In “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poem talks about the never-ending cycle of life and death and how the world keeps moving on through it all. The theme is shown through metaphor, repetition, personification, and symbolism. The line “The tide rises, the tide falls” is a metaphor for the cycle of life and death. It compares the tide rising to a rise in a new generation. The tide falling is a comparison for their passing away. This metaphor shows our journey up through life, but everything must fall. It is not a positive comparison, nor is it negative. It is just a way of life and showing that it goes on, even if your presence in the natural world may fall apart without a trace. The repetition of these lines
John M. Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, takes us back 70 years to a society that most of us would hardly recognize.
The article entitled “The Tide That Sinks All Boats” by Chris Matthews discusses how feelings of protectionism and nationalism are making it difficult for President Obama to pass the Trans-pacific partnership (TPP) through Congress. The implication in this article is that the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump during this presidential election stirred these feelings amongst Americans. Thus, members of Congress fear that passing the free trade agreement will make them a “traitor to the American Worker”. The article also mentions how free trade agreements often take the brunt of people’s fears regarding global trade and its impact on domestic job security referencing NAFTA (Matthews, 2016).
John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, communicates his fascination with the Mississippi River by using diction, imagery, and syntax. Barry’s word choice conveys the mechanical force of the river; his use of imagery the beauty, and his use of syntax the unpredictability. Barry’s command of rhetorical devices draws the reader in and brings the Mississippi River to life.
In the opening lines of the poem where the soldiers, “sway and wander in the water far under,” he manages to tell us that the tone of the poem is soft and calming. But it eventually changes to become blunt and it is evident in the line, “the sob and clubbing of gunfire.” This shows us the brutality of war and how horrifying it is. Even the title of the poem is a paradox itself. The beach is normally a place to have fun but in the poem it is described to be a place of death because the word “burial” is put next to it.
Similarly, in “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou conveys that people can not let anything stop them from achieving their dream and to fight back. The use of similes expresses this because it shows how good or bad a
Then lastly, “we all fall down” gives imagery to the magnitude of death that was happening. People’s entire families were being wiped out and sometimes in less than a few months. This song truly shows how imagery changed from a positive light to a negative
Not many fictional stories have much success addressing real world problems like global warming and pushing animals to extinction. People often hear Fiction an assume that the story will be one of a completely made up story line that has little to no truth in it and lacks the necessary details of a nonfiction story. Even though the story line is not based on real events it does make one more aware of the things going on around us.When reading you must look at the fragile and dangerous ecosystem that the Sundrabans offer. The land constantly is changing because of tides which puts the people at risk of loosing there homes at all times. If that struggle is not scary enough the people of the Sundrabans have to fear the predators who roam the waters and the land. Its also an equal relationship with humans as well due to there over fishing of areas and damming of the fresh water streams. At this point you think it could not get any worse but it does because they have severe weather which comes through and can wipe out whole villages and kill hundreds of thousands of people. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Gosh addresses the
The comparison is not meant to take away meaning from the life event, but instead is meant to drive home the point that we are all in this together. Each step along the way is all part of the bigger picture that needs to be completed. In “Forever Overhead”, the narrator says, “It is a machine that moves only forward” (13). While the words themselves are in reference to the high board, a deeper meaning about life is present. The line for the high board is much like our lives, we can only move forward. The ability to stop time is nonexistent. The ability to halt life when we are feeling uncomfortable is unavailable to us, we must charge on. Our narrator acknowledges this, “There’s been time the whole time. You can’t kill time with your heart. Everything takes time” (15). Our young “birdlike” narrator has for the first time just realized that he must jump into adulthood, just as he must jump from the high dive at the pool. He is unable to stop time, he’s unable to avoid the outcome. His best option is to embrace puberty, embrace the jump. Puberty is part of life and just as with the narrator it often takes people by surprise. He says, “You have been taken…. Did you think it over. Yes and no” (15). The not knowing what is next is what makes us uncomfortable; yet somehow comforts us because the unknown could be the very thing we need. We all jump, even when we aren’t sure we’re really
Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”
In the poem, Longfellow depicts the tide in nature as the rise and fall cycle of life, example, life and death. One case for this example is the constant repeated sentence “and the tide rises, the tide falls”. This
The poet uses the symbolism to fortify the theme that the greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall (“Ash, ash –you poke and stir flesh bone there is nothing there…out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air” ( lines 73-75,82-84). Sylvia’s discontent with falling is blatant when she expresses that “this is number three what a trash to annihilate each decade” (line 24); however, she express the splendor in rising again when she declares that she will rise again with her red hair and eat men like air (lines 83-84). The poet makes use of her initial theme to fortify the theme that the human experience consists of falling down, rising up, falling down again, and rising up again. Plath makes it manifest that her fall is not the first one when she states that “this is number three” (line 24), and she implies that it would not be her last when she states “and like a cat I have nine times to die” (line
The poem may have been read and understood differently but the theme of the poem was that the things that occur in life happen because that’s the way of life. The poem explains that a man passes away after being alive and compares it to the fact that after a tide rises it also dies when it falls.
A theme presented in The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls is that man will die, but nature will continue forever. Longfellow states in his poem “The day returns, but nevermore / Returns the traveller to the shore, / And the tide rises, the tide falls.” This quotes is significant because he describes the death of someone but then continues to state that the tide will maintain its usual routine despite this person’s death. Nature connects to Longfellow and shares his grief and in turn connects him to God is the theme of The Cross of Snow.
It’s almost as if Hughes is trying to show that in life, most of the time you just dive right in without thinking about the consequences. But then, life turns around and bites you in the butt leaving you crying, hollering, and in shock from the “cold”. Even though it catches you off guard, frightens and shocks you, you still survive. You survive by fighting, and resisting the urge to sink. The elevator represents life as well, but in a different way. The stanza about the elevator states “I thought about my baby And I thought I would jump down” (14-15). I think that these two lines do a great job portraying that in life, a lot of times, you feel powerless and you want to just give up; however, you must remember those around you who are ruiting and depending on you. Often times, this can lead to stepping back and consciously choosing to not give up, and the main character does not give up at the end of this stanza.
The theme of new beginnings and the harness of the past in another natural setting is discussed again in the second stanza, but now with a focus on time. The visual image presented my the passage as the sun hesitating and losing its direction show allow the reader to observe the symbolism of the sun. The sun universally represents time, the rise and set of sun symbolizing the beginning and ending of each day, days leading into months, years, and lifetimes. The rise of the sun is a new beginning, but it "seems to hesitate," and "lose its/ incandescent aim." The new beginning brought on by the rising of the sun was held back and lost "in that second." Hope and the fresh start were halted by the sun, who was not ready to let time pass and continue. The passage concludes with an affirmation of the symbolism, that "the past is brighter yet" than the sun who could not pull the new start cleanly into the future.