The Mock-Epic and Material Desire in Not All that Glisters Gold

Sentences like “And how the lions in your eyes are all dying” (5) or “But the Egyptians used honey / To preserve their vital organs” (8-9) are perfect uses of metaphors in the sense that they characterize the situation and give the reader a vivid understanding. The ‘lions dying in the eyes of the beholder’ is a way of saying that all the courage, confidence and fire they had burning inside of them before, is now vanishing. It leaves one feeling empty and self-conscious knowing that whoever betrayed them, whether it be lover, a friend or a family member, had the audacity to do it in the first place. Another striking phrase in the poem was when Weslowski referred to the Egyptians using honey to save their most important organs. In a literal sense, the heart is one of, if not, the most vital organs we, as humans, have; it’s what keeps us alive. Speaking in a non-literal sense, the heart is something everyone wants to protect because no one enjoys getting their heart broken. Unfortunately if the occasion arises, one may go to certain lengths to shield what self-dignity they have left, or what pieces of their heart is still there. Half way through, Weslowski speaks about mohawks on skateboards (12), tattoos underwater (13), becoming the bad weather (14-16) or the music (17-19), or even becoming an empty coffee cup (21), he is pinpointing how certain people cope and the varying coping

One of the things that is so fascinating about poetry is that it allows readers to discover and sometimes challenge and channel their emotions as well as their understanding. A poem’s words as well as its structure can reveal many things to its intended audience. In “Myth” by Natasha Trethewey, the poems form is just as important as the words she writes, becoming a map for the journey Trethewey takes, using transitions to take us from one place to another. The nature of the poem therefor becomes multifaceted, as it encourages the reader to think about the speaker’s words and use of form and structure she uses to craft this epic story. Using form as a tool, Trethewey is able to use structure as a way to guide us as readers and the speaker across the conscious and unconscious thoughts and dreams the speaker faces in this story.

There are a lot of differences between Christopher Smart’s My Cat Jeoffry and Thomas Gray’s Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. Quite possibly more differences than anything else but within both poems there is also a lot of things that the two poems have in common. The approaches Thomas Gray and Christopher Smart used in order to honor cats, so to speak, are unique and are very much reflections of who Smart and Gray were as people at the time that they wrote the pieces. Christopher Smart used the connections he felt to God to bring out some of his best lines to represent his cat, Jeoffry and Thomas Gray used humor to address a sad time and honor a lost cat for a friend.

In the story Matched by Ally Condie author's craft, such as figurative language, has a big input on the story. Cassia’s grandfather gives her an illegal poem that she has to destroy containing words of rebellion about how “a flood may bear me far,” if she had kept the poem she’d be “riding on a flood that I [Cassia] couldn’t stop… the poems are gone and I [Cassia] can never get them back.” (Condie 123) The figurative language refers back to the quote which adds importance to the story. It adds to the story because it shows how significant the poem is and how dangerous it is for the. The use of the words in the poem added to her fear of being caught makes readers wonder why poems such as the one that has fallen into Cassia’s hands are so dangerous

The poem commences with a third person narrative voice. This persona describes the terrorist as enjoying the moment, ‘The terrorist has already crossed the street. / The distance keeps him out of danger, / and what a view – just like the movies:’ (5-7). By describing the situation as movie-like, it shows that the terrorist values his life over others as he situates himself at a distance where he can observe safely. This idea is also expressed through the fact that the language is factual, observational and unemotional, conveying the emotional detachment of the terrorist towards the pain and suffering he will inflict. The use of language in this is vastly different to that of ‘Lot’s Wife’ with the contrast of emotional language and factual language. The descriptions of the individuals are detached with mundane characteristics, such as the ‘crummy gloves’ (26), only being mentioned. This creates the sense that these individuals are less important than him, showing that the terrorist looks down on them. Throughout the piece, there is a sense of dramatic irony, with the terrorist knowing something that the people entering and exiting the bar don’t. This introduces the idea that the terrorist perceives this situation as comedic. This idea is continued with the use of time intervals marking the countdown of the detonation.

In “The Fatal Sisters” Thomas Gray has created a monologue pregnant with references to history, geography, and mythology. These reappearing references and allusions enrich the text, as they allow a closer look at the political situation surrounding eleventh century Britain.  The poems’ sixteen stanzas exhibit an ABAB rhyme scheme, which provides for systematic organization and positive aesthetic effects.  Closer examination of the setting, tone, and imagery of the poem permits insight into the text’s content and artistic genius.

He chooses particularly emotive lexis to convey this “impensius uror,” which shows the violence of Catullus’s passion and “vilior et levior,” which by lexical choice and the use of comparatives emphasizes how much Lesbia has fallen in Catullus’s eyes. The final phrase of this poem “quod amantem iniuria talis cogit amare magis, sed bene velle minus,” is clear and logical, given Catullus’s

Moreover, it has been argued that the cat is a metaphor for the narrator’s wife. Critics claim that the following passage raises suspicion that the killing of the first cat was actually the murder of his own wife. Poe writes: Norton Anthology American Literature. 7th. 1. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. 705-711. Print.

The themes of both poems show the complete mental consumption of the voice’s. Their pre-dominative behaviour appears to emerge from perverted good values. The paranoid voice of a woman, angered with her supposed cheating husband runs throughout the duration of ‘Medusa,’ seeming to grow in anger as it meets every line. In addition, Carol Ann Duffy creates an extended metaphor of this women’s transformation into the monstrous character ‘Medusa,’ using members present in Greek mythology, in order to paint a metaphorical juxtaposition of a once beautiful woman, now a hideous ‘gorgon’ due to the impact of detrimental human emotion. Detrimental emotion being, as shown by the phrase: ‘My brides breath soured, stank,’ with the use of sensory imagery demonstrating how a slight ‘suspicion’ has taken hold of the voice. Moreover, this build-up and outpour of the slight ‘suspicion’ and emotion over the poem suggests that the voice has succumbed to and has allowed herself

The narrator finds this cat to be out of place, and she uses the sight of this cat to take her text in a different direction. Losing her train of thought is an exercise in allowing the reader to experience what it might feel like to be a woman writer. Although the narrator goes on to make a valuable point about the atmosphere at her luncheon, she has lost her original point. Women, who so often lack a room of their own and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not forced to struggle for such basic necessities.

His writing shifts in this way in an effort to draw the reader’s attention. This frantic style of writing is meant to parallel the speaker 's thought process and mental state. In addition to this frantic writing style, the author repetitively uses opposing and contradictory words whilst attempting to describe lust, “enjoyed” (5) and “despised” (5), “hunted” (6) and “hated” (6), “bliss” (11) and “woe” (11), and “joy” (12) and “dream” (12). In addition to these contradictions, there is also heavy repetition. The words extreme and lust are both repeated several times throughout the poem. These conflicting views of lust, as well as the repetition of language, further reflect the confused, frantic, and frazzled mental state of the speaker. Beyond the madness as a result of guilt, the author claims lust within itself creates madness, “On purpose laid to make the taker mad:/ Mad in pursuit and in possession so, / Had, having and in quest to have, extreme;” (8-10). These lines create a metaphorical crack within the armor of the speaker’s mind that will echo throughout the entirety of the poem.

Keats, on the other hand, uses the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to express his perspective on art by examining the characters on the urn from either an ideal or realistic perspective. In the beginning, Keats asks questions regarding the “mad pursuit” (9, p.1847) of the people on the Grecian urn. As the Grecian urn exists outside of time, Keats creates a paradox for the human figures on the urn because they do not confront aging but neither experience time; Keats then further discusses the paradox in the preceding stanzas of the poem. In the second and third stanza, Keats examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover “beneath the trees” (15, p.1847) and expresses that their love is “far above” (28, p.1848) all human passion. Even though

In order to give “The Bard” literary standing, and thus provide an effective platform to broadcast his views, the poet makes several careful and deliberate choices in the poem’s structure and language to create a sense age and grandeur for the poem. By referring to both to classical Greek poetry and popular and influential literary pieces, like Milton’s Paradise Lost (Gray 20), Gray manufactures standing for his poem. The full title specifies the poem as a ‘Pindaric Ode’. Though this was not an uncommon form of ode – and one which Gray used frequently – specifying that “The Bard” is a classical style of poem immediately sets the reader up with the understanding that this poem will be written with the Greek style in mind, and thus gives it an almost classical credibility. Although it was written before the Romantic period of literature, Gray’s use of landscape and nature, ask the reader to contrast the landscape to the actions of the English army and begs comparisons between physical nature and human nature. Gray, whilst linking the poem to ancient works and

Alexander Pope's mock heroic epic The Rape of the Lock appears to be a light subject addressed with a satiric tone and structure. Pope often regards the unwanted cutting of a woman's hair as a trivial thing, but the fashionable world takes it seriously. Upon closer examination Pope has, perhaps unwittingly, broached issues worthy of earnest consideration. The Rape of the Lock at first glance is a commentary on human vanity and the ritual of courtship. The poem also discusses the relationship between men and women, which is the more substantial matter in particular. Pope examines the oppressed position of women. Infringement on a woman's personal space, her person and her pride by an aggressive male (the Baron)

The word “epic” ignites a multitude of reactions in the minds of literature lovers and passive readers alike. Some people may think of the slang version of this term while other may fondly remember the theater. However, when one is conscious of literary analysis and literature, they can always fall back to the genre of an epic poem. In literary terms, an epic poem is considered to be a lengthy, narrative poem that has a focus on the exploits of a hero and is full of immense amounts of style and figurative language. Normally, by following this hero throughout the poem, the readers are introduced to the alignment between the poem with a specific nation or national identity. Several characteristics of epic poetry lend to this concept, especially those found in both The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost. Both epic poems focus on historical context and on the characteristics of a heroic journey, the scale of the setting, and divine intervention in order to establish a trend of English nationalistic and religious identity.