Essay about Theodore Roethke's Root Cellar

To make an inanimate object quite literally come to life isn’t something someone can usually do. However, Ray Bradbury does not fall into this category with his writing. In his short story The Veldt, Ray Bradbury uses personification to make the objects in his story come alive. He uses the house and the nursery mentioned in the story as a form of personification within itself. Both the family’s home and room are active as themselves, mentioned as if they were human. And although some may say it could be a metaphor or simile, it couldn’t be, for personification is its own separate form of author’s craft for very specific reasons. Furthermore, Ray Bradbury also shows personification on things other than the house or the nursery. Objects such

“I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.”

Another very well used literary device in this story is personification. Personification is when an inanimate object is given human attributes. In the specific instance

However, a poem could be written without personification and still be great. In this poem the speaker states, “season when the young buttercups and daisies climb up on the mulched bodies of their forebears to wave their flags in the parade” (1096). This stanza is personification because it talks about the buttercups and daisies climbing up. This line of the poem also reminds the reader of soldiers marching in a parade.

Cynthia Lee Kotana says it perfectly when she states in her excerpt, "In the first descriptive octave, personification, the giving of human attributes to inanimate objects, is used to drive home the persuasive mood of the poem." (Kotana, Paragraph 6, Sentence1). She is stating that it is at this point in the poem where Roethke begins to paint a picture of the idea he wants to get across to the reader. It seems possible that he was trying to switch the roles of the humans and the inanimate objects. After all, if it was possible for a pencil to feel sadness, or for a manila folder to feel misery, then is it not possible for a human to feel absolutely nothing? The same nothing that we know all of the inanimate objects around us feel? This was a very great technique used by Roethke in trying to bring the reader to look a little deeper into his poem than just to see "misery" and "sadness" and to think what a dark poem it is. It is truly a great skill and takent to be able to make the reader see that he is bringing the "Dead" to life and the "living" to absolute

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan on May 25, 1908 to Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner. Along with uncle, his mother and father owned a local greenhouse, where Roethke spent a lot of his childhood days working and playing. He referred to the greenhouse as “my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth” ( ). The greenhouse played a huge role in his poetry. Roethke implies that only after death of the self can people come to realize the true purpose of life, love. Roethke always had stored in the back of his mind “the idea that personal selves were not the focus of time on earth”( ). Therefore, people must experience the death of their selves before they can truly live.

Personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. To get you attached to the wolves, Mowat personifies them. This mostly starts in Chapter 9

Personification is a figurative element used to give an inanimate or inhuman object, human features. This is to allow the author to describe an objects quality. Harper Lee uses this profusely in the book. Although when Lee uses personification it not

As I mentioned earlier as a child Theodore Roethke spent a lot of his time in the greenhouse his father and uncle owned. He observed nature and its true beauty in unique ways. The years he spent in that greenhouse truly helped him become successful in his writing career. A good number of his most famous works, as well as his less notable works reference nature in some way. I will discuss some of these poems showing the references to nature and repeated themes. Roethke tends to relate life and death to nature using imagery and detailed descriptions to captivate the readers.

What really puts everything into perspective is the claim that the poet might have referred to a lizard because it is a cold-blooded creature and depends upon the sun for its body heat, which is where he thinks his wife's beauty amplifies the most. Therefore this analysis only helps build upon Roethke's level of genuineness, so as to make it obvious that he is in fact very serious about expressing his love for his wife, and that by this point in the poem, the reader should not be questioning his true intentions.

Mr. Roethke used diction, the choice of words, in his poem to describe his tone. In line one and ten he uses the word nothing. The word nothing means to be worthless. However, the author uses action words to show the action of the nothing. This is a little odd that he would describe something worthless to be in action with so much importance. Although, he is describing the nothing to be a hopeful creature.

“Roethke was a great poet, the successor to Frost and Stevens in modern American poetry, and it is the measure of his greatness that his work repays detailed examination” (Parini 1). Theodore Roethke was a romantic who wrote in a variety of styles throughout his long successful career. However, it was not the form of his verse that was important, but the message being delivered and the overall theme of the work. Roethke was a deep thinker and often pondered about and reflected on his life. This introspection was the topic of much of his poetry. His analysis of his self and his emotional experiences are often expressed in his verse. According to Ralph J. Mills Jr., “this self interest was the primary matter of

In Theodore Roethke “Root Cellar”, there is a heavy use of vivid and stylistic imagery. In the first line, the speaker states, "Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch." We are given that something is refusing to sleep--that is, to die--and at the same time being "dank" gets us thinking about things that are “undead”. In line two, the speaker states, “Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark.” This tells us that things are still growing and they are looking for the light. In the next following line the speaker mentions, “Shoots dangled and dropped” (3). This gives us the image of the shoots coming out of the bulbs. The shoots dangle and droop towards whatever light possible. In line four, the speaker gives us an idea of the type of housing they are in, “mildewed crates.” The moisture creates mold and mildew. It also creates prettier life like plants. As you can see, mold and mildew are life, and they grow alongside the plants. In line six, the speaker brings us a smell by saying "congress." Roethke must mean just the coming together or gathering of smells. In line seven, the speaker give us another sense of smell, "Roots ripe as old bait, pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.” He gives us this image and the sense of smell of mold and rot to show it is still life. These words for example would be ripe, pulpy, rank, and rich. The last two lines, “Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing

Instead of writing hundreds of pages Roethke manages to fit a wide range of emotions into a more creative form by minimizing it into a poem. Each section of the poem is creating a leap to the next set of ideas running through the narrators head from confusion to reaching clarity. The first stanza introduces the dark setting and emotions that the narrator is in. From the following pieces of description “the echoing wood”, “weeping to a tree”, “Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den” form the image of a man wandering outside alone. Roethke also gives insight to the individuals inner turmoil he’s begging to face, gathered from the following phrases “I meet my shadow in the deepening shade” and “I hear my echo”. The title “In a Dark Time” collaborates most with the first stanza to set the clear tone that this man is going through a dark moment.

The cellar-smell was worse than ever today, because of the flood. Their house was high on Witcham Street, near the crest of the hill, and they had escaped the worst of it, but there was still standing water down there that had seeped in through the old rock foundations. The smell was low and unpleasant, making you want to take only the shallowest breaths.