The Farming of Bones: the Symbolic Portrayal of Water's Relation to Death vs. Life

Having a loving family is something that no child should live without. A loving family helps shape your personality, and also helps instil good decision making in you. They also act as your support system, when you are going through hard times. Lastly, they teach you about your heritage and culture, this helps create a sense of belonging. These are just a few reasons why having a loving family is something every child should have. This theme is shown through THE FARMING OF BONES written by Edwidge Danticat.

Danticat is wanting the reader to be aware of the women’s suffrage still happening in the world. Even though they themselves may not be experiencing it, the injustice displayed upon women is a real thing. She stated in the article that “my grandmother was an old country woman who always felt dis-placed in the city… where we lived and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her,” (Danticat). The stories shared between Danticat and her grandmother are forever etched into her memory. Since death was such a commonality, Danticat was not even fazed when her grandmother passed. The fact of the emotionless death alone should shed a light on the terribleness of the situation. Death should never be an everyday thing.

The theme death has always played a crucial role in literature. Death surrounds us and our everyday life, something that we must adapt and accept. Whether its on television or newpaper, you'll probobly hear about the death of an individual or even a group. Most people have their own ideas and attitude towards it, but many consider this to be a tragic event due to many reasons. For those who suffered greatly from despair, living their life miserably and hopelessly, it could actually be a relief to them. Death effects not only you, but also those around you, while some people may stay unaffected depending on how they perceive it.

The water is symbolic of romantic love as an overwhelming and transforming force that changes in form and changes the people involved. The wave is large, unpredictable and spans out as far as the eye can see. The movement of an all-encompassing emotion like love is impossible to contain, much like water. It is free flowing and goes on forever. “Love was a game, a perpetual creation (Paz, 2). Love and water are both creations of the divine and humans tend to use and abuse them. However, humans are emotional and social animals who need both love and water to survive. Waves have a way of hitting humans all at once, just like love. It renders humans excited and full of surprise at first “wave of surprise” (Paz, 2) like a crashing delight. It also leaves us always wanting more. We have an unquenchable thirst for love and affection, thus we chase it even in its most sinister forms, like an abusive relationship. The narrator is accepting of the wave 's presence when she appears in his home where he was once hesitant of the idea of her in his life. Love also transforms and can change us, like water changes states. It can become overwhelming and hard to breathe, but it is often all around us and

In Alistair McLeod’s collection of short stories the Lost Salt Gift of Blood; death seems to be a constant companion. Death is important and perhaps even symbolic in this collection of short stories. It is important because it has the power to affect people and relationships, invokes freedom and even predetermines ones future, through the death of animal’s people and the impending death of others.

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem First Death in Nova Scotia follows a small girl who is introduced to the concept of death for the first time through her cousin, Arthur. Even though the narrator is just a child who is experiencing death for this first time, she is extremely perceptive of her surroundings. The details and language the girl uses to describe the situation illustrates the difficulty the girl is having coming to terms with the idea of death, while also confusing her throughout the poem. The important concepts of death, grief, and loss of innocence are conveyed by Bishop through the encounter the girl is having with death. Bishop’s theme in the poem seems to be that death can be extremely sorrowful yet hard to understand and as such, people deal with these feelings in different ways, even children. The narrator, being a small child, naturally uses distractions in her surroundings and her figurative language to start to understand death at the end of the poem.

She describes their movement as aimless, and careless because of their lack of motivation to struggle on, seeing life as “ought” or nothing compared to what it once was before the loss. The reader can imagine being in the position of the sufferer; very stagnant, and lifeless almost like a corpse which is what makes this form of diction so evoking.

Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.

In Cereus Blooms at Night, Mala’s relationship with language, time, space, and species is explained through a narrative form that creates a literary strategy that represents trauma though the idea that death feeds life. This specific narrative form began in a series of passages that surround the moment when Mala relived a traumatic experience. In these passages, Mootoo’s diction changed in order to reveals this new narrative form. Mootoo began to switch from describing Mala as an individual to describing her in relation to nature. She began to stress her relationship with language, time, space, and various species. Mootoo initiated this change by stating that Mala had disconnected from a life style that would be deemed as socially acceptable.

The simple notion of mortality is difficult to acknowledge, much less accept; why must anyone welcome the ridiculous idea that their current, stable existence will someday abruptly disappear? Whether I believe I will fade into a dark eternal nirvana, fantasize of a pure heaven, or place my faith in reincarnation matters little before mortality. After all, I cannot eliminate complete doubt of my beliefs. The irrational element of certain death awaiting each and every person is an unshakable truth that can be beyond infuriating. However, in Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, Matilda states, “It occurred to me I could simply end things this way. I could just give up, let go.” (Jones 215). Literature entraps readers within the minds of characters who turn to their inevitable demise and embrace it, accepting the truth. At the same time, literature beautifully illustrates the ideals of those who fight for survival, eternally rejecting mortality. Thus, I believe literature strongly influences our beliefs and tolerances, and while it may force us to accept mortality, it may just as strongly teach us to defy it.

This chapter influenced me the most, in the way that Falkner described Addie's death, giving the imagery so much emphasis that it takes away the hardship of the death, but brings a beauty to the passage. The main points of this section, which evolve around the death, changes not only the reader, but the characters in the book itself. Falkner used many different forms of imagery in the chapter of Addie’s death brings grief and despair. Not only is the death dramatized, but the few paragraphs behind that are too. Addie’ s death is described as a flame going out, bring the light out of her eyes and an eternal darkness to take its places. This flames represents the life source of Addie, which because she has died, has gone out.

The first line of stanza four “Or rather-- He passed Us—“ (l. 13) demonstrates that the speaker is uncertain about her existence in the world. Now she feels that her life symbolized by the sun is passing by. She becomes chilled by the “dews” (l. 14). Lines three and four in this stanza illustrate the reason for her coldness. The speaker is attired in a light “Gown” (l. 15) and cape or “Tippet” made of “Tulle” (l. 16), which is a kind of thin, transparent, open meterial. When people die,

Here, De Quincey is both the helpless onlooker and the perceived threat; he is culpable on two counts. His gentle recreation of memory has turned suddenly, irreversibly sour, as dreams often do, and in turn he becomes “another peril” that the anonymous girl flees from, only this flight of “panic” ends in her death. Yet this death is not brutal or bloody – instead, the girl is preserved from the neck up, with her “fair young head and the diadem of white roses around it” (52) still visible in the sand. The entire sequence is an uneasy elegy for a sister whose unexpected death compulsively haunts each one of his works, from the intangible presence of Ann in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, to the young granddaughter of his ‘Postscript’,

Death is inevitable in every person’s life, but death in these character’s lives is easily predicted to be early, and this represents the sadness and sorrows in the innocence of war. There are many ways to die, and war is the saddest way for that to occur, but at the same time,

The use of Oracle bones can be tracked back to the Neolithic Era (Chou 135). The Neolithic age was quite significant and played and immense role in contributing towards the evolution of man. The Neolithic Era lasted for roughly 12,000 years, and mainly stayed in what today is Northwestern Europe. People closely relate the Neolithic times to the start of man. The people of the Neolithic era used the oracle bones themselves; physically, as tools. The ox shoulder blades were used as weapons, tools, and other farming equipment. (Chou 135). However, most common tool that was used by the Neolithic people, during these times, was, The Neolithic Spade. Furthermore, the Spade was a shovel/weapon and was made by using the ox shoulder blade; moreover, the same bones used for divination. (Chou 135). The bones were greatly and often utilized during the Neolithic Era; however, the Shang Dynasty had some important uses for the bones as well.