Not Waving but Drowning

Essentially a monologue set within a frame, this poem creates two personae. The anonymous author gives a brief introduction and conclusion. The Wanderer, an aging warrior, who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his king. In nature, he finds absolutely no comfort, for he has set sail on the winter stricken sea. Poignantly, the speaker dreams that he is among his companions, and embracing his king, only to awaken facing the gray, winter sea, and snowfall mingled with hail.

Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.

The poem is somewhat ironic in that it talks death and the drinker being ostracized from society, both very cold subjects.

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

Thoughts of drowning run rampant in every man’s mind on that boat. At dawn, the men decided that their only chance is to row toward the distant shore again and swim when the boat finally capsizes.

The author symbolizes the water as transition and spirituality, the lake is symbolized as the elusive badness the boys want so badly. The narrator notices that none of them are as bad as they try to act. After that night the narrator realizes he cannot make it in that life, rather the narrator wants to go to the safety and security of his home and parents.

This poem is like an extended metaphor because it refers to death as being dark like the night time

The fourth stanza reverts itself to the gloomy tone the title implies with the lines, “The cold water is anesthetic and very quick. / The cries on all sides must be a comfort.”(11-13), at a glance, these lines seem to be pure irony. The words used to describe the atmosphere of their final moments arouse the feeling of sarcasm, rather than desire. However, when compared other means of death, slipping peacefully away in the cold could be something to pine for.

The third stanza is addressed to ‘good men’ who regret their choices in life and think of how much they could have achieved, if they had only had lived longer. Poetic techniques used in this stanza are personification, symbolism, repetition and rhyme. In the second line, we see the use of personification when Thomas writes of how “their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”, referring to the ‘good men’. This line paints a picture of how the frail

The tone of the speaker was very sad, cold and lonely for misses his father. Evidence that support that he misses his father can be found in the poem. The second and the third stanza reflects how he feels about the weather and I think he meant the fall season in which he uses a cold tone “the garden is bare now. The ground is cold, brown and old”, he clearly just mentioning the negative sounding around fall. A lonely tone also found in the last few stanzas, when he mentioned that his food is almost cooked “White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame oil and garlic. And my own loneliness. What more could I, a young man, want.”. The part where he said, “And my own

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

In the second stanza, I see that the speaker wonders about what his horse is “thinking” which shows his interests are also in the outside world too, like his horse. He also takes certain pleasure seeing the scene from what he imagines to be his horse’s perspective. I think his horse is practical in nature, he thinks, while the speaker sits there dreaming, watching the snow fill up the woods. He just stands there dreaming, and thinking about his horse's feelings is the one thing that brings him back to reality. Death comes again in the typical image of night, as we’re told this is the “darkest evening of the year.” Also, it can either be taken literally as the most lightless night, or it can be taken as the night of the darkest emotions. I think that it is a combination of the two, a dark moonless winter night in which the speaker experiences some form of depression or loneliness.

The last two lines act as a slap in the face. Every element works toward death, and the speaker almost slips into eternal rest. One can see him, putting the

In “Diving Into The Wreck”, Rich’s well crafted imagery and use of an extended metaphor helps to develop a powerful theme. In this poem, Rich suggests once people go through a traumatic experience they tend to hide behind a false memory they create in order to protect themselves. In order for people to completely heal themselves, they must be willing to go back into the memories they have suppressed. By taking this journey, they can reclaim what beauty was lost and put to rest the damage that was done, allowing for a rebirth of their soul.

     The reason for the speaker’s sudden surge of regret seems to be looming death, for he states in the very first line, “My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree toward heaven still” (1-2). This reference to heaven is the first evidence that the speaker thinks he is going to die. At this point in the poem the references to death or the end of life are rather peaceful, as exemplified by the statement. “But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night” (6-7). Though the words, “winter”, “sleep”, and “night” typically represent death, they do not necessarily invoke a