Essay on Sailing Home from Rapallo by Robert Lowell

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

In the two sonnets, “Remember” by Christina Rossetti and “The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the authors address death and remembrance indicating similarities when exploring grieving process but also demonstrate its differences through literary techniques. They both utilized symbolism, imagery, and metaphorical language but showed differences in tone.

The poem is set in a hospital as the persona visits a dying relative. It is mostly focused on his walk through the hospital to her ward, and to her bedside. Throughout the poem, the poet explores the themes of death and pain using the emotions and thoughts of the persona.

Throughout the poem Crichton Smith successfully creates a haunting portrayal of his guilt-laden grief over his mother 's final years and the role he played in her neglect. This neglect is evident in the vivid image of his mother 's home combined with her frailty. Crichton Smith adds to this his own role in failing to rescue her and subsequently emphasises the extent to which he is plagued by regret.

Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the first

Also included in the poem is the image of a young child being embraced by their elders. This shows the gap in life and the aging process that we go through. When we are young we are carefree, but as we age we hold on to the ones we love because of the knowledge that we will one day have to make our departure. Out of this idea of death, Whitman shows that this is a natural part of life and

Langston Hughes also uses characterization in this poem. The poem is a narrative on a specific character. Hughes describes in detail the background and interests. As soon as he leaves the classroom he starts thinking about his assignment and what he is going to write. This speaks to the characters drive and strive for his education. His race is also his struggle that allowed him to move to the north. Hughes shares what he loves to do, what he is passionate about, his knowledge, and his choice of music. His identity is clear and never questioned. Hughes knows who he is and what he is capable of accomplishing.

He explains that their love is so strong that it will survive the distance. One example he uses to compare being away from each other is death in the literal sense. The main theme of this poem was the love between husband and wife, with a metaphorical theme to death. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contains both themes, their roles are reversed. Death is the main theme continuing throughout the poem and is personified.

The power of the poet is not only to convey an everyday scene into a literary portrait of words, but also to interweave this scene into an underlying theme. The only tool the poet has to wield is the word. Through a careful placement and selection of words, the poet can hopefully make his point clear, but not blatantly obvious. Common themes of poems are life, death, or the conflicting forces thereto. This theme could never possibly be overused because of the endless and limitless ways of portraying life or death through the use of different words.

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.

Many of Robert Frost’s poems and short stories are a reflection of his personal life and events. Frost’s short story “Home Burial” emulates his experience living on a farm and the death of two of his sons. Frost gives an intimate view into the life and mind of a married couples’ struggle with grief and the strain it causes to their marriage. The characters Frost describes are synonymous, physically and emotionally, to his own life events.

The poem by Emily Dickinson entitled the “The Last Night That She Lived” is about the death of a family member. The death was rather expected as it seems. The reason we know this is because the whole family was already gathered in order to be there when she passed. Dickinson was labeled as a dark and morbid writer in her time. In the poem “The Last Night That She Lived,” we get to experience the sadness, grief, and even spirituality of Dickinson’s feelings when dealing with her experiences of death.

In the third stanza, Arnold uses imagery and metaphors to depict the setting, which further set the mood of the poem. The first three lines portray and insinuate prospects of a visual image. The last five lines appeal to the auditory sense in the form of despair. In the first part of the stanza, Arnold characterizes the sea as divine.