The Story Of The Vase Essay

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

In Atonement, instead of the family’s stability being viewed as a rock like the ideal family, the vase in Atonement maintains peace but creates nothing but chaos and downfall when it is destroyed. When the vase, the family’s heirloom, begins to fall apart, so does the family, until the pieces are so tiny that repair becomes clearly impossible.

When the narrator is a mirror, she falls in love with what she sees. The wall opposite her is “pink with speckles” and she views it as a companion. She falls in love with the wall because it is what she is seeing. She loves what she cannot reach or have. When the narrator becomes a lake, she shows a reflection of a woman yearning for her

The word sadness immediately stands out in the title indicating opposite feelings normally associated with wedding dresses. To continue, the words “sad story” are repeated in lines 27 and 28 (Galvin). Galvin also repeats the word closet in line 4, 11, 14, 20, and 29; alone and forgotten in the darkness of a closet emphasizes the unique perspective of abandonment as opposed to a treasured item. From there, Galvin repetitively makes additional word choices that emphasize the sad, lonely, and abandoned feelings used wedding dresses experience. Galvin makes word choices such as starless, hopeless, darkness, hollow, dump, gone, and disappear. These words all connotate a dark, lonely, and abandoned feeling. Moreover, Galvin incorporates the words yellow, smoke, and flames. Packed away wedding dresses turn an ugly yellow while the lucky wedding dresses go up in smoke and flames; neither scenario are connected to the traditional view of a keepsake. To further the unique tone Galvin associates with wedding dresses, he integrates words such as weeping, longing, and waiting. The connotation of Galvin’s word choices elicit a deep yearning for a better outcome that will unfortunately never come for his abandoned wedding

The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.

But, we cannot forget about the tone that Marisa was getting out. She understands as a woman what it is like to be young and feel like nothing is pretty enough for the world we live in. So the tone set in this poem demonstrates understanding of the difficulties of being a girl in today’s society. She turned a not so perfect dress into one she was proud to wear, which shows courage to change the way we feel about things. Marisa describes that in the future she will meet someone who will see past all the vein things and say, “She is sublime, will be precisely right, and I will step / With incandescent shoulders, into my perfect evening.”

After reading “what the mirror said”, some readers may say that this poem was not written to embrace the woman’s beauty but to explain that she is confusing and hectic. A reader with this point of view would

7. The setting is used as a reflection of the woman's inner emotions. The sun shines and birds sing with no sign of gloom because she is not actually mourning as she thinks to herself. The lack of sorrow from the woman cause the setting to seem even more lovely to her as she realizes she is feeling joy. The details used by the writer portray a sense of well being and positivity. The woman reaches out towards the window as if her joy is tangible, this is a vey important

“Breaking the surface, shatter an old silence” evokes a sense of commotion as if everything was so silent you could hear a pin drop and all of a sudden there was excitement. This shows that the previous poems she read mean nothing close to what the poems she is reading now. This description provides a distinction between the previous poem she read and this current one. “The lake flowed out again, the swans, the darkening sky”(32-33) shows that there is stuff happening compared to the silence before. The darkening sky causes the girl to lose her doubts further showing how powerful this rush is. The figurative language of describing the swans as having question mark necks shows that the girl may be having allusions as a side effect of how much she is being impacted by the poem. The rush she feels from how interested she is in in poems causes her to lose her morals and her mind for a few moments. The girl is looking at the swans and is thinking about stealing the book “my breath came quickly, thinking it over- I had no money, no one was looking”(39-40). The question mark necks show how truly she was uncertain on what to

Duong’s decision to describe the snowflakes as “strange flowers” exposes Hang’s attachment to the landscape of her own home, and also the strangeness of this new landscape for her. The word choice of flowers and their connotation of spring provide contrast to the harsh winter. Hang’s simile comparing the snowflakes to a “luminous” childhood dream juxtaposes the description of them as “blinding shards” and “frail”, thus revealing Hang’s opinion of dreams as something rarely obtained. Surely as a child she imagined the best that might have happened, and had such optimistic hopes of what might have been. They are thus associated with sorrow by the simile, reflective of the cruel reality she faced when her dreams were suffocated as a child. The snowy landscape also triggers a more consuming flashback to a time in Hang’s childhood. Duong provides vivid imagery of the beautiful landscape of the bay - “Clouds floated like puff jade along the horizon, a line broken jagged by solitary rocks.. This endless jade-colored necklace fallen to the earth.” (Duong ) The metaphor comparing the clouds to a jade-colored necklace further emphasizes the landscape’s beauty and richness. The idea of a jade necklace, a material wealthy good, introduces the idea that the natural landscape is a gift, accessible by all. Duong emphasizes this with the subsequent sentiment that “beauty knows no frontiers, seduces without discrimination” (Duong 83). Hang

He cried on my shoulder that morning in his hospital room when he saw himself in the mirror for the first time. The right side of his handsome face sagged, and he couldn't open his drooping eye. He didn't cry because of vanity, but rather because the image looking back at him represented a lost way of life.

For this writing assignment, I was given the Attic Black-figure Lekythos. The vase told the story of Herakles and the boar. The Lekythos is a cylindrical vase. The base color of the vase is orange. The ink used turned black from when it was heated. The vase still contains most of the story; however, a lot of the vase is faded.

In this reflective essay, Stewart discusses the struggles her and her family went through. He family has faced a lot of struggles and throughout all these struggle a mirror was there to see it all. The essay starts off when Stewart is arguing with her mother then blinded by anger she broke the family mirror. It all started with her great-grandmother Elsie when she lost her husband in a tragic fire. The mirror was the only thing left in this fire. Elsie passed this mirror on to her daughter Ruby.

On the front of the vase, the central figure is a seated woman, holding a mirror in her hand. This woman is clothed in both formal and modest attire from a close observation of the intricate folds drawn by the painter of the vase. The lines used to distinguish these folds in the robes are not blurred, but drawn with bold strokes. These bold strokes offer a sense of emphasis, in this case, on the status of the woman wearing the clothing. Women of status are known to wear such