Suji Kwock Kim's Monologue for an Onion

He is disgusted with the way the gentlefolks are handing themselves around nature, and the narrator wants the reader to picture in their mind the image he is seeing to illustrate his disdain for the gentlefolk in a different manner. Then along with that sees them as cold hearted and conscienceless, as the gentlefolk are able to do such things, as the speaker says,”...without a pang of remorse…” In lines 25-26 the narrator says,” Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you do know.” This sarcastic statement illustrates that by cutting up a flower to comprehend what it is made of , no person can gain appreciation for its simplicity, being its colour and scent are natural. The gentlefolk would destroy such a thing as a flower, which poses no immediate gain by destroying it, the author shows great

Secondly, the author uses word choice to show the speakers overall sorrow. Throughout the whole poem there are word scattered everywhere that describe the general emotion of sorrow, some of those word being “restless” (19), “torment”, and “troubled” (4). These words instantly give the connotation of feelings like despair and sadness. The speaker also uses literary elements such as simile to express sorrow, like when she says “These troubles of the heart/ are like unwashed clothes” (27, 28). Everyday people usually do not pay much mind to unwashed clothes, and usually look at it as something unimportant or irrelevant. When the speaker compares her internal troubles to something that holds little importance to everyday life and is also seen as unpleasant, the readers really get a look into the sorrow and sadness that the speaker is truly feeling. The speaker also uses word choice to help show the readers the true intensity of what she is going through.

The emotions he showed was lonely, upset,sad, left-out. In the poem it says “ sometimes when i’m alone I cry because my heart is torn.” And his message was it feels like he's really trying

Most people would not associate a joyous event and death. For instance, when someone is on a roller coaster, they hang on tight out of fear. The second stanza gives the details of how the father was knocking over pans and shelves. No fun event would require continuous destruction to the house. The reader also sees the mother in a seemingly helpless state as the father continues to damage the house. She seems to be in a state of dismay as her husband carries on his behavior. Her frown shows that his actions sadden her but she is powerless to stop him. One would think that a smile would be more appropriate. This supports the abuse aspect because she would not be frowning if it was a joyous exchange between the son and father.

Once I was able to associate these words to emotions and issues present in everyday life, the poem started to make me feel sad. I began thinking about all of the emotions and feelings that everyone hides as they go about life. For example, how the waitress I see once a week may have an eating disorder, or how the singer I look up to just lost her son, or the businessman who got laid off today. Everyone has their own personal battle that they carry everywhere, at any given moment. This explains why the setting is so plain, since the internal struggles people face affect them even at a bus stop. While each person waits, the waitress may be thinking about how much skinnier the person next to her is. The singer could be remembering when she held her baby. And the business man could be planning how to break the news to his wife. No matter how small, everyone experiences a type of trauma or bad experience, and this poem seemed to show what happens when these emotions become bottled up. No one can help each other because they are so stuck within their own issues. The difficulty helping others reminded me of the idea of having to take care of yourself before being able to take care of others.

Imagine that you are living in Philadelphia in August of 1793. You have fallen on hard times; no job, no money, no family, no home, and the talk of fever is worrisome. Standing in front of Cook’s Coffeehouse, you wander inside. Mattie greets you with a warm smile. You are tired and frustrated with the prospect of no job, and Mattie hesitantly takes you back to the kitchen because you look so distraught. You share your situation with Mattie. Mattie informs you that they recently lost their serving girl, Polly, to a mysterious fever. She offers you the job along with room and board.

From the beginning of the poem, the reader can tell that the tone of the poem is consistent. There is no shift in tone, it’s simply sad and bitter. The father notices the innocence of his daughter and knows that there is bad luck that is coming for her future. The reader is able to see the father’s concern throughout the poem when he says that the “night’s slow poison” will change her. He knows that this issue cannot be changed, so he is doing what he can to avoid it becoming a bigger dilemma. By the end of the poem, it’s easy to notice that the father has become angry about the situation that is brought upon him. In the last two lines, the father decides that he doesn’t want to have children because of all the things he sees in their future, nothing but pain and suffering. His decision is expressed in the way he says “These speculations sour in the sun. I have

The humor and seemingly-comedic personification used in the poem are very different than the theme, and serve as a distraction from the speaker’s pain.

The overt and easy emotional character of men and women is possibly one of the reasons many find this poem so enduringly human. Whatever our weaknesses and failings as humans men and women both are deeply moved by thoughts of home; memories of old love; lost friends; lost youth; and death. Men weep -- Odysseus prodigiously throughout the poem -- the poem is drenched in tears (squeeze text)-- and laughter too. The emotional overtones here are easy and free -- it's an attractive and I think healthy world in that regard.  there are contemporary understandings of human nature that view the capacity for easy emotional discharge as a key to thinking well, thinking rationally. Our intellectual capacities can be stopped up, occluded by, unfinished emotional work. A good cry, a good laugh, a good scream, is just what the doctor ordered. Retentive individuals, cultures, genders, tend to act differently -- irrationally in some areas.

The concept of the hunt in “Monologue for an Onion” is essential to understanding the poem’s commentary on human desire and failure to comprehend the intricacies of life. The heart, skin, and secret core are the three concepts attached to the idea of the hunt that humanity is on. They each contribute a vital piece to understanding just why the Onion is suggesting that humanity is flawed when it comes to their pursuit of happiness and finding life’s true meaning. The heart symbolizes both what is beautiful about the Onion and what is beautiful about humanity. Skin is the essence of the hunt taking place because it is the brush that the hunter has to go through to find its prize. The secret core is the mystery of life itself and

The idea of using an onion to represent your love for someone may be laughed at. However, the onion could metaphorically speaking represent the many layers of love or how love is bitter sweet. Duffy shows how an onion could mean a lot more than invaluable gifts such as ‘a rose or a satin heart’. She shows how these ordinary gifts are just stereotypes or clichés and expresses how she thinks that love should be represented by

The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both

One major difference between the poems are that, the men in “the suitor” show their true selves without a problem. In “the monologue of an onion it is

Yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep, While I weep – while I weep! This is an indirection indication to the main character realizing that he cannot hold onto his loved one anymore. As the poem continues the main character gets even more troubled, when he says in line eight “O god! Can I not clasp them with a tighter clasp? O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave?” This is almost a cry for help, almost like him saying “God I tried to save my loved one, why did this happen to me? Why are they leaving me? I tried to save them!” And then in the last two lines of the second stanza, the character becomes overwhelmed with the pain and I feel almost whispers, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” Fundamentally, allowing him to come to the conclusion that his loved one is gone, but that what he went through was just a bad dream, like everything else he had endured throughout his life.

“On Pain” has some very dark themes. It talks about life's suffering and pain; telling us how much of it is brought upon by one's own self. The first line in the poem says “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” This is telling the reader that the pain of life destroys the world we have built up in our heads which we call reality. In the next two verses, the author explains to us that if we could only ”keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life” then we could find balance in our lives between the pain and joy. If we could only revel in the joy of life as must as we did the sorrows of life then the sorrows would be much more bearable. That is the main message in the poem. It makes a lot of sense that this poem is dark because of the history of the Middle East. The middle east has a dark and violent history so it's no wonder that their literature is dark. This particular poem also has a