Theme Of Ode On The Death Of Goldfishes By Thomas Gray

“The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a short story by the English novelist, essayist and literary critic D.H. Lawrence. It represents how the author cautions about the negative effects of materialism, as it can never fully satisfy the human need and will eventually end in tragedy and unhappiness. Lawrence does so through the archetypes of the terrible mother, the hero, and the anti-wise old man.

In the poem “America,” by Tony Hoagland, the idea of Americans being consumed with their money is shown using symbolism and metaphors. The speaker in this poem is a teacher whose name is never mentioned. One thing revealed in the poem is that the speaker has a father who is presumably very wealthy and successful. One of the teacher’s students compares America to a maximum security prison. A recurring theme throughout “America” is Hoagland showing examples of America’s greedy society using a teacher, student, and a father’s experiences. Using metaphors of money and symbols of rivers filled with merchandise, Tony Hoagland captures how the teacher begins to think after he hears his student compare America to a maximum security prison.

Throughout the years, people think they have gained happiness from their materialistic things. In this story, Ray Bradbury creates a family that is particularly wealthy through material possessions and how they become dispersed through the possessions they own. However, in Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Veldt” he emphasizes that utilizing materialistic things can actually result in terrible harm. Through the use of symbolism, irony, and foreshadowing, Ray Bradbury establishes the idea that overindulging in materialistic possessions can result in grave consequences.

One of the emotional essentials of life is to be loved, and there are quite a few cases where material things can hinder receiving this much-needed love, the greatest culprit of all being money. D. H. Lawrence’s short story “The Rocking Horse Winner” tells of a boy, Paul, who desires love and affection from his mother, Hester, but she is so wrapped up in her concerns with money that she does not display any of this needed affection toward her son or any of her children. She has grown unloving and bitter due to her husband’s inability to meet her expectations, and she tells Paul his father is unlucky. Full of curiosity, Paul asks his mother what luck is, and she tells him, “‘It’s what causes you to have money. If you’re lucky you have money. That’s why it’s better to be born lucky than rich. If you’re rich, you may lose your money. But if you’re lucky, you will always get more money” (Lawrence, 2). Paul is quite intuitive and interprets that the only way he can finally obtain love from his mother is if he is lucky, much unlike his father. He proudly shares with his mother that he is lucky, but when she does not take his word seriously, he falls into a blinded rage as he madly rides his rocking horse, hoping it will take him to where the luck is, “‘Now take me to where there is luck!’” (3). By riding his rocking-horse, he knows which horse will win the derby. The association of love with money brings about the idea of a love for money, or greed, which is one of the seven

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

The truth behind the poem “Poverty and Wealth” is bone-chilling, almost as if it was meant for a character like Ponyboy Curtis. On the east side of town, there lives

When writing a collection of poems, most poets chose to focus on maintaining certain themes throughout their literature and Cornelius Eady is not an exception. Cornelius Eady’s collection of poems in Brutal Imagination focus on issues such as racism, family crisis, internal conflict, and death. The first part of the collection circles around a servant who works for Susan Smith and is the caretaker for her children. The story centers around the perspective of the servant who is also the overarching narrator. The story describes old version of United States when racism was still bluntly present and affected individuals identities and financial opportunities. Based off the information presented in the collection, the servant can possibly be male. The general plot follows deeply into the difficult life of the male servant through examining the issues he faces. The first poem within the collection set-ups the rest of the story with context for the readers giving them a few expectations about what they should look forward to reading further. Eady draws the reader through integrating an origin for the male servant and his connection to Susan Smith’s family.

Through “T he Rocking Horse Winner’s” theme of the quest for materialism is realized in the end. In “The Destructors” materialism is destroyed. Where Paul in “The Rocking Horse Winner” strives to fulfill his family’s need for more money; in “The Destructors”, T. along with Blackie, burns seventy-pound notes in what T. called “a celebration”. In both stories, there is an intense struggle to satisfy the frustration over being impoverished.

Thus, the story centers around an extremely wealthy, privileged man who opts to spend all his time and money helping the both materially and spiritually poor, and the attempts of a lawyer, bankers and family declaring him insane. Vonnegut examines troubling social issues that he sees pervading America: excessive wealth alongside dire poverty; attitudes that make the poor, despised, even by themselves; purposelessness, bred alike by unemployment and unearned riches; and the loneliness, depression, and suicidal complexes generated by such an economic and moral structure. Deconstruction serves a dual role in our analysis work both as a preparatory technique to get research data ready for use in other ways; and a method of exposing, and testing assumptions deeply embedded in our mental models.

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.

This displays the dismissal of overwhelming issues that are masked by wealth. Furthermore, the livelihood of the rich is displayed through their belongings identifying their wealth, but captures the misfortune that comes with it: “Throwing open the french windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness” (Fitzgerald 165). Assets such as “french windows” (Fitzgerald 165) originating in 16th to 17th century France represents the wealth of the rich, but the “throwing open” (Fitzgerald 165) of them displays the impulsive need to escape the falsehood and burden money plays in their daily lives affecting the emotions and actions of the characters. Ergo, the only way of addressing the issue is through “smoking” in the “darkness” to portray the pain felt through color and action as a way of using it to distract from the agony instigated by money. Therefore, the encumbrance of wealth on the filthy rich mind results in the misguided view of their lives, ultimately being captured through the incorporation of windows.

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

This rare radiance stands in stark contrast to the "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous" raven who now never leaves his chamber (71). Lenore is referred to as a "sainted maiden" (94), whereas the raven is referred to as a "prophet!" and a "thing of evil!" (85, 91). The radiance of Lenore is contrasted with the speaker's soul, which he describes as being under a shadow (107). These contrasts serve to draw attention to the most significant contrast described in the poem: an intelligent, well-read, loving man interprets a bird seeking shelter on a cold night as an emblem of never-ending anguish and succumbs to depression and madness.

The quest for the ideal is a phenomenon that many people attempt to achieve. As we all know, the quest for the ideal is difficult and complicated by personal experience. The poems, “The Story” by Karen Connelly and the “The Love Song of J.Aflred Prufrock”, by T.S Elliot, as well as the essay “Kant’s Beauty and the Sublime” by Maureen Rousseau explore the peril inherent in the quest for the ideal, which is that in our search for beauty we risk encountering the sublime. The danger of the sublime is that we cannot comprehend the magnitude of the realms of things that are sublime. We ask ourselves why someone would want to risk encountering the sublime. Well, with great risk comes great reward and that is the beauty we

Throughout history, many people struggle with greed. Greed is defined as a selfish desire for something. Throughout the story each character faces there own form of greed, whether they know it or not each action impacts each other and leads to the death of the mother’s son. In the short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the author D.H lawrence uses a rocking horse, wealth, and lack of family intimacy to illustrate to the reader the disastrous problems with greed.