The Bronze Horseman Essay

As she passes the ruins she recreates the pleasant things that had been there. Despite the reasonable arguments that her goods belonged to God and whatever God does is just, there is in the poem an undercurrent of regret that the loss is not fully compensated for by the hope of the treasure that lies above. (84)

Concepts such as compassion, thoughtfulness, and empathy are what people all over the world would seemingly strive for. Often, however, these benevolent ideas of the way society should be, are muddled and manipulated by the reality of the way society actually is. Prince Myshkin, a Russian man who represents the essence of kindness and morality, is thrown into the high society of Petersburg, a society that is obsessed with money, power and reputation. In his selfless attempts to save his companions from their destructive “evil”, Prince Myshkin is in turn transformed and distorted by a superficial and empty society. The title of the book, The Idiot, fits well with Prince Myshkin’s attitude towards human nature and also does well to highlight his status as an outcast; however The Idealist is a title that would better suit the Prince’s thought process and actions.

For my report, I chose to summarize how Brian Helgeland’s movie “A Knight’s Tale” (2001) draws its medieval themes and story from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales: The Knight’s Tale”. Besides the nearly identical titles of these works and the moderately similar storyline, it can be further proven that “A Knight’s Tale” is an adaption of “The Knight’s Tale” because Geoffrey Chaucer appears as a character himself—and a vital one at that—in the movie. Furthermore, just to make certain that there is no mistake among the viewers about who they are dealing with, Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany) even refers to himself as a writer in the movie and points out his very first own work “The Book of the Duchess” in disbelief when some peasants don’t

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

The line ‘driven like stakes into the earth’ is a simile and can be interpreted in two different ways. It can be seen as the fact that man is trying to build a city of impermanence, and the other is the literal meaning of mans crucification of the earth with buildings. Robert Gray also uses contrasting juxtaposition of imagery extensively in the poem. ‘On a highway over the marshland...cars like skulls, that is rolling in its sand dunes.’ This not only emphasises humankind’s assault on nature and the urbanisation that is contaminating natural spaces, but also compares the two landscapes as existing together. It once again forces the responder to visualise the situation, one of which they may be able to relate too and question life’s morals. The poem shows the destructive nature of mans actions, which is an issue in society that is prevalent.

As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.

To start with, the theme of the poem is that water is a necessity to life and is a precious gift. This gift is known as a “Blessing”. To begin with, there is a lack of water in which the poem takes place. Imtiaz starts the poem off strong stating right away how “The skin cracks like a pod” (1). Human skin becomes dry and cracked when it is not moisturized. A pod is useless when it is dries up and becomes fragile because of the deficiency of water. The pod links to human skin because water keeps the skin hydrated and helps the body function. In addition, the villagers in the poem value water. When the municipal pipes explode, “silver crashes to the ground” (9). To the villagers, the water shines like silver. The villagers worship the

When a person is lucky, it does not have to mean that they are fortunate with money. Luck is the chance for things to go the way you want them to go with out having any control over the situation. In The Rocking Horse Winner, Hester, the mother seems to believe that luck is strictly having money, and when there is no money, there is no luck. Hester's idea of luck meaning money brings forth the two ideas of greed and death throughout the story.

Osip Mandelstam was one of the most complex and mysterious Russian poets who wrote symbolic poems in the totalitarian time. The Stalin Epigram is the example of such texts, after which the poet was deported to Siberia. It seems different than his previous poems since it has simple and concise style, which directly express Mandelstam’s criticism of the Stalinist regime. However, the poem contains many conceptual and intertextual citations, therefore, it is the encrypted message that should be decoded by the intelligent reader. Also the images of mountaineer and prison embody the despotic and anti-human regime, where human life means nothing, so it could be sacrificed for the totalitarian goals. The Poem “The Starlin Epigram” used imagery

In Alexander Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” many aspects of the short story have made for considerable debate among scholars.  Pushkin fills an integral role in Russian literary history, and there are abundant research sources to use in analyzing and interpreting his texts.  Pushkin is often referred to as the Father of Modern Russian Literature, but until just recently much of the criticism on Pushkin focused on Pushkin himself as the author, the innovative simplicity in his prose, or the political relationship between Pushkin and the Russian aristocracy.  Pushkin’s personal life was often the subject of public debate among his readers and the Russian aristocracy,

and that he believes them. The poem also translates into how living in the city is toilsome and that the city is unrelenting. On the other hand it shows how the city can be prosperous and happy with the city’s disadvantages. in the second half of the poem it’s telling how nomatter what is wrong with the city, the people are still proud of who they are.

Yet despite all his inherited wealth and connections he shrugs off social norms as he indulges in his sin and poetry, and because of such subversive poems in exiled. Onegin was quite entranced despite frivalities to find love, yet still cynical and poetic by such fate “He was convinced, a kindred creature would be allied to him by fate; that, meanwhile, pinched and glum of feature, from day to day she could but wait; and he believed his friends were ready to put on chains for him, and steady their hand to grapple slander's cup, in his defence, and smash it up” (II.VIII) Despite Pushkin’s Don Juan motifs, he settles down with a young noblewoman, Natalia, and like the typical superfluous man his love for this women leads to his misery. By enticing a duel, which he has done numerous times, another example of his idleness; he meets his fate as he is fatally wounded outside of St. Petersburg. The comparisons between the superfluous Onegin and the superfluous Pushkin push many bounds, as the superfluous man, as the trope of the

The novel ‘The Horse Whisperer’ by Nicholas Evans is a love story set around a damaged horse. After a riding accident leaves a girl named Grace and her horse Pilgrim badly injured, Grace’s mother Annie believes that the best way to help her daughter is to heal her horse Pilgrim. This links to the extended metaphor throughout the novel that Pilgrim is as a symbol of the broken relationships between the people around it. Tom booker, a Horse whisper, is the only one who can fix Pilgrim and therefore the relationships of the people in Pilgrim’s life, connecting Booker’s saying that he “help[s] horses with people problems” showing that the only way to heal Pilgrim is to heal the people in his life and vis versa.

Popular descriptions of Alexei Karenin label him as a cold and passionless government official who doesn’t care about his wife or family. Indeed, he is viewed as the awful husband who is holding Anna hostage in a loveless marriage. However, this is a highly exaggerated description, if not completely false, analysis of Karenin. Upon careful analysis of Karenin’s character and his actions, it is clear that he is not the person Anna makes him out to be. In fact, with thorough examination of the passage on pages 384 and 385 of Anna Karenina, it is clear that Alexei Karenin can be considered the hidden tragic hero of the novel.

The man describes an identical situation at the end of the poem, saying, “Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season” (76). The concept of nature as a source of order is based on its function as a cycle. The old man waits for the cycle to deliver him from his spiritually dry state to a place of fulfillment. But nature brings no change to the man and leaves him in the same arid condition in which he began. The failure of nature to provide a cycle is supported by the natural, stationary images in the poem, such as, “Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds” (12), and the “Gull against the wind, in the windy straits” (70), which shows nature forcefully impeding the progress of the bird, just as its lack of cycle reinforces the stagnation of the old man’s mind, body, and spirit.