The Death of a Toad by Richard Wilbur

As the narrator looks back at his memory of Doodle’s death, he describes Doodle with a “vermillion neck” and “little legs, bent sharply at the knees” (564). With a shirt “stained a brilliant red” and legs “so fragile, so thin,” the narrator compares Doodle to the dead scarlet ibis they encountered earlier (564). The narrator “[lies] there crying, sheltering [his] scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain” (564). The narrator realizes that a fragile boy like Doodle had beauty within him and he weeps at the loss of this beauty. Although Doodle is crippled, he still has a hopeful imagination and a warm heart. The scarlet ibis is described as “a broken vase of red flowers,” dead, but beautiful (562). The narrator feels guilt because it was his fault that something elegant, like the scarlet ibis, was now dead. He was not able to accept Doodle for who he was when he was alive and now that he is dead, he realizes that Doodle is beautiful just for being his one and only brother. By depicting the narrator in a heresy of rain, as if his past wrongdoings are continuously falling on his head, it represents his guilt. Therefore, the comparison of Doodle and the scarlet ibis portrays a loss of beauty that causes the narrator to feel

The idea of death can be, and is an enormously disturbing, unknown issue in which many people can have many different opinions. To some individuals, the process of life can progress painstakingly slow, while for others life moves too fast. In the excerpt We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates, a innocent farm boy named Judd Mulvaney has an eye-opening encounter by a brook near his driveway. During this encounter, Judd faces a chain of feelings and emotions that lead to his change of opinion of the issues of life and death, and change as a character. This emblematic imagery of life and death, as well as jumpy, and retrospective tones benefit the development of Judd as an innocent child as he begins to change into a more conscious and aware adult.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.

Once more, the poet anticipates his own death when he composes this poem. But in each of these quatrains, the speaker fails to confront the full scope of his problem: winter, in fact, is a part of a cycle; winter follows spring, and spring returns after winter just as surely. Age, on the other hand, is not a cycle; youth will not come again for the speaker. In the third quatrain, the speaker resigns himself to this fact.]

John Updike arranges structure in the poem to create the specific feeling of having one’s heart change from seeing something beautiful. The beginning of the poem starts with a couplet that describes the setting; a man-made golf course “on Cape Ann in October” (1). Enjambment is integrated throughout the poem to surprise the reader and create anticipation. For example, in lines 8-9, enjambment adds tension as the narrator describes what he sees in the sky. The entire poem is free verse, this emphasizes the flight of the birds and how nature has no true rhythm. By using free verse, the reader is unable to predict what will happen next and uncertainty is added. Without the free verse, the poem would feel unrelaxed and harsh. In lines 50-1, Updike changes the word order to startle the reader and conclude the poem in an interesting and memorable way. The poet manipulates the structure to provide a suspenseful mood and make the reader feel interested in the storyline.

In the beginning of the short story, as Brother reflects on Doodle’s life, the author uses personification and foreshadowing to create a mood of remorse. As he gazes out of the window into his backyard, Brother states that “the graveyard flowers were blooming. ...speaking softly the names of our dead” (Hurst 1). The flowers provide flashbacks of the past, and foreshadow a loss of life. The loneliness felt by Brother causes readers to consider how they would feel if their loved one was gone. As Brother observes the seasons, it is noted that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 1). The personifications of the seasons as stages in the cycle of life and death creates an unsure and uncertain mood. The shift between seasons creates an idea of change and uncertainty of events to come. Hurst creates a mood of remorse through

In “The Poem You Asked For” by Larry Levis, he is comparing writing a poem by comparing it to a plant, stubborn person, and toad. Larry Levis, a 20th-century writer is well known for his brevity and surprise approach in poetry. This poem magnifies the complications that authors may face while trying to write something of such importance. The speaker uses an abundant amount of figurative language to personify how writing is so difficult, and can lead to many difficulties and dead ends. The author uses figurative language to portray the theme of difficulties in the writing process such as: difficulties prewriting, writers block, and how hard it is to let go of writing as an author.

I could feel the terror at the beginning of the poem “A Fig for Thee, Oh! Death” by Edward Taylor. He mentions falling in a pit of darkness that masks me feel that he fears death or that he is looking into the face of death. He continues talking about the lords blessing and how he’s missing it which I feel like he’s speaking about God’s forgiveness for his sins and evil doing. When he speaks about how his skin feels like a shell and how God is breaking into it, I feel like he’s talking about how he feels and how he’s vulnerable about everything that he’s feeling about in his life and how he’s so scared to breakdown in an emotional state in the face of God. However, I feel that he believed that when you die, you must face your sins and that

Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the first

a Toad” by Richard Wilbur, he show’s his response to death through the final moments of a toad

However, the poem has fluidity despite its apparent scarcity of rhyme. After examining the alteration of syllables in each line, a pattern is revealed in this poem concerning darkness. The first nine lines alternate between 8 and 6 syllables. These lines are concerned, as any narrative is, with exposition. These lines set up darkness as an internal conflict to come. The conflict intensifies in lines 10 and 11 as we are bombarded by an explosion of 8 syllables in each line. These lines present the conflict within one's own mind at its most desperate. After this climax, the syllables in the last nine lines resolve the conflict presented. In these lines, Dickinson presents us with an archetypal figure that is faced with a conflict: the “bravest” hero. These lines present the resolution in lines that alternate between 6 and 7 syllables. Just as the syllables decrease, the falling action presents us with a final insight. This insight discusses how darkness is an insurmountable entity that, like the hero, we must face to continue “straight” through “Life” (line 20).

In "A Barred Owl" and "The History Teacher", by Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins, both authors ponder child innocence and a child's willingness to believe what they are told by people they trust. In "The History Teacher" a teacher tells a series of historical events in which he changes the names and harsh details of the events to protect the children's innocent minds, while in "The Barred Owl", Wilbur describes an innocent child being put back to sleep after being woken by an owl catching it prey outside their window. Both adults in the poem provide different explanations for their children on a disturbing event, both authors demonstrate ways to protect a child's innocence, but use different literary devices to make their points, such as the use of irony

In the book Reading and Learning to Read, it states that all assessments need to have “authentic and relatable things that are interesting and real” to successfully assess the student (p. 144). The assessment I chose to modify was located on ReadWorks.org, titled A Frog’s Life. This book discusses the details of the life cycle of the frog. This assessment consists of a formative and summative assessment. For this assessment to be authentic, I have to rely on scaffolding the student’s background knowledge. Therefore, before beginning the lesson, I would read the book The Trouble with Tadpoles by Sam Godwin before reading the expository text.

As Mark Twain said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mary Oliver in her poem embraces the same idea that Mark Twain presents in his quote; she is no longer afraid of death because she embraces life fully and accepts the fact that death will come, and when it does come she will be proud of her life and all that she has accomplished. Oliver’s use of symbolism, personification, repetition, and alliteration throughout the poem assists in the meaning of the poem – that death is certain but should not be feared but rather embraced and used as a tool to fully live ones life. When death comes is a poem about Oliver anticipating the arrival of death in a myriad of ways. Oliver captures the innate curiosity humans have regarding death. She also regards life as precious, and hopes like many others that when she dies she can be happy with the way she lived her life without doubts and regrets.