Sestina Figurative Language

When we are still children, running around the playground with our friends, our goals in life and what we want to be when we grow up are much different than later in life. We want to me mermaids, princesses, astronauts. When we get older though our values change. Instead of going after what our heart really wants to do, we go after the jobs that offer the biggest paycheck. Our culture’s minds have been warped and bent towards the desire to have a bigger house, a cooler car, and fancier clothes. We put what we think is right in our minds over what we truly love to do deep down in our hearts. The novel Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, is about a sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, who has been given his death sentence. He reconnects with his former student and current sports journalist, Mitch Albom, to try to remold his mind like soft clay to resist the pull of money and fame that today’s society provides. In this story, the author uses descriptive language, figurative language, and repetition for effect, to capture the theme that money will never

In the short story “Interlopers” by Saki uses figurative language to help explain the situation and let you know what is going on. The author uses figurative language to help the reader understand the story while it is being narrated in third person. In the story it starts with the two neighbors arguing about land and blaming the other for poaching. The narrator says“As boys they had thirsted for one another's blood”(Saki p.1). In the story the author says they thirsted for another's blood but they don't actually thirst for another's blood. The author said that to over exaggerate the story and to make it sound more intense. The author use figurative language to make the reader stay interested in the story. Later on in the story the neighbors

In “La Bamba” by Gary Soto, the symbols in the text point to the theme which is that worrying can cause things to not go as planned but things can take a turn for the better. One of the symbols in this text is how people view Manuel. This is a symbol because throughout the story Manuel constantly worries about how people view him and what people think of him. In the story Manuel worried about not messing up and making sure everything went as planned because he wants to impress people and make people think he is cool. When people used words such as “funny,” “crazy,” and “hilarious” to describe his performance and when people enjoyed it everything took a turn for the better. Even though Manuel thought his performance was bad at first but when other people told him that they liked his performance, he liked it too.

In this poem, symbolism is used to help reader’s find deeper meaning in the little things included and show that everything comes back to the father’s fear of the child he adores growing older and more independent. “In a room full of books in a world of stories, he can recall not one, and soon he thinks the boy will give up on his father.” This sentence makes a reader assume that the story the five year old so

Foreshadowing is another main element. One example appears when the grandmother is talking to Bailey stating that she would not take her kids anywhere that there is such a deranged killer on the loose (O 'Connor 276). Later as the grandmother is talking to John Wesley, she asks what he would do if he ever did run into the Misfit. He replies, ‘I’d smack his face” (O’Connor 277). As the family is riding, they see a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it “like a small island” (O’Connor 278). This simile represents a sense of foretold death.

In the beginning, there is very little light. It is almost dusk, and the speaker describes the smell as “dark” (7). Towards the middle and end there are various lights: lanterns, lamplight, fireflies, lamp (9, 11, 13, 20). This change over time depicts the storyteller’s significance to the speaker, because she brought enlightenment to his life. In this poem, light is a metaphor for knowledge, while darkness is a metaphor for ignorance. At the end, the old wise storyteller, who is the embodiment of wisdom, “was the lamplight” (20). In contrast, the two boys, who are young and ignorant, are “in one shadow” (21). The juxtaposition of light with darkness shows that the speaker and storyteller are opposites in their insight. Additionally, it is strange that she is a light before them, yet they are still shadowed. What is blocking the light from them? This metaphor illustrates that it takes time for people to become sage like their elders. As the speaker says, adulthood is “childhood’s aftermath,” which means that the knowledge people gain in childhood will lead them to be wise adults such as the storyteller

In Tangerine part 2, (November 10) the theme is that hard work leads to success. The book shows many literary elements to support this theme. Paul and his soccer team showed them being resilient till the end. On page 194, it shows great use of imagery and figurative language, it says, “When I pulled them back on they were smeared with blood,”. Which is an example that Paul gave it his 100%. In addition to, it states on page 191, “Tino, who was closing in on the Lake Windsor fullback with murder in his eyes,”, Also, it says on page 188, “flattened that Gino kid’s but,”. These two examples show how the author is exaggerating and is using figurative language to describe more in detail of what is happening. The symbolism of this book is Paul’s

“How can a man who is warm understand a man who is cold?” (Solzhenitsyn, 19). In the book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, uses few complex sentence structures and abstract nouns because he believes that the reader wouldn’t be able to understand the conditions of the Gulag, just like how a man who is warm can’t understand a man who is freezing. Solzhenitsyn way of writing is the opposite of how Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, narrated his story. Instead of trying to make the reader understand how horrible the environment was in the Gulags through complicated sentences and figurative language, he narrates the story realistically.

. . should burn and rave at the close of day”(2). This means that old men should fight when they are dying and their age should not prevent them from resisting death. Another example of personification in the poem is “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”(8). This line personifies the men’s frail deeds by saying that they could have danced. This means that the potential actions of the men could have flourished and contributed greatly to their lives. The metaphor “. . . words had forked no lightning. . .”(5) is about how the men had done nothing significant with their lives. They had not achieved anything great or caused a major change. The simile “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” is about how even grave and serious men will fight against death for as long as they can. Another notable example of figurative language within the poem is “. . . blinding sight”(13). This oxymoron details how the men can see very well and it is very obvious to them that they will die soon, but they know that they can control how they will leave this world. There is an abundance of imagery within this poem, a few examples of which are “. . . danced in a green bay”(8), and “. . . caught and sang the sun in flight”(10) . These examples of imagery are both appealing to the sense of sight by using descriptive words such as “Green” and “danced” in the first example and words such as “caught” and “flight” among others. The second example also appeals to the sense of sound by

A sestina is a fixed form of six stanzas that end with an envoi, an address to an imagined or real subject. This particular form of “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop takes you through one particular afternoon of a grandmother and her grandchild. Though the poem itself is ambiguous, Bishop foreshadows the grandmother’s demise throughout the entirety of the poem. The five words almanac, grandmother, tears, stove, and house are used at the end of each line for the six stanzas and envoi. They are clues as to figuring out the meaning of the poem. However, they are not the only clues as symbolism is the main usage of figurative language. The speaker is assumed to be Elizabeth Bishop but even she has written the poem in a way that reflects that of an outside observer to obscure the poem even further.

In the sestina, “Sestina”, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, uses a tone to give the impression of living life to the fullest and seizing the time that is before you. The audience of the author, Swinburne, is to the reader themselves but possibly to those near death as well. It is a rather difficult poem to understand and does use rhyme which is different than a standard sestina. The lexical repetition word choice helps the reader understand the meaning of enjoying and taking advantage of every moment of life; this includes both day time and nighttime as well as your youthful, full of energy, days as well as when you are older, and possibly near death, to always find something in life to concentrate on and enjoy

Simile: Simile is a literary device that uses the words “like” or “as” to directly compare two objects, people, places, or concepts in way that exemplifies their meaning or creates a new meaning through differences between the two nouns being compared. The secondary object being compared to the main object is used to draw a resemblance or similarity between the two objects, giving the context a greater meaning and understanding. Example: “Of a carriage, left you like a finch / Wrapped in its nest of linens wound / / With linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box / / Tonight the wind is hover- / / Hunting as the leather seats of the swings go back / And forth with no one in them / / As certain and invisible as / Red scarves silking

Simile: “I heard a cough as if a thief was there” sparks a whole line of thoughts about what has happened to the author’s children. This shows about how anxious the author is when her children cough and preciousness of her children. Another line also shows the importance of her children, “It’s midnight and my life is laid beneath my children like gold leaf” to the author, her children is her treasure, something that she values to most in life.

They should glare and glow “like meteors” and not like dim candles. In the last stanza, the speaker refers to his ailing father, on his deathbed and asks him to weep fiercely, as this serves as both a blessing and a curse for him, for his heartbreaking death, and if possible a heroic survival. The poem ends with the same two lines being repeated, thus the poet instructing his father to not submit to death but “rave” and rant and fight it every step of the way.

In Emily Dickinson’s lyrical poem “There’s a certain slant of light” she describes a revelation that is experienced on cold “winter afternoons.” Further she goes to say that this revelation of self “oppresses, like the Heft of Cathedral Tunes” and causes “Heavenly Hurt”, yet does not scare for it is neither exterior nor permanent. This only leaves it to be an internal feeling, and according to Dickinson that is where all the “Meanings” lie. There’s no way for this feeling to be explained, all that is known is that it is the “Seal Despair”, and an “imperial affliction”. These descriptions have a rather powerful connotation in showing the oppressive nature of his sentiment. There is an official mark of despair and an imperial affliction