... him with jewels, gold, helmets, swords, etc. The importance of material goods are one of the cardinal characteristics of the Pagan's beliefs. Hrothgar and his counselors make useless attempts to appease Grendel in Verse 2. They can't offer him gold or land, as they might an ordinary enemy. Like most people in a time of crisis they slip back into old ways of thinking. Instead of praying to God for support, they sacrifice to t he stone idols of their pagan past. The Christian motifs that run through the poem contrast with the pagan system of values that underlies the actions of the kings and the warriors. The influence of Christianity was just be ...
... he gropes his way downstairs in the dark (pg.194)." Tiresias is able to use his other senses to see what is going on around him. He becomes an observer of everything around him. Tiresias is used in the poem as the observer of the typist and her young lover. He sees all of the hurt going on between the characters. Tiresias states that, "And I Tiresias have foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed (ll.243-244)." Tiresias seems most Christ like at this moment in the poem. According to Steven Helmling in The Grin of Tiresias: humor in the Waste Land, "Tiresias participates in the suffering he sees, like Christ; and he has foresuffered all like Christ ...
... age and starting anything, such as a baby beginning life, an athlete beginning a season, or a student beginning a course of study. The poet is telling the novice to build on what she has learned in the past, to continue to set her goals high and to open herself up to help from a higher being, which may be herself, her father, a mentor, or God, to help her achieve her goals. Booth is saying in this poem that the first lesson one needs to learn in life is that we must prepare ourselves for the future. In doing so, we must rely on a “higher being” for support, because we are not capable of surviving on our own. A baby, or very young child, must have its parents ...
... who was living is now dead" shows the passing of the primal ceremony; the connection to it that was once viable is now dead. The language used to describe the event is very rich and vivid: red, sweaty, stony. These words evoke an event that is without the cares of modern life- it is primal and hot. A couple of lines later Eliot talks of "red sullen faces sneer and snarl/ From doors of mudcracked houses" (ll. 344-345). These lines too seem to contain language that has a primal quality to it. From the primal roots of ceremony Eliot shows us the contrast of broken ceremonies. Some of these ceremonies are broken because they are lacking vital components ...
... in "Native Moments" he once again mimics the concepts of democracy with his words. He lets all know that he embraces the people that others have rejected, as democracy should embrace all. These people are part of America also, and should be accepted as such. as democracy should embrace all. Whitman commends the many people of America in "I Hear America Singing." He writes of the mothers, and the carpenters. He says that they all sing their own song of what belongs to them. In this poem Whitman brings these people from all backgrounds together as Americans. In the freedom of American democracy they are allowed to sing of what is theirs. In these poems Whit ...
... The third section does contain the "philosophical" proposal that, as lovers, the couple will turn the tables on time, but it's not clear if this idea is, again, empty rhetoric. A variation on this interpretation is that the speaker wants not only sex, but also to develop the spiritual aspects of their relationship--the two go together. In this view, his high-flown speech (especially in the first section) expresses the extremeness of his commitment to her. From this perspective, the speaker's final proposal about the lovers' taking control of their own fate (taking that control away from time) could be meant sincerely. Throughout the class discussions, ...
... two similes with common objects to create sympathy for the captive. Bishop then goes on to clearly illustrate what she means by "wallpaper": "shapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age." She uses another simile here paired with descriptive phrases, and these effectively depict a personal image of the fish. She uses the familiar "wallpaper" comparison because it is something the readers can relate to their own lives. Also the "ancient wallpaper" analogy can refer to the fish's age. Although faded and aged he withstood the test of time, like the wallp aper. Bishop uses highly descriptive words like "speckled" and "infested" to create an even c ...
... beat fast. If I meet you suddenly, I can't speak- my tongue is broken." She wishes that she had the same relationship with her love that he has. The Greeks believed that love was so strong of an emotional feeling that it could have physical effects. In the poem, the speaker becomes ill from loving so much. She is hurt inside because she is not with her love, and the emotional pain transforms to physical effects. "I drip with sweat; trembling shakes my body and I turn paler than dry grass. At such times death isn't far from me." The speaker goes so far as to consider dying because of the emotional pain she is feeling inside. She gets physically sick from hur ...
... and "let the world dream otherwise" (14) to hide our suffering. "Richard Cory" is about a man that everyone in town admires. "When ever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentlemen from sole to crown" (1-3). He stood out in a crowd because of his polished fashion. "And he was always quietly arrayed, and he was always human when he talked" (5-6). He was rich and had advantages over others, but he did not conduct himself in a "holier-than-thou" manner. "In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place." Everyone not only liked him, but wanted to be him. He was a role model for som ...
... precise images, and he learned too, to fear romantic softness and to regard the poetic medium rather than the poet's personality as the important factor. Eliot saw in the French symbolists how image could be both absolutely precise in what it referred to physically and at the same time endlessly suggestive in the meanings it set up because of its relationship to other images. Eliot's real novelty was his deliberate elimination of all merely connective and transitional passages, his building up of the total pattern of meaning through the immediate comparison of images without overt explanation of what they are doing, together with his use of indirect references ...
