Themes In Brutal Imagination By Cornelius Eady

Often times a person lives their life based on how their own family would see it. Whether it disappoints or makes their family proud, it is inevitable; a person’s family will forever remain an important factor in their life, actions and the consequences that come with it. In “The Idea of Ancestry”, the author Etheridge Knight writes a poem where it is obvious that he is guilty of his actions and the shame and hurt it brings to his loved ones. Knight is haunted by the faces of his loved ones in his cell, and it is symbolic of the guilt he feels as he sits in prison and contemplates on his bad choices and addiction to heroin.

This book is made up of two cycles of poems, each confronting the same subject: the characterization of a black man in white America. In this book, I plan to focus mainly on the first cycle and touch briefly on the second. The first cycle includes four different sections. In section one of cycle one, Eady writes about Susan Smith and Charles Stuart, two murderers who blamed their crimes on nonexistent black attackers. The first poem is called “How I Got Born” (Eady 5), in this poem the fictional young African American man is conjured up. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, Eady writes a note that explains who and what the speaker is: “The speaker is the young black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children” (Eady 5). In the first few lines of the poem he says, “Susan Smith willed me alive/ At the moment/ Her babies sank into the lake” (l. 1-40). So right away he gives us a pretty straightforward explanation for what this poem is about and what this section will be about. In the next few poems, the narrator discusses his “existence” and reason for being created. Eady uses a lot of metaphors, similes and imagery in his poems, and he does a phenomenal job with imagery.

George Ella Lyon is a storyteller and that can be seen throughout her amazing collection of poems in the piece Many Storied House. The reader is able to experience everything with the family as it happens through the halls of George Ella’s family home. Lyon takes the reader through a range of emotion with the narrator. George Ella brings so many personal issues and hardships to light for the reader to walk alongside her down the hallways of her childhood. The style that Lyon uses, allows the reader to experience the emotions felt by her during these parts of her life. Weather is be her parents marriage issue or her own struggles with suicide and sexual abuse. We get to explore the different personalities and

n the world of Edgar Allan Poe, the women in his life have treated him significantly better than the men. To Edgar, men were figures of abandonment and cruelty, but women were angelic figures of kindness and grace, and this greatly affected his life and his writings. In Poe’s own words, “Women have been angels of mercy while men have sat at the edges and mocked,” and there are several examples of this throughout his life, whether it be the kindness of his aunt, his adoptive mother, or his wife. First and foremost, the primary example is when the Biography of Edgar Allan Poe text suggests that he had his aunt, Maria Clemm, move in with him, and that she was a great role model and mother figure to him. (2) This shows that Edgar was inspired

Frances E.W. Harper and James Whitfield are two of the most influential anti-slavery poets of all time. Both individuals use poetry as a form of resistance and as a way to express themselves during a time of great racial tension. Their poems reach out to many different audiences, shedding light on racial injustices that were present in America. Harper’s and Whitfield’s poetry, like many other works that were written during this time, help us to better comprehend the effects of slavery on African Americans.

When reading a story, the reader has to pay attention to the specific pattern of the story. There can be unique patterns that can help explain the story. There can be explicit details that can add to the story. For example, a little tiny speck in the corner can explain why the character’s mother died. The speck could have led to mold, which could have led to cancer, and killed the mother. If a reader does not pay attention to every little example, they might not understand the story. In Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” imagery develops the story to help a reader understand the plot. Imagery makes a story whole. By engaging all of the senses, imagery can explain things that simple statements cannot. These techniques can

In his short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell writes of a hunter named Rainsford. He finds himself cut off on a Caribbean island where he must survive a treacherous game of hunting. Throughout the story, Connell emphasizes the suspense of this story and places a sense of fear into the reader’s mind. He uses the literary devices of foreshadowing and imagery to suggest that terror and danger can be felt by even the strongest and boldest of men.

In the classic story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, we are introduced to Sanger Rainsford, a well-known hunter. At first, Rainsford holds himself in high esteem and is proud of his power, dominance, and skill in hunting. Throughout the adventure, we watch as Rainsford meets new characters, turns from hunter to hunted, and at last overcomes his destructive arrogance. Along the way he meets General Zaroff, a prideful and ruthless big-game hunter. Fortunately, through the general’s mistakes, Rainsford learns an important lesson on personal character. The recurring theme of this classic work is the danger of taking excessive pride in one’s own past accomplishments, current strength, and perceived superiority.

The way an author catches your attention is by using descriptive words to help you visualize the story. The same goes for the story “The Most Dangerous Game” which is about a hunter who falls off his yacht and ends up on an island then in turn becomes the huntee. The imagery in this story creates suspense by describing the struggle, what is being witnessed and what is being done, realistically. In “The Most Dangerous Game”, Richard Connell uses imagery to emphasize suspense by applying descriptive words to aid the reader to visualize what is happening or what is about to happen in the story.

Throughout the novel Praisesong for the Widow, Avey Johnson goes through many different “journeys”, both physical and spiritual. On one of the “journeys”, Avey Johnson has the pleasure of meeting a man that goes by the name Lebert Joseph. Lebert Joseph is an important character in the book; he makes a major impact in Avey Johnson’s life. Lebert Joseph’s purpose in the novel is to get Avey Johnson to remember her African heritage and to never forget it. Avey Johnson regains the knowledge of what made her the person she is today with the help of Lebert Joseph. In this essay I wish to demonstrate how Lebert Joseph is important to Avey Johnson.

In the poem, the black tenant reminds the white landlord of the house’s maintenance problems, a leaky roof and broken steps. However, instead of fixing the repairs, the landlord reminds the renter that he owes ten dollars, which causes the tenant to become furious and refuse to pay his rent. The ballad relates the tenant’s struggle until he realizes that he cannot win.

The death of Edgar Allen Poe’s young bride prompted a wealth of bitter resentment in the writer. While this is evidenced in many of his works, nowhere is his antipathy more explicit than in the poem, “Annabel Lee”.

In “The Chimney Sweeper” William Blake draws out the image of life as a literal chimney sweeper in London during the late eighteenth century. Blake explains the struggles of a young boy who has to endure the painful lifestyle after his mother passed and his father sold him to the sweeping business. After reading the poem once through, techniques such as rhyme and diction stand out, but a close reading of the poem shows the central issue Blake is trying to address in “The Chimney Sweeper”: inequality. The figurative language used in the poem emphasizes the justice he wants served when referring to the harsh conditions of child labor.

In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.

Throughout our lives we move from one story to the next. Whether we are listeners, readers or writers “we live our lives immersed in stories.’ From the many stories we encounter, both fiction and non-fiction, the orphan figure stands out as one of the most prominent figures in literature. Orphan figures have prevailed in the literary arena for centuries, from ancient poetry, folktales, and myths to modern day novels. This constant reoccurrence of the orphan figure in literature emphasizes the need to understand the significance attached to it. However, according to the editors of Bastardy and its Comparative History literatures great interest on the orphan figure is poorly reflected in literary criticism. It is further