Summary Of To An Empty Page

Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.

In the poem, by Emily Dickinson, the speaker conveys multiple literary devices to show the complexity of the death of her friend on “The last night she lived.” The speaker utilizes juxtaposition in the first stanza in order to show an extreme pain towards the idea of death yet treat it as an understatement. Another emotion the speaker conveys through diction is how inevitable the death of her friend is, how she can do nothing about it other than be with her by her side. In the third stanza the speaker utilizes imagery when she talks about one room being filled with death and the other of those who will live. Lastly, the speaker facilitates diction to convey the jealousy for the woman who has died and no longer has to deal with emotions when she says,” A jealousy for her arose.” All of these emotions and actions all contribute to the complex attitude the speaker portrays in the poem.

The poem itself is discussing a man's journey from birth to death and how all around him life is interpreted by material possessions. At the beginning of the first stanza, the sentences have been made very short and simple, as if to demonstrate the thoughts of a new born child. The first voice that the baby hears when he is born is Bobby Dazzler, one of Australia's first game shows. The very first thing that the baby

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

The title of the poem, “An Echo Sonnet To an Empty Page, is a symbolic representation of the echo being the force that drives the ‘voice’ of the poem to do activities the poet never dreamed of. The empty page represents the speaker’s life but it would not be empty as it is if he listens to the ‘echo’ telling him to do what his timid self would never do. The overall synopsis of the poem is about these two ‘speakers’ which are the ‘voice’ and the ‘echo’ which sets up the structure. The voice symbolizes the timid man who is afraid to plunge into his own life because he fears the future and consequences of his own morality. On the other hand, the echo symbolizes the poet’s alter ego as it answers the questions the voice asks in a way that drives the voice to take a certain prospect in life. In the first line it quotes, “How from emptiness can I make a start?” The echo answers back, “start’ which shows that the echo’s response is not as harsh because it is the step time of starting a new page in his life. It continues by quoting, “And starting, must I master joy or grief?” Then the echo replies, “grief.” This symbolizes that it is a very sincere answer because it is not blindly trying to trick the poet but exist to give answers to life. When it gets towards the end, the voice asks, “Then are you glad that I must end in sleep?” and the echo replies, “Leap.” This may be cruel by the echo but it shows the reality of life because humans need to realize at one time they are going to

The poet uses many metaphors, repetition and morbid diction to illicit the response I had to this poem. Firstly, Butson compared the emotions and internal struggles of a

In the beginning stanza, the speaker’s use of personification reveals the tone of a grim and melancholy existence. “A ball will bounce, but less and less. It’s not/ A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience./ Falling is what it loves” (lines 2-3). The speaker can be compared to the ball which begrudgingly bounces back time after time. This can be viewed as the speaker’s own perception on his stance in life. The speaker’s boredom

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

The poem talks about the life of an individual and how you should

This is another example of the common symptoms of depression. Dickenson feels as though she is losing her sanity, and she is mourning the loss an it’s importance to her through the expression of the funeral ceremony. As I read this stanza, I imagine the racing thoughts, which have been burdening Dickenson’s mind, have now come to a halt. She is thinking nothing, and is feeling nothing. Her mind is so empty of thought, that all she can hear is the beating of her pulse (like a drum) in her ears, and she loses all feelings and all sense of control. She is no longer thinking, no longer feeling, she is simply existing. This feeling of depression I would compare to the victim sinking into a hole of despair in their mind, unable to escape and unable to feel. No longer have experiencing life or emotions as they did prior to sinking into the misery of depression, of your mind being empty, leaving her entire existence feeling

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

The song opens with a boy who has experienced a continuously tedious repetition of trying to become assimilated to the society that rejects his identity. Being disillusioned from not receiving any result from what he considers a worthless land, becoming emotionally eroded and misperceiving death to be the only resolution to being set free from his burden of laboring: a ‘perfect persona’ that he cannot embody. However the author continues to transition from life to death and pivoting towards the desire to live again, coming to a realization that he is not yet beyond the point of being desensitized to death and accepting of it. Both poems express a similar theme of change, from life to death, and of family and depression during their endeavours to becoming a ‘better

Death of a loved one is a phenomenon that one cannot comprehend until it is experienced first hand. In Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem, “Reuben Bright”, the theme the narrator portrays is that the death of Reuben Bright’s beloved wife is an unbearable pain that ultimately changes him and his life drastically. Robinson creates this poem as a traditional fourteen-line sonnet separated into three stanzas. The first two stanzas are quatrains, and the last stanza is a sestet. The poem uses iambic pentameter rhythm. This rhythm puts stress on the second syllable; each line has ten syllables and five iambic feet. In the opening stanza, the reader is informed of

I think that the poet is trying to tell us to live life to the fullest

Throughout the poem, W.D. Auden did an exceptional job incorporating the several examples of figures of speech. By including these devices, Auden drew deeper connections to the overall themes of death and love with the readers. For example, “let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” is an illustration of personification (Auden, 5-6). Auden personifies an airplane to mourn over someone and scribble in the sky. Both human like characteristics suggest that the speaker wishes for everyone to know that his loved one has passed, so that everyone can mourn over the deceased, like the speaker. Another example of this is shown through a series of metaphors in lines 9-12 “…my North, my South, my East, my West,/ My working week and my Sunday rest,/ My noon, my