Paper 2

Paper 1: Unseen Commentary

Adolescence-II by Rita Dove
Introduction
Thesis Statement: Rita Dove's Adolescence-II describes the transition from a young girl to an adolescent by use of dark imagery and diction to develop the speakers fear and ambiguity.
1. Imagery
The Imagery of the poem shows darkness pain and confusion
* Ex: "Venetian blinds slice up the moon"
* Ex: " The tiles quiver in pale strips"
* Ex: Night rest like a ball of fur on my tongue"
2. Structure
There isn't a clear structure in the poem. This adds to the confusion the speaker feels.
3. Similie/Metaphor
* "Eyes as round as dinner plates"
* "Glittering like pools of ink under the moonlight"
* The three seal men, are an illusion of the speakers mind.

Conclusion
Dove uses several literay techniques to illustrate the confusion and desperation of the speaker as she experiences adolescence.

Cora Tull

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a great American Novel. The Bundren family is faced with the death of mother and wife Addie Bundren, the novel is told by many narrators providing the insight and thoughts of every character throughout the story line. The most important characters in the novel would be Darl and the other children of Addie. However the neighbors are also import to the novel as well, they provide a view of the Bundren family from the outside looking in.
Of the characters outside of the Bundren family Cora Tull is very insightful and her thoughts of the Bundren give the readers a view of the Bundren family from the outside looking in. Cora is the wife of Vernon Tull and a neighbor of the Bundren Family. Reading Cora’s narrative and some dialogue with her husband Tull we can further analyze characters of the Bundren family through her observations and the opinions she makes about each character.
Cora is the second character to narrate in the novel and the first character outside of the Bundren family. In her first dialogue Cora’s mind is on the cakes she proudly made without a cost to bake them. For m this narrative we learn that Cora is amongst the poor of her community since she is very proud of making the cakes for close to nothing. Cora also makes a few remarks which reveal her true character. “There’s not a woman in this section could ever bake with Addie Bundren….First thing we know she’ll be up and baking again, and then we won’t have any sale for ours at all.” From this quote we can tell that Cora focuses more on herself than anyone else. Addie is dying and she’s concerned about the money she wouldn’t be able to get if Addie was well and making her own cakes.
The second of Cora’s narratives beginning on pg 21, Cora reveals her thoughts about Darl. Often Darl is described as the weird one in the family. From Cora’s views of Darl in comparison to Jewel and the rest of the family we can tell that everything she says should not be held accountable. “It was like he knew he would never see her again….I always said Darl was different from those others…he was the only one that had his mother’s nature, had any natural affection” These are the thoughts of Cora as Darl and Jewel leave their mother for a chore that pays $3. What Cora sees is far from the truth, Cora sees Jewel as the son that really deserved Addie, when in fact Jewel was the one who didn’t want to leave his mother. From Cora’s second narration we can see her very religious and God fearing side. “ I have tried to live right in the sight of God and man, for the honor and comfort of my Christian husband and the love and respect of my Christian children.” All while Cora proclaims her faith it seem that her thoughts focus back on to herself, when her original thoughts were on Darl and his mother.
Looking at Cora’s name itself, "Cor" means "vulgar corruption of God." This is not surprising see that Cora always seeks the faults of other people, including Addie Bundren on her death bed, as she fails to see her own.

Sad Child by Margaret Atwood

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.

Commentary
Reading Margaret Atwood's poems, we know that her poetry can reflect multiple meanings. It's not surprising that we are able to see multiple themes in her poem Sad Child. Through her diction, metaphor and imagery Atwood could be displaying a girls experience of becoming a woman, naturally through her menstrual cycle. The poem delivers a message although this experience seems hard and painful, it will pass, get over it. This message is conveyed in a uplifting, "tough love" tone

The diction in the poem allows us to establish that the child in the poem is a girl, the words dress and sugar, the word sugar describes what adults and society label little girls sweet like sugar. The dress mentioned in the third stanza, has a ribbon on it, which adds to the stereotypical girl wearing a dress, looking pretty and sweet. As the stanza continues, the girl in the poem is in the bathroom, she says to herself, "I am not the favorite child." In the bathroom where she finds out she has gotten her first period, she realizes she is not the favorite child anymore because she is not a child at all, because biologically she is a woman.
The speaker in the poem describes what a period feels like in a sarcastic tone. "you're trapped in your overturned body,/under a blanket or burning car/and the red flame is seeping out" Periods are natural and there is no way of escaping it, anywhere you are or no matter who you are we all bleed.

Sadness is definitely a theme in the poem. The child is sad when children are usually seen as carefree beings with lots of joy and happiness, this child is sad. To deal with the sadness that is caused by the period, the speaker suggest these things that could help. "See a shrink or take a pill...buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget." The speaker is sarcastically offering the child ways to get over her sadness. The speaker is saying, 'so what do wanna do? this or that? is it really going to ease your sadness?' From the fourth stanza on the speaker delivers the primary message.

The primary message from the speaker to the child in the poem could be that all women go through this menstrual cycle and we all overcome and survive it. "I am not the favorite""My darling, when it comes right down to it...or else we all are." The speaker whom i assume is a woman is experienced and can assure the former child that everything will be fine, it's not as bad as it seems.

H3an3y: Follw3r

Follower

My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

Commentary

Seamus Heaney's use of nautical imagery to captures the speakers admiration of his father and how the roles of the "follower" switch between the speaker and his father. As the poem begins the speaker describes his father as this amazing person whose "shoulders globed like a full sail strung" caused " the horses to strain at his clicking tongue." These lines in the first stanza brings us into the thoughts of the speakers past and admiration of what his father could do. As the poem continues the speaker speaks of what he observed his father doing in his childhood and the the things he wanted to do too. By the fifth stanza the speaker speaks of himself and how he wanted to be like his father. "I wanted to grow up and plough", just as his father did. "All i ever did was follow"

As the poem ends the speaker uses the words, nuisance, tripping, falling and yapping to describe the way his father possibly saw him, when he followed him around in the fields. However the roles switch, now his father is "stumbling" behind him now, figuratively or possibly physically becoming the follower the speaker once was.

Over all the poem illustrates the speakers, pride, and admiration of his father and how his father had an impact on his life. The poem reminds me of my mother and grandmother who died recently. The speaker in this poem saw his father as this amazing person that he followed and looked up to, but its mind boggling that now he's the one that takes care of him or how because he is physically gone, the lessons and morals his father taught him stay with him forever.

Mid-Term Break

Mid-Term Break
Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying-
He had always taken funerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Commentary
Seamus Heaney is big change from John Donne, Heaney generally uses alot of imagery to illustrate his experiences and his point of views with his poems. Mid-Term Break is a prime example of the way Heaney uses imagery to share his experience to his audience, the structure and the diction of the poem provides contrasting moods and feelings at the time of his Mid-Term Break.
In Mid-Term Break, Heaney is a college student who comes home after the death of his younger brother. words such as bell, knelling, crying,funerals, blow, sorry, angry, tearless sighs,troubles, corpse, and ambulance contribute to a tone of mourning as well as the grave situation. even though these words depict a serious and mourning tone. the diction develops some contrasting words; baby and old men, describing the old and young gathered together, crying and laughed, too very different moods of sadness and happiness.
The structure and the style of the poem makes it seem like a short story. Each of the three lined stanzas provide, different snippets or pieces of the whole ordeal.Each stanza reveals the next part of his experience. The last stanza is one line in comparison to the seven stanzas preceding it. this last line in singled out because it pulls you back to the reality of the situation. "A four-foot Box a foot for every year" it shows us how a innocent child died.

"The Flea"

In "The Flea" John Donne is able to use diction, and metaphor to persuade his lover into becoming intimate with him. The Flea, which the poem is entitled reflects the love that the speaker and his lover already share. the poem says it sucks me first and now sucks thee", which means that their bloods are already mixed together. From the speakers stand point the the blood which is mixed within the flea is just like them being intimate. In the sixteenth century of Donne's time it was believed that having sex with someone also meant their bloods were mixing. With this established in the first stanza the speaker continually uses the flea to illustrate what has "technically" already happened.

Donne's use of diction also adds to the speakers persuasive and pleading tone. In the second stanza Donne uses the words married, marriage bed, marriage temple, met , to illustrate the connection that the speaker and his love have together. Donne also uses the words spare, kill, self-murder sacrilege, three sins and killing, these words are used to make the speaker's lover feel as if she has committed a sin and she is the one who should feel guilty of a violation for not being intimate with him. the diction continues in the third and final stanza when Donne uses contrasting words, innocence and guilty. these words also make "the flea" something innocent and the lover in the poem the guilty one.

IN conclusion Donne was able to create a rather comical, persuasive plea for the speakers to convince his love to sleep with him. The diction was most successful in making it seem as the speaker's lover was the guilty one for wanting to hold on to her virginity until she is married. Personally i think that this poem is funny, creative and skillful in the use of diction and metaphor to illustrate the small difference between intimacy and a flea who has bitten two ppl. I do wonder if this poem was successful, if this was actually used by Donne.