Symbolism In William Zusak's Death

The color red symbolics all of the colors and how each can have numerous emotions coming

1. An example of a literary device on the story so far is "...And fiends, goblins, monsters, giants....", found in line 27. This literary device is an alliteration, defined as a repetition of an initial sound in a neighboring poem, and in line 27, the sound "s" is repeated.

Simile-“Sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water” (4). This quote makes me think of the main character losing control. In this quote, the water is used in a simile to represent how she feels like she's just letting her opportunities slip through her fingers and she feels like there isn't anything she can do to stop it from happening because much like water you have no way of keeping it in your hands. Diction-“At my feet, the city doused its lights in sleep, its buildings blackened, as if for funeral” (11).

The repetition gives this passage significance and makes it stand out,

Prompt: The novel contains many literary elements and references to different works of literature, how do these convey the themes of the novel?

He constantly decided how cold it was and how he didn’t like to be as cold as he was. Inevitably, the psychological factors wore his mind and soul down to make him only think how cold he was. By the end of his situation, any warmth, whether by the sleep of death or fire, was all the man could think about. Without any imagination to focus his thoughts elsewhere, the man helped himself collapse into his final doom.

The novel is narrated by Death, a guy who’s getting tired and bored of his job. He wants a vacation, but sadly no one can replace him. He tries to find ways to give meaning to his job. He is fascinated by humans and colours of the world, and he is curious of how humans are capable of so much ugliness and so much beauty. Death is some way more human than a lot of people.

Page ten, chapter 1, I chose the passage," The race to death had begun."(Wiesel 10) as an important style of writing. This quote is personifying how quickly death reached some of the Jews from Sighet. I think this use of personification, which is the style figure of speech, is a big factor to the text because, it enhances the amount of emotion it makes you feel while reading. In this passage, the use of personification is a major element because it is making us feel the emotion of fear that they all have.

8. What literary devices did the author employ? What purposed was achieved with these devices?:

From this point, he concludes that literature is concerned with symbolic action, that literary or mythological characters are typical, and that the world of poet imagery is “totally symbolic” (p. 75). He then moves to the principle of “literature as a whole” (p. 49): “you don’t just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms a part” (p. 69). Hence there is a progressive element in the study and teaching of literature: as we read more works, we become able to generalize from our experience of literature.

To begin, the speaker of the poem “Thou famished grave” presents a resentful and aggressive attitude towards death. The poem, addressed to a “ famished grave” (1), personifies a grave as a starving beast that can “roar” (2), “gnaw” (3), and has “dismal jaws” (7). This represents death in a negative way because the description of the beast make it seem unpleasant and to be feared. Furthermore, the poem includes words and phrases when addressing the grave that follow the theme of starvation, such as, “famished grave” (1), “Gnaw thine own sides, fast on” (3), and “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey” which emphasizes that the beast of death is starving to take someone’s life. This animal-like aggressiveness adds to the already negative image of the beast. This imagery also shows how the speakers thinks of death since it comes from her words which shows that she sees death in a very negative way. Due to this, the speaker is angry and does not want to give death what it wants, which is to take someone’s life. Additionally, although death is something normally feared, the speaker shows that she is not fearful by saying “I have no fear / of thy dark project” (3-4) when speaking to the grave. She expresses that she does not want to die and her “heart is set / On living” (4-5), which explains her resentfulness towards death. She also understands that death is inevitable as she says, “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey / And thou shalt have me; but I dare defend / That I can stave thee off” (6-8). This shows that even though she knows that she will one day die, she still doesn’t want to give death what it wants and will fight as long as she can

This passage helps to build the themes of power, love, and rebellion by the use of literary devices like diction, punctuation, repetition, foreshadowing, and simile.

According to Kong, “Red in Chinese culture symbolizes ‘luck’ and ‘popularity’ and is commonly used in important rituals and ceremonies…the color red is a vital signifier that is often charged with a special ironic power” (123). Red is often associated with passion and lust, though the latter is true to this film, the symbolic representation of red amount to sexuality as a means of gaining political power within the Chen household. The dining table scene where 3rd mistress arrives fashionably late dressed in a bright red gown shows that she currently holds the power in the amongst the four mistresses.

Death is the main character, as well as the narrator of this story, yet the author provides us with no real description of her other than calling her a woman. Death narrates this tale in a way that leads us to believe that she is almost an omniscient being in the way that she is able to describe the dialogue between the servant and his master, but an omniscient narrator is incapable of being surprised himself or herself and we find this not to be the case in this story. I believe the author intended to do this in order to make Death appear mysterious, yet also familiar to the reader. Once Death is given human elements, like the ability to be surprised, it gives the illusion that one can cheat death.

Quite often Death is portrayed and perceived as dark, ominous, dangerous, and foreboding just to name a few. In this particular drama, death does play a serious role and does possess some of the above mentioned characteristics, but not the stereotypical role associated by many with death; here Death is cast as an obvious servant of God, not the typical servant of evil. Certain uncommon qualities are given to Death in this play as well; Death clearly demonstrates fairness and mercy in his allowance of Everyman to take a companion with him to the grave. Ron Tanner, writing in the Philological Quarterly, illustrates another, borderline, humorous quality in Everyman, specifically Everyman’s negotiation with Death: