The Impossibility Of Imprisoning The Mind

One’s identity may be questioned when suffering; ultimately suffering is what creates one’s sense of self or what destroys it. The poetry of John Donne and the play W;t, 1993, by Margaret Edson, both illustrate and explore a sense of suffering and identity. In John Donne’s poetry, suffering, both emotionally and physically allows the speaker to understand their identity in more depth, in comparison to Margaret Edson’s play, W;t, Vivian’s suffering leads her identity to be stripped away. In Donne’s sonnet, ‘If poysonous mineralls’ we are shown suffering religiously and emotionally, through one’s sin’s, questioning god’s justice, which leads to a realisation of one’s identity. In Margaret Edson’s play, W;t, Vivian’s emotional suffering

Despite the differences in context, a comparative study of the poetry of John Donne and Margaret Edson’s play, ‘W;t’, is essential for a more complete understanding of the values and ideas presented in ‘W;t’. Discuss this with close reference to both texts.

In stanza four the poet is flashing back to his childhood and telling us some other words that he got in trouble for. “Other words that got me into trouble were fight and fright, wren and yarn.” (29-31) Even though he got in trouble by his teacher for not knowing the words, his mother helped him understand them in a different way. “Wren are small, plain birds.” (34) “My mother made birds out of yarn.” (37) Here he is shown how two different things can become the same thing.

The couplet of this sonnet renews the speaker's wish for their love, urging her to "love well" which he must soon leave. But after the third quatrain, the speaker applauds his lover for having courage and adoration to remain faithful to him. The rhyme couplet suggests the unconditional love between the speaker and his

In the study of English literature, “The Sullivan Ballou Letter” by Sullivan Ballou and “To Lucasta, Going To The Wars” by Richard Lovelace are very similar and different in many various forms of ways. These works of literature can be categorized as goodbye letters from two men who sent them to their wives to show their love, before they leave for different wars. “The Sullivan Ballou Letter” is written in American literature and “To Lucasta, Going To The Wars” is written in British Renaissance literature. The work of literature written by Ballou is perceived in more of a formal way and Lovelace’s is viewed in the form of a ballad with a iambic tetrameter as a rhyme scheme. These two works of literature are compared and contrasted by their

The first element our writers used to express their message of wanting to be free is form. The narrator for ‘The Caged Bird” feels alone and wishes to be able to snatch the chains that keep her tied down. Also, in the poem “Sympathy” by Dunbar as well an in “The Caged Bird” both authors used a bird to symbolize the captivity and aspiration for freedom. Both poets wrote their piece in lyric form because of obvious reasons. A lyric poem is defined as a poem that expresses personal and emotional feelings. Writing poems with this form shows the amount of deep emotion that the narrator feels toward this work. In addition, both authors wrote their poems in iambic pentameter to make the poem sound like a natural flow of speech to really show the deep feelings the poets are feeling.

A deeper level is achieved in the mind of the narrator when she acknowledges her own mental state and that she is eager to leave her sad mood. While the man is described as animal-like and savage, she stands “In moody sadness, on the giddy brink” (9) full of contemplation and reflection on her own worldview. The poet is quite self-aware while the lunatic is not, and through her intelligent banter, the reader can see the extreme difference in personality. The poet’s own self-conception, however, is ironic in that she is wishing for ignorance that can only be achieved by lack of a self-concept. The catch-22 she experiences is perplexing, both to her and the reader.

Through the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou it is evident freedom is a desire for all beings, and this is conveyed through symbolism and juxtaposition.. “Sympathy” is a poem that expresses a caged bird’s desire to be free and it’s pain, as well as the poet’s connections to the bird. The poet writes, “I know why the caged bird beats his wing/Till its blood is red on the cruel bars/For he must fly back to his perch and cling/When he fain would be on the bough a-swing” (Dunbar 8-11). The bird symbolizes freedom is a desire for all beings. The bird is a symbol for being trapped, confined, or restricted. The bird tries to escape so desperately to the point where there is blood on the bars. This is an urgent

In Howards End we see the outer and inner worlds – the prose and the passion, disconnected, but still existing within the same space. Although the material Wilcoxs’ and cerebral Schlegels seemingly come from different worlds, their alignment is ultimately a matter of personal connection. Yet, just about sixty years prior in Karolina Pavlova’s A Double Life we see the same two worlds existing in separate spaces entirely – prose in the waking life, poetry within Cecily’s dreams. One explanation for this is that of Konstantin Askakov, in his introduction to Pavlova’s novella. For him, the prose represents the “outer,” frivolous emptiness of everyday high society; the poetry, the voice of Cecily’s “soul.” Cecily’s dreams then represent an inner

The term ethics often refers to questions of right and wrong. Lack of consent and harm are areas that CIA mind- control lacked in regards of ethics to their participants. Throughout Project MK-ULTRA's existence, mind control experiments were conducted on CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, government agents, and civilians were tested on usually without consent. In the program, legal and illegal psychotic drugs such as alcohol, morphine, LSD, mescaline, and heroin were used to research how the brain works. The effects on the participant were often damaging and completely ignored the safety that researchers should assure their participants. (Ross, 2007). In regards to inform consent, the researchers should always have informed consent

In these short verses, Plath encloses the concept of life and death—in an alternation between sensory and visual perception—expressing the eternal dilemma that sees in contraposition what is visible through the physical eyes (somehow mechanical) and what can only be perceived at the sensorial level. Hence, the intangible or not visible represents a mere figment of one’s imagination. The scenario portrayed in the first stanza brings to mind that typical feeling of incredulity one perceives when awakening from a vivid dream realizes it was an illusory perception, a mere trick of one’s mind. Moreover, the author expresses the desires to exert a sort of control over the outer world by closing her eyes as if to reject a reality that appears to be overly alienating and constraining. The sense of confinement is also emphasized by the parenthesis of the second refrain, which reinforces the concept of doubt that pervades the narrator’s imaginary world where just torment and obsession lie. Indeed, for its rigid and repetitive formula, the poetic form of the villanelle finds a perfect application in Plath’s work, by recalling a

The mood of “Caged Bird” changes drastically from stanza to stanza. Angelou’s specific diction choices help to reflect the change from being positive to negative with some elements of hope involved. The parts of the poem involving the free bird provide the reader with a feeling of self government.In contrast, the mood associated with the caged bird is confinment. Despite the negative mood tied to the caged bird there are still elements of hope woven into these stanzas.

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

     Nature and the land of the faeries present images of freedom throughout the first three stanzas. “There lies a leafy

Tennyson portrays the isolation of women through the reoccurring theme of Romanticism, this is shown through the poet’s constant associations with nature being the centre of the poem. The poet focuses more on the surroundings of the main character as she lives “By the island in the river…And the silent isle embowers The Lady of Shalott.” Tennyson presents the speaker to hide the details of the actual lady, her imprisonment and the curse which leads us to believe she is a mystery as the nature around her seems overpowering and consuming her. Tennyson portrays the lady in the poem to be an embodiment of a typical woman of the contemporary culture as he describes ‘A charmed web’ which the woman is ‘weaving, either night or day’. The ‘web’ can be a symbol of slavery but also a symbol of creativity and possibility. When the woman tries to turn away from the web she refuses to be a slave and ultimately