Summary Of Similes By Armst Bryant

Written by Ernest Lawrence Thayer in 1887, Casey at Bat is a narrative American poem and story, telling of a baseball’s game’s final half-inning between the home team Mudville, and another team. The poem has a main character named Mighty Casey, the team’s star hitter. Ultimately, Casey loses the game for his Mudville team at the end of the poem because he strikes out. Casey at the Bat’s theme is baseball with its tone being both exciting and suspenseful. Its tone also begins calmly, getting eager towards the middle, and then disappointing at the end. The purpose of this paper is to identify three figurative languages used throughout the poem. The three figurative languages that will be defined is metaphor, personification, and hyperbole.

In “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, the author uses simple, but powerful similes as a gateway to the reader understanding the setting of the story. “The Pedestrian” is the tale of a lone wandering man walking down the street at twilight. The man is then accused of being a criminal and taken back to his home, also known as “The Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.” The similes used in the story help readers fully understand and see the setting of “The Pedestrian”.

In the poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” the author, Henry Longfellow, uses figurative language, and sound devices to create suspense and tension within the poem. The way he uses the figurative language and sound devices makes readers want to keep reading to find out what will happen next. In Longfellow’s famous poem he uses devices such as rhyming, rhyme scheme, and repetition to allow the readers to feel fear and push them to the edge of their seats. Some figurative language the storyteller uses is personification, and similes to compare objects, and fearful moments to something more dramatic.

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.

Imagine yourself shipwrecked upon an uninhabited island. The experience of being stranded will cause you to pose many questions, with the possibility of only one of those questions to being answered. One answered question is: what is the purpose of literature? Northrop Frye, within “Motive for Metaphor”, uses the analogy of being within an uninhabited island to examines the purpose of literature by connecting it to the purposes of language and their use within the different worlds and levels of the mind Frye sees present.

Have you ever read something and wondered why someone wrote it? Many authors write about things that are personal to them, yet they seem to relate in some way to everyone who reads it. Authors are able to relate to their readers through the use of things like metaphors. This allows the reader to interpret the story to fit their own life and experiences. In the poem, “I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon,” the author, Stephen Crane, utilizes the use of a metaphor in order to relate to every reader and to teach a lesson about having confidence in one’s beliefs.

One is simile from the book Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis is on page 16-17.

“Punishment for such serious sexual crimes could be severe. Thomas Granger of Plymouth, a boy of seventeen or so, was indicted in 1642 for buggery "with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey." Granger was hanged; the animals, for their part in the affair, were executed according to the law, Leviticus 20.15, and "cast into a great and large pit that was digged for the purpose for them, and no use was made of any part of them” (Cox 1). Present day and Puritan communities use physical consequences as a result of unlawful actions. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore use similes and atmosphere to show that physical consequences result from unlawful actions.

Night goes through the journey of Elie Wiesel, a Jewish prisoner, in concentration camps. In the concentration camps, Eliezer fights through the internal and external struggles along with his father. Some of the struggles they go through include the cruelty shown to them. In order to fully understand Elie’s pain, Wiesel uses literary devices such as similes. Night provides similes to further demonstrate compassion and cruelty throughout Elie’s time in concentration camps.

Another technique that Bryant uses in “Thanatopsis” is setting. This entire poem takes place somewhere in nature. However, when both aspects of the poem are looked into, the poem may also take place in the speakers mind. The speaker is using nature as a way to think about death. In a way, it seems as though nature will help make death more understandable. Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” contains specific details: Go forth under the open sky, and list/ To Nature’s teachings, while from all around--/ … /--Comes a still voice”(14-17) There are many key words in this single thought. “Go forth under the open sky” means when one dies and ascends upon heaven. Another key phrase is “Nature’s teachings.” It is what nature has to teach about death to help the speaker understand the concept of death. Also, it sets the theme for the entire poem. In lines 16 and 17 when

William Cullen Bryant was well known for writing poems on nature, and he beautifully shows us the Romanticism view of one of their key themes. As with numerous other poems from the Romanticism Period, Bryant uses the imagery and ideas of a woman to convey his love for nature. An example of this trait is in the poem, “Thanatopsis”, Bryant’s most famous work. The first three lines of the poem shows both his love for nature and that he is going to use the image of a woman for the rest of the poem. “To him who in the love of nature holds/ Communion with her visible forms, she speaks/ A various language; for his gayer hours” He expressly says

In The Hills of Zion by H.L. Mencken, various stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies are used such as similes and imagery. Mencken uses similes in order to show how religion made the people of the hills fully convinced in their religious rituals. This can be seen when Mencken and a woman went to a religious gathering in which the priest spoke and ”Words spouted from his lips like bullets from a machine-gun”, and a woman “bent backward until she was like half a loop” in addition to “bouncing all over the place, like a chicken with its head cut off.” Such figurative language is used by Mencken in order to display how religion made the people of the hill appear unusual as well as fully convinced in their religion. Furthermore, various

Claude McKay was a Jamaican poet who brought hopefulness to the oppressed during the Harlem Renaissance in his poem, “If We Must Die”. McKay experienced the hardships that colored people were going through because of their race and nationality. He believed that the people should fight for what they believe in, even if it seems like a hopeless cause. McKay uses the concept of dying with dignity to persuade his fellow African-Americans that are being oppressed to fight for what they believe in.

   In response to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, I have just one question. Why all the similes? There isn't a single page in the novel that doesn't display this annoying literary device. Everything is "like this" or "like that." It never ends! Similar to decoding a secret message that isn't difficult to understand, but nevertheless tiring due to the overwhelming amount of messages, the novel is frustrating to read. The following analysis acknowledges Chandler's creativity in developing his main character, Philip Marlowe, with his usage of simile. However, the excessive style of the novel creates a dominating force that ultimately leaves the reader unfulfilled at the end.

Attention to figurative language when analysing a text is critical as making judgement on a text can be undetermined when taking in the literal sense, perhaps the text when taken literally means nothing or has a shallow and uninteresting meaning but when figurative language is taken into consideration a deeper new meaning can be taken from the text. The aim of figurative language first and foremost is to force the reader to imagine what it is the writer is trying to express and to explain the concept in an interesting way. This language is not supposed to be taken literally and through comparisons to another concept, a deeper undertone is revealed to the reader. Two of the poems in which make use of figurative language are “Mary’s Song” by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes “The Thought Fox”