Powerful Emotion in Louise Gluck's The School Children Essay

From the first-time read through, the poem gives a basic understanding of the narrative: a daughter telling the audience about her mother’s struggles

The first two lines “ My father said I could not do it, but all night I picked the peaches” have significantly indicate that her father’s disbelief is the main catalyst that drive her to intensify her determination and to persevere her action throughout the night. In addition, the writer declares that “ all night my hands twisting fruit as if I were entering a thousand doors”. This line has clearly reveals another inciting force which is the writer’s ambition to explore and to have advancements. Due to the writer’s desire to extend her competence and to prove her self-worth, she eventually develops “ a long patience” which strengthen the action that she determined to fulfill . Along with the writer’s aspiration and her view of her father’s doubtness as his expectation of her, she desires to demonstrate her worthiness and dignity by staying up all night and carry out the unanticipated task. The writer illustrates that “ all night my back a straight road to the sky” proves that she persists to endure the mission till the very end. By the end of the poem, the creator displays that the pond was filled with peaches that she picked and it was also “ full of fish and

In remembering her seventh-grade class in 1965, Charlotte recalls how much she and her friends loved Miss Hancock. They were "backward" because they "had not yet embraced sophistication, boredom, cruelty, drugs, alcohol, or sex." Because of their innocence and their sheltered environments, Miss Hancock "was able to survive, even flourish" as their teacher. Charlotte recalls when Miss Hancock read poetry aloud, the class "sat bewitched, transformed," and they were "drugged by some words as some children are by electronic games." This description juxtaposes the end of the short story. Miss Hancock's teaching career no longer inspired the children because they were no longer the broad-minded, influenceable children they once were. Nostalgia eats away at Miss Hancock, especially in the case of Charlotte. Once so inspired by the composure of a metaphor, “grown up” Charlotte, when asked if she still wrote metaphors responded, “oh, I dunno.” Miss Hancock once knew the mesmerizing and transformative power of words; however, as she and her students aged the words lost their power, in turn she too lost power.

In the poems “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, each poet illustrates adults who are providing explanations for children to protect them from the harsher realities of life. In “A Barred Owl”, Wilbur conveys his point that children should be shielded from these harsh realities, through the use of personification and understatements. However, in “The History Teacher”, Collins conveys his point that protecting the students’ innocence is a lost cause, through his use of metaphors as well as understatements. Both poets use similar and different devices to convey their respective points.

In Lynda Barry's essay “The Sanctuary of School” the author addresses the ongoing issue of funding for public schools in America. She is trying to persuade her American audience, such as the school board, and parents, that we need to keep the public schools. Barry is the perfect person to argue the importance of public schools and art and the children who attend them because she was one of those children. She is now a famous cartoonist and author, and she thanks her public school experience for her success. Her essay was intended for the people who believe they aren't important, people who work for school boards, maybe some parents, and the United States Department of Education. In “The Sanctuary of School,” Lynda Barry uses a sense of

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” is a poignant look into the horrid practice of child labor that took place in the mines and factories of 1840’s industrial England. Browning paints such a vivid, disturbing picture that she aroused the conscience of the entire nation. A new historicist perspective into this poem will help understand why Browning decided to take a stand and speak up for these children through her work.

The relationship between a parent and a child can be a complicated, difficult to understand concept. Factors such as complications that occur in the lives of either of the figures, separation from the other, and the protection the parent is willing to give to the child all contribute to the idea of this messy relationship. However, all these factors seem to fall away in comparison to the immeasurable amount of love the parent and child carry for each other, and the strong relationships that last a whole lifetime. In many poems, authors such as Theodore Roethke, Li-Young Lee, and Rita Dove use literary devices such as imagery, tone, symbolism, metaphor, and simile to show the unbreakable bond between parents and children.

The third stanza of the poem expresses the emotional connection between the mother and the child having grown stronger. “O node and focus of the world” (11). Her child is the center of her world. This symbolizes just how important her child is to her, it was become the “focus” of her life. “I hold you deep within that well/ you shall escape and not escape-/ that mirrors still your sleeping shape;/ that nurtures still your crescent cell” (12-13). The “well” represents the woman’s womb that molds and “nurtures” that child while it sleeps. The part that speaks about the child escaping refers to the child no longer being inside of the mother yet always being a part of her. The mother will always have an emotional connection to her child.

Often at times there are many voices in one poem. These voices represent the different views that come from the same material that are portrayed by the buzz that the bee elicit in the hive. The proposal that Collins is trying to exude is that there is never one way to read a poem. The type of approach will vary with reader and who they are, but by having a radical approach it will help to enhance our understanding of what the poem means. Collins wants the reader to feel free when analyzing a poem: “I want them to waterski across the surface of the poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.” As a teacher you try to pummel depth into your students’ minds and push them into the direction of understanding. The speaker declares that the grapple to illuminating meaning and the amount of time where the reader does not understand adds to the worth of the poem. The parallel to the surface of water, where you have not attained the depth even though you know it’s there is important to how much it takes to find the true meaning of a poem. While reading this poem it have the outlook on how poetry places more of aln emphasis on us to be able to pick apart the undisclosed meaning and essentially to be able to pull apart the poem without a fixed structure. By doing it this way it is able to help the audience to build upon skills to help interpret and understand, which substantially is important throughout any source of literature. We

Figuratively, in stanza three, the poem symbolizes the three stages of life: childhood represented by “Children strove” (l. 9), youth represented by “the Fields of Gazing Grains” (l. 11) and the end of the life represented by “the Setting Sun” (l. 12). On the way of her journey, the speaker views children struggling to win in the race in School. She also sees cereal grasses collectively in the field, and at last the speaker perceives with her eyes that the sun is setting on the way of her journey. This stanza gives us a clue of her passing by this world; however the speaker is not able to figure out that she is dead. She simply thinks the sun is setting on a regular basis.

In the first stanza we find the student, who is also the narrator, having gotten his homework assignment to write a paper, is returning home to Harlem. The school he attends is "on the hill" (line 9), and apparently is in a "better" part of town, so he has to travel through the

Imagery is also used morbidly throughout the poem, an example being when the children travel to “the other shore” (5) to get to school. “The other shore” (5) is implying the long journey that the children go through to get to school, and that the separation from their mothers is a great distance in mind, even if it is not in body. The segment also uses hints to being a metaphor for the river styx, which extends Gluck’s somber perception of sending children off to school to being as traumatizing for the mothers as sending their children to their death. Another way that Gluck expresses how important the loss is for the mothers is through extended metaphors, especially through ones that suggest that sending your children away is like sending them off to war. At the beginning of the poem, the mothers are “gather[ing] the late apples” (3) to give to their children, but at the end, the fruit trees that were once full “bea[r]... little ammunition” (14).

The tone of this poem is what makes it so openly interpreted. It can be used as motivation for almost any path one decides to take in life. The verse “Yet knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back” can be related to by anyone who has ever experienced having to make crucial decisions in life. Life is not easy, and it is not worth our precious time to be whimsical in our decision making. Nobody wants to have to backtrack, and this poem portrays that rigorous ‘keep your head forward, shoulders back and your eye on the prize’ mentality that has been part of our culture as Americans for so long. These two very salient lines of the poem also do well to instill an element of mystery and air in the mind of the reader. It is human nature to think what could have been ‘if only I’d done this’ or ‘If that never

This strong metaphor compares the narrator to the elephant who feels their fate is death. The third part of line 4 is the fine timbers that directly relate to the house previously mentioned. The purpose of the house fortifies the idea that what’s inside is of value. The house is nothing without its fine timbers and it is merely for protection and shelter. Just like a pregnant woman is for her unborn child. The fifth line represents the rising loaf like a child growing inside a womb. It is a pun on a familiar saying to pregnancy of a bun in the oven. “Money’s new minted in this fat purse” plays with the idea that the purse has no great value in itself but contains valuable things inside. Line 7 explores the narrator’s feelings towards having a child. She feels like “a means”, as if she is just a way for the baby to be born. As a mother she is just “a stage” and a platform but not a performance. She is “a cow in calf,” where many cows are separated from their offspring and have little to do with their mum. The final lines seem to break away from the rest of the poem and have a tone of darkness. After eating “a bag of green apples” one might feel sick especially since green apples are considered sour. The fruit is also unripe, signifying that the narrator is not ready to have a baby. Another point that can be found is that it is easy to see the resemblance of this line and Eve from the Bible. Eve was tempted to eat an apple and was cursed with the

    The rhyme scheme that is portrayed in the poem is ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH and so on. The meaning of this rhyme scheme is every other line rhyme with one another. For example, line one and three rhyme with each other because line 1 ends with brother and line three ends with mothers and that rhyme with each other. Also, line 2 ends with years and line four end with tears and those two rhyme with one another. This poem is literal because it is straightforward with what is going on the poem from the title and throughout the poetry. The poem is literal with explaining that there are children who are going through a depressed time because they are forced to do hard work and believe that death is the best way out. Child labor is causing the children to not live their life as a kid instead as adult with all the hard work they have to do.