Within A Dream Synthesis

Having a dream and living with passion is very important because I believe living without passion is like being dead. Someone like Tony Hawk could agree. Tony Hawk has been a professional skateboarder for over 24 years. However, he did not receive that title overnight; Tony got his first skateboard when he was only 9 years old. Since then, Tony worked extremely hard and put a lot of his focus on skateboarding. He did it because that was his Dream. Tony’s Dream was frowned upon by many of his teachers and adults alike. One of his teachers even told him that he “would never make it in the workplace if he didn’t follow directions exactly” (Hawk), but he never gave up his Dream. He kept working hard and eventually became a pro at the young age of 15.

A Dream Within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe, was written after the death of his beloved wife, Virginia Clemm. Poe was also inspired to write the because of the death of his mother, his father leaving him to start a new life, and his past love, Sarah Royster, losing connection with him due to her parents intercepting their letters (Loveday). Poe’s sadness is shown in lines 14-18 when the poem says, “And I hold within my hand/ Grains of the golden sand---/ How few! yet how they creep/ Through my fingers to the deep, / While I weep --- while I weep!” (Poe). The sand represents the lives of those who

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is not a tale of ease. Poe’s life was full of personal and fiscal disaster. These disasters help to mold some of the most ominous and intellectually challenging poetry ever written. For the short duration of Poe’s life, he was seen as a literary critic rather than an author. To the modern generation his unbeknown status seems bafflingly inconceivable, considering his now acclaimed publications. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing was very much dictated by his life. The mournful tone of Edgar Allan Poe’s life created his literature; death and all his friends narrated Poe’s life. Edgar Allan Poe shows his life’s constant despair through his poetry and short story writings.

The poem I will be analysing today is Song of the Surf by Dan Ashlin. Ashlin is a born and bred Australian poet who writes modern poems. I believe that I have a strong connection with this poem because of how much I personally love the beach with the soft sand and the ferocious waves. In my opinion this poem isn’t just about the waves in the ocean, but how the ocean has its own life and story to tell.

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

The reading begins with two researchers Aserinsky and Dement, researching into why humans need sleep. Then, it begins to talk about another two researchers, Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley. They both came up with a new theory about dreaming, which was “ in essence, was that dreams are nothing more than your attempt to interpret random electrical impulses produced automatically in your brain during REM sleep.” (Hock 2013). Basically what they were saying is that while we sleep, a part of our brain produces electrical charges in the brain stem. While we sleep most other parts of the brain are inactive, but the brain stem isn’t. Hobson and

Both Freud and Jung provided important and interesting theories on dreams; encompassing their functions, their roots, and their meanings. Freud looked at dreams as a result of repressed memories, particularly repressed sexual memories from our childhood. Jung however, believed that dreams delved beyond sexual repression during younger years, to other problems, be it trauma, anxiety etc. Jung also believed dreams changed predominately through middle adult years, while Freud believed the opposite. There is little empirical evidence to reinforce either Freud or Jung’s theories, however, their contributions to the study of dreams in psychology cannot be lessened or denied.

Thesis Statement: Dreams are successions of images, emotions, and sensations that occur subconsciously during sleep.

Then the next line states, “How few! Yet how they creep, Through my fingers to the deep,” which is symbolizing that time is slipping away from him and he cannot stop it from passing. It shows that he is really sad about time passing as he tries to grasp the sand harder like some try to grasp more time. Poe is symbolizing sand as time and time passing also binds into the theme of the poem. Poe is trying to grasp the sand that is symbolizing time because he wants to have more time to be with his loved ones as they are dying in the first stanza.

Starting off the video I found it quite fascinating that when Alan was asked to blink slowly 5 times to test the equipment we could clearly see 5 large spikes in the second line of the graph. This seems like quite the trivial matter considering it was just meant to test the connections from Alan to the equipment; but it was cool to see such a strong response from the equipment for such a simple movement.

The poem A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe depicts a theme of isolation and uncertainty. In the poem, Edgar talks about life and how it is slipping away from us. I think the author wants us to understand that it is hard to let go of the past and that our lives will never be perfect. I believe having the ability to move forward in life is important, otherwise, you will be missing out on new experiences and opportunities.

Akin to the barrenness that Poe was obviously feeling at the time he wrote this poem, most detail is stripped away except for the most basic imagery of the sea, the shore and the heavens.

In the novel, Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee, the magistrate’s progressive, non-linear dreams are a parallel to his growing involvement with the barbarians and his growing distaste for the empire. The great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud said, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious.” In every dream there is a hidden meaning and when the reader starts analyzing the magistrate’s dreams he reveals that he is oddly attracted to the barbarians and knows he should not get involved and it will be a trial to get close to them.

“From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw,” Poe has shown his readers that he has had one of the “most stormy life” (1-3, 10). Poe’s use of alliteration and “anaphora” in his poem “Alone” emphasizes the message Poe is trying to get across (Cummings). Also Poe’s use of a metaphor while in his poem “Alone” shows a great deal of how his childhood caused him to have a “most stormy life” (Cummings, 10). Poe’s different point of view strongly affected his “emotional life,” Poe hit’s a sensitive nerve when talking about his past and displays to his readers why “he sees things differently” (“Alone Poem Analysis”). Poe’s poem “Alone” had a strong sense of imagery “Alone” was Poe’s cry for help, “My sorrow—I could not awaken,” Poe is announcing that he can’t get escape from his sorrow and what “drives him to sorrow is something different” (6, “Alone Poem Analysis”). The sorrow and the “demon in my view—” led to “The mystery surrounding Poe's death” (22, Giordano). The strong metaphor of “demon” is talking about Poe’s personal demon, the reader might never know exactly what Poe was referring to because “this is the central mystery of his life” (22, “Alone Poem Analysis”). No one truly knows how Poe had died, the rumors still linger to this day. Poe’s reputation didn’t flourish until after his

Many people can relate to the feeling of desperation that comes with acknowledgement of a person’s cosmic insignificance. In the poem “A Dream Within a Dream”, Poe utilizes multiple poetic devices in order to shape and define the way a reader analyzes the poem. These devices further bring the reader to understand the purpose of the poem: to show how death is inescapable.