza when the word “cold” (2. 1) is used again, later followed by the word “warm” (2. 2). In the last stanza, the father eventually “had driven out the cold” (3. 2). Yet the father had not ridden the house of the cold air until the end of the poem, which symbolizes how it took his son several years later to recognize the behaviors in which his father conveyed his love for him.

The house is always being referred to as alive, and throughout the story different parts of the house are being talked about as though they are body parts of a human. "Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior," just as a disease or an illness would overcome a human body (Poe 716). They say the house has eye-like windows and are of a crimson red. The house is connected to the family and the family name, because this family is the only family to have ever lived in this house, and the house has `seen' everything that has gone on with the family from the very beginning. As long as the house stays up and strong the family name will remain and continue, but if the house were to crumble the family members in it would die with the house. Because the house is almost like their hearts, and as long as it's alive and well they will stay alive and well, and the family name will be carried on.

“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”(Roosevelt). Memories are a phenomenon that brings both good and bad thoughts of the past back into one’s reality. This comes to show that an individual is a product of her past but is not a prisoner of it, due to it being her history and not her present. Margaret Atwood speaks in her poem, “Morning in the Burned House”, as a child who is reliving her past, although, that is perceived to her as her reality and she becomes a prisoner of that memory. This poem illustrates the message that the past is not one’s reality in that moment; it is history that tends to repeat itself in one’s mind. In this poem, Atwood expresses her thought and message through the specific imagery she uses of the five senses and the fire. Atwood uses the five senses imagery as a way to make one feel as if she is beside the child, reliving that memory with her. She uses the fire imagery as a way to set the tone for the poem, that perhaps something bigger and more life changing happened to the child. As well, Atwood uses the theme of illusion versus reality as a way to portray what is the child’s truth and what is a memory.

In this poem, the narrator opens up with a serene scene of a winter night – or so it seems. Although the narrator describes an externally cozy, peaceful scene, he unveils a discordant heart, as suggested by the restless tone he uses. During this silent night, the narrator watches a piece of soot flicker over the fire: “Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, / Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature / Gives it dim sympathies with me who lives, / Making it a companionable form” (15-19). In other words, the narrator associates himself with

It was three o’clock in the morning. Outside the window, the sky was still dark. There were barely any stars in the sky, and no cloud cluttered. The sky was painfully dark and motionless. Except for the faint light from the moon, everything seems lifeless. In a dark room, there was a girl sitting up on the bed, leaning on the wall beside her. She was looking out the window. Through the window, the girl can see the sky and the top of some buildings, however, nothing special or attractive. But, the girl has been staring at it for almost an hour now, silently and peacefully.