Anne Bradstreet’s ‘Prologue’
In Anne Bradstreet’s ‘Prologue’, the
speaker is a woman who is trying to overcome the stereotype of women as
homemakers and is demonstrating her own knowledge and artistic ability. It
attempts to show the difficulties faced by a talented and knowledgeable woman
in a man’s world(patriarchy), to get attention or respect for doing something
out of her social norm. Throughout the poem, the mood is condescending because
the speaker is lowering herself by thinking the same way that society does.
Figurative language and imagery are used throughout the poem to convey the
theme. For example, “mean pen” is personified and explains that the speaker’s
pen is humble according to the speaker.
Bradstreet strikes a note of humility when
she says that her “mean pen” would be unequal to the task of writing anything
as lofty as the epic. Pen symbolizes literary creativity which was considered
to be prerogative of men. “Obscure lines” carries the connotation that she is
hardly recognized as a poet, as literary critics were gender biased. Bradstreet
cleverly caters to the male ego by asserting the poetic superiority to Bartas
to ward off critical censure. The mood of self-depreciation is evident as she
acknowledges her deficiencies as a poet. One must not expect much from her just
as one cannot expect rhetoric from a schoolboy or hope for harmony from a
defective musical instrument. Her poetry is immature and lacks the ‘sugared
lines’ associated with ‘great Bartas’. The absence of ‘perfect beauty’ in her
verse is due to one chief defect – the Muse that inspires her is “foolish
broken and blemished”. And there is no art by which one may set right this
natural handicap. The speaker is supremely confident and is only sarcastic
about the notion of woman’s lack of literary creativity. Although a great deal
can be achieved by art, yet there is no remedy for “a weak or wounded brain”-
an attack on the prejudice against women in literary arena.
The speaker opines that may be, writing
about wars, captains and kings lies outside her experience as a woman, but to
suggest that her talent is better suited for needlework is very disagreeable to
her. She feels that even if she were to write a good poetry, she still would
not be appreciated. Originality and talent in woman poet are viewed with
suspicion. Given this cultural and intellectual hostility, she feels that the
Greeks perhaps were more mild and understanding than the men of her own
generation, as they have made women as the nine Muses. The ironical implication
is that the Greeks held the idea that women are only inspirers and not
creators. It is a dubious privilege women enjoy as Muses.
Putting on the mask of humility, the
speaker says “Men can do best, and women know it” and so she expects the male
poets to be gracious enough to make a small allowance to women’s work. She goes
on to suggest that the male poet’s true merit as writers is dubious as their
praise is dependent on their capacity to hunt down(condemn) their prey(women
writers). Anticipating the adverse criticism
of male poets, Bradstreet deliberately humbles herself and request these
“high-flown quills” to condescendingly cast a glance at her “low lines”, and
crown her efforts with a wreath made of thyme and parsley(both used in cooking)
as she does not merit one made out of bay.
The concluding couplet is very significant
as it suggests that the poetry of male writers is not intrinsically great. It
shines by contrast with the poetry of women acting as a foil, further it has to
be borne in mind that the pure gold has its origin in “mean and unrefined
ore”. Bradstreet calls for a less
hostile atmosphere for the writing of women poets to improve and begin to
glitter like gold.
Denise Levertov’s ‘The Mutes’
‘The Mutes’ is built around an event which
is so much a part of our urban culture that no serious heed is paid to it.
Women, the target of unsavoury attention, often dismiss it with lady-like
disregard. If, however, they experience revulsion, they either eschew it or
occasionally resort to a sharp rebuke. This too common and familiar incident is
analysed by Denise Levertov from various perspectives, leading to startling and
relevant indictment of our decadent culture.
The first stanza describe the incident and
the next two problematises it by raising
a serious question. The poet muses about “Those groans men use/ passing a woman
in the street’ or elsewhere. A street scene with a far too familiar spectacle
of harassment of women is immediately conjured. The use of the demonstrative
pronoun “those” makes the groans specific, the kind men use only when they are
excited by a woman and want “to tell her that she is a female/ and their flesh
knows it”. There are two key words in the second stanza, “female” and “flesh”.
The word ‘female’ is disagreeable as it introduces a gender bias with its
attendant functions – in the present context she is seen as an agent of sexual
arousal. And man’s response to her is purely physical(of the flesh). Her human
identity is submerged by her function as a female. Levertov hints at all this
but instead of resorting to the conventional moral censure, she sees the
problem as an abuse of the faculty of speech. The groans to her sound like an
ugly song “sung/by a bird with a slit tongue” which “is meant for music”.
Tongue, one of the organs of speech, which could be effectively used to produce
musical notes in praise of a woman’s beauty has lost its function and can only
produce groans to suggest how men have become emotionally and intellectually
inarticulate. The men who stand at street corners are seen as objects of pity
for they are the deafmutes of our culture. The groans are in a sense a muffled
cry for attention apart from being a sort of ugly tune. They fail to realize
that between a man and a woman there can be more enduring and mutually
gratifying ties than mere casual copulation.
Having psychoanalyzed men, Levertov directs
her attention to women’s response to the “groans men use”. Her comment is
forthright and candid: “yet a woman, in spite of herself,/ knows it’s a
tribute”. A woman is regarded not as a
warm human being but a “warm hole”. Being aware of the implications of the
sub-text of groans, the woman “wants to/ throw the tribute away,” because it is
no tribute to her good looks, but to her function in bed.
“Life after life goes by/without poetry,/
without seemliness,/ without love.” The lines very vividly capture for us the
bleak and empty lives of individuals who lack aesthetic sensibility and love.
In that sense the poem is an indictment of our culture that fosters spiritual,
intellectual and emotional barrenness.
The line “Life after life goes by” records
with profound regret the absence of the growth of finer feelings . In the
absence of poetry, seemliness and love, life is lived at a very primitive level
– seeing everything in terms of sexual gratification and having no concern for
finer fellow feelings. Thus a woman is seen only as “a warm hole.”
Theodore Roethke’s ‘The Meadow Mouse’
In ‘The Meadow Mouse’ , the speaker
expresses his feeling about the little meadow mouse he had picked up, and how
he cared for it as if it was his child. A clear image and description of what
he is feeling and thinking is presented to the readers.
The speaker describes the way the mouse
acted towards him when he found him for the first time – “trembled and shook”
with fear. The speaker uses parental words like “baby”, “cradled”,”little” and
“puppy”. The readers would be able to tell that the speaker treats and looks at
the meadow mouse as if he is looking at his own baby. Further, the reader also
could feel the care and love that the speaker has for this particular meadow
mouse. The poet brought the baby meadow mouse “cradled “ in his hand” which
shows the great care and gentleness in handling it. Then it is put “in a shoe
box stuffed in an old nylon stocking” which projects the idea of warmth and
safe being. The speaker has provided the little mouse with shelter and “five
kinds of cheese” draws the attention of the readers to the love and the
pampering. When the mouse is full, it
“lays it one corner…his bat-like ears twitching, tilting toward the least
sound” shows that the speaker pays undistracted attention on this mouse because
he notices even the finest twitch of the mouse’s ears. He observes every
movement of the meadow mouse and this again shows the motherly love the person
felt towards this mouse that he found in the meadow.
“Do I imagine he no longer trembles
when I come close to him?” The speaker asks himself whether the mouse is still
trembling but he is not sure. He wanted to give the mouse a feeling of safety
and protection. The speaker assumes that he had offered the mouse enough love
and protection that the mouse now trust and feels safe with him. The speaker
assumes that the mouse had settled in and is no longer afraid of him and had
perhaps even developed a better relationship with him.
In the fourth stanza the speaker finds
that the shoe box which contained the mouse “is empty”. He wonders what had
happened to it; “had it gone to live by courtesy of a snake?” “Run under the
eye of the owl” or “ran under the wing of the hawk?” All these are enemies of a
mouse and can be fatal predators to a mouse, especially one as young as the one
the speaker had picked up. The speaker fears for the mouse and this feeling is
passed to the reader, fearing for the little mouse’s faith and life.
The last stanza is all the
possibilities the speaker thinks has happened to his mouse, “nestling fallen
into the deep grass”; “turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway” are
all horrifying images of helpless animals whose lives are at stake. At this
point, the speaker is referring to his lost baby mouse who is out there
somewhere on his own, unprotected by the speaker, who had tried everything to
put the mouse under his wings of protection.
Roethke makes a human correlation, a
discovery about human conditions and parental worries over a child. Even though
the world is fraught with danger, in the natural scheme of things, every parent
knows their child will leave the safe environment of home to seek his or her
own fortune in this dangerous world; and even though the dangers are real, a
parent must let the child go.
Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much Madness is divinest Sense—‘
The narrator distinguishes between madness
and sanity: the beliefs of the majority constitute sanity, whereas those who
dissent are considered insane. This poem states that what is often declared
madness is actually the most profound kind of sanity when viewed by someone
with a ‘discerning Eye’. What is often called sense or sanity is in fact not
just madness but profound madness and it is only called ‘sense’ not because it
is defined by reason, but by what the majority thinks.
Since the majority rules, the act of
agreeing, no matter to what, means that you are, in the public mind sane. If one
disagrees, or even hesitate in his/her assent, he/she is not only declared
crazy, but dangerously so. The act of disagreeing with the majority leads to a
loss of freedom, thus one can either be physically free, but ruled by the
majority, or imprisoned with their own beliefs.
This poem is not just concerned with the
judgement of ‘madness’ or ‘sense’, however, but with the prospect of any
judgements that have important ramifications, and with who has the power to
make them. In this poem, the judgement of a person’s insanity is made
‘straightway’, and only because this person chooses to ‘demur’ from the
majority. The diction here, especially in the contrast between the extremes of
these two words: ‘straightaway’ is as fast as a decision can be made, while ‘demur’
is a rather weak form of objection, as opposed to, say, a rebellion.
There is no slow, steady, rational process
of judgment before this person is labeled insane and “handled with a Chain,” it
is instead simply a kneejerk reaction, yet one that takes away the insane
person’s freedom. The use of the word “Chain,” too, has a hint of violence to
it, so it is not just a loss of freedom, but potentially a violent one.
Dickinson throughout her poems is very concerned with the issue of truth, and
the fact that it is almost impossible to ever really find it. If this is the
case, then passing judgment in any fair way is inherently impossible, and to do
so quickly is a horrifying crime.
Emily Dickinson’s ‘The Soul Selects Her Own Society’
The speaker says that “the Soul selects her
own Society—” and then “shuts the Door,” refusing to admit anyone else—even if
“an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her mat—.” Indeed, the soul often chooses no
more than a single person from “an ample nation” and then closes “the Valves of
her attention” to the rest of the world.
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” takes a playful
tone to the idea of reclusiveness and privacy, the tone of “The Soul selects
her own Society—” is quieter, grander, and more ominous. The idea that “The
Soul selects her own Society” (that people choose a few companions who matter
to them and exclude everyone else from their inner consciousness) conjures up
images of a solemn ceremony with the ritual closing of the door, the chariots,
the emperor, and the ponderous Valves of the Soul’s attention.
Essentially, the middle stanza functions to
emphasize the Soul’s stern and uncompromising attitude towards anyone trying to
enter into her Society once after the
metaphorical door is shut—even chariots, even an emperor, cannot persuade her.
The third stanza then illustrates the severity of the Soul’s exclusiveness—even
from “an ample nation” of people, she easily settles on one single person to
include, summarily and unhesitatingly locking out everyone else. The concluding
stanza, with its emphasis on the “One” who is chosen, gives the poem, the feel
of a tragic love poem, although we need not reduce our understanding of the
poem to see its theme as merely romantic. The poem is an excellent example of
Dickinson’s tightly focused skills with metaphor and imagery; cycling through
her regal list of door, divine Majority, chariots, emperor, mat, ample nation,
and stony valves of attention, Dickinson continually surprises the reader with
her vivid and unexpected series of images, each of which furthers the somber
mood of the poem.
Emerson’s
‘Hamatreya’
The poem addresses the question of ownership – whether humans own the
land or the land owns the humans. By specifically naming each of the landlords
–“Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,” and their agricultural
products – “Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood,” Emerson
demonstrates the dependence that humans have upon the earth. However, because
the landlords work upon the land, they come to see their crops as a result of
their own work, rather than a result of nature’s processes, and they develop a
sense of ownership of the land. These landlords do not consider that death
comes for every person, and that it returns them to the soil which they claim
to own. The founders took satisfaction in their ownership of the trees and
hills, and believed that the land would belong to them and to their descendants
forever. The speaker asks where they are now and answers “Asleep beneath their
grounds”, suggesting a kinship with the earth quite different from that which
the founders thought they possessed. He writes of the Earth laughing at her
“boastful boys” who were so proud of owning what was not actually theirs, but
who could not avoid death. The speaker enumerates the ways in which they
altered their land. These men appreciated the stability of their property as
they sailed back and forth across the ocean, never dreaming that the land that
awaited their return would outlast their claims to it. They did not realize
that death would transform each of them into “a lump of mould”, turning them
back into the land they owned.
The “Earth-Song”, the second poem nested within “Hamatreya’ is Nature’s
answer to the landlords’ assertions of ownership. “Mine and yours; / Mine, not
yours, / Earth endures” indicates a relationship where Nature actually has
ownership of man. During life, the landlords have a partnership with nature
which gives them a feeling of ownership of the earth, but once a landlord dies,
the earth belongs only to itself.
The words ‘I’ and ‘mine’ constitute ignorance. In the earth song, the
Earth mocks the legal deeds by which the property of the first settlers was
supposedly conveyed to their heirs, and she sings that the inheritors of the
land are, like their progenitors, also gone, as are the lawyers and the laws
through which the ownership was effected. Everyone of the men who controlled
the land is gone, even though all of them wanted to stay. The Earth underscores
her hold over the men who firmly believed that they held her.
In the third section of the poem, the speaker of the poem states that the
Earth-Song took away his bravery and avarice, “Like lust in the chill of the
grave,” thus ending the poem on a note of sober awareness.
Emerson drew on a passage in the VishnuPurana
in writing ‘Hamatreya’. The origin of the poem’s title is unclear, because
there is no Hindu word or name ‘Hamatreya’. Edward Waldo Emerson noted in his
annotations to the poem in the Centenary Edition of his father’s writings that
‘Hamatreya’ appears to be an adaptation of ‘Maitreya’, one of the characters in
the Hindu text. In the original passage, Maitreya is engaged in a dialogue with
the deity Vishnu. Vishnu tells Maitreya about the Hindu kings who mistakenly
believed themselves possessors of the Earth. But the kings have disappeared,
while the Earth endures. Vishnu recites the chant of the Earth, who laughs at
and pities the egotistical kings and their blindness to their mortality. He
tells Maitreya that the Earth’s song will cause proud ambition to melt away.
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’
The theme of the poem is Lenore, the
beautiful mysterious maiden who died very young with whom the poet was deeply
in love. The very name conjures in the poet sorrowful flights of fancy, on a
dismal wintry night of dark December, the season of decay and cold death,
chilling in its suggestive loneliness and haunting aloofness. The embers
falling out of the hearth in ghostly shadows, the silken rustle of the pink
curtains, suggestive of unknown fears, the mild tapping at the chamber door,
half-heard at midnight hour by the poet whose mind is on the borderland of
sleepiness, fill the atmosphere with a sense of foreboding. The poet is
sorrowladen with memories of beloved Lenore, no more on earth; but in his make-believe,
as belonging to the world of angels and hailed as one among them. This heavy
air of foreboding is given a further denseness in the manner of the advent of
the Raven, the very symbol of ill omen.
The Raven takes over as the titular hero of
the poem’s narration from here, as though the motif of the great grief of the
poet for Lenore were a preparation for its arrival. Lenore, the symbol of the
poet’s soul in agony of separation over a length of time, meets with another
symbol of the raven in a dimension of the spiritual world, concretised in awful
majesty. The pompous stealth with which it makes its presence known by rapping
at the window, the manner of its entry as of right, fluttering majestically to
occupy its accustomed place on the bust of Pallas Athene as one expected at
that midnight hour, adds to the ominous quality of the visit.
The Raven becomes the centre of attraction.
It comes to occupy the central place in the poem. The poet’s thoughts are
centred round the bird. The mystery that surrounds the radiant maiden Lenore is
overlaid with the equally mysterious appearance of the Raven. It is a bird of
yore who belongs to the Hades, the world of Plutus, whose appearance spells
doom.
The popular superstition about the Raven
being a thing of evil tidings is exploited by the poet in this poem sustaining
the theme of Lenore whose whereabouts as a spirit is agitating his thoughts.
The Raven ensconced comfortably is questioned by the poet as to what tidings it
has to convey from the spirit world from where it has come.
The Raven, the black bird hailing from the
black interiors of the netherworld, belongs to the dark ages of yore. It keeps
its distance in far off regions of long ago, of dead souls and spirits, having
access to dark secrets of dark world. The awesome ugliness and grim smugness of
The Raven is amusing at first, but assumes the role of mystery when it repeats
the word, “Nevermore” to every anxious, agonized appeal of the poet to tell him
where his beloved Lenore is. The Raven assumes a more irritating, more
grotesque and more ambiguous role to the poet who is bewildered by its reply in
one word repeatedly said as if that one word, “Nevermore” were the very essence
of its soul. The mystery adds suspense. The poet tries to play down his fears watching
the bird reclining on the soft chair before it. Its eyes peer into the poet’s
soul and burn it as it were. The eyes are red as live coal reflecting the floss
of the dim light. Its beak, the poet feels, is pecking at his heart. His
attempts to find out the implication of the word ‘nevermore’ are frustrated.
The bird is differently flattered by the poet as a prophet come from Heaven or
from the Hades to tell him if the sainted Lenore is not hailed by the angels.
The Ravens utters again the same word with an agonizing monotony ‘Nevermore’.
It adds fuel to the fire. In the name of God, the poet asks if there is no balm
or opiate that can drown his sorrow for Lenore, which can be found in Gilead,
near Palestine. The Raven should be aware, being all-knowing. The allusion to
Gilead is skillfully made to prove that the Raven, against the popular
conception as foreboding evil, is also a consecrated divine bird, holy and
wise, as it was the ravens that fed Elijah the saint of Gilead long ago. In
this faith, the poet flatters the bird as having a double attribute as
messenger of Heaven as well as of Hell. It has access also to Heaven. He
desperately asks for the last time if Lenore is not somewhere to be found in
the region of the Garden of Eden with the angels calling her by that name. The
maiden being a radiant girl, she cannot but be in Heaven with angels. But the
Raven replies ‘Nevermore’. The poet roused to indignation beyond control gets
hysterical and cries at it to vacate its usurped place above his door on the
bust of Pallas and leave no token of its terrifying undesirable visit and to
return to the netherworld, its real original habitation. It had better left his
haunted house alone. The poet is now convinced that the Raven is more of a
thing of evil, though a prophet, a harbinger of death and not a holy messenger
from the heaven. It is the devil. It should not leave even a single black plume
behind. For it has spoken a lie as black as its soul.
Robert Frosts’ ‘The Death of the Hired Man’
In this domestic epic, a man and
woman converse on the porch of their farmhouse. The man is just coming home in
the evening; his wife meets him at the door to warn him that Silas, the old hired hand, had returned that day. Silas
looked terribly ill, yet he didn’t ask for help. Instead, he told her he would
cut the upper pasture, and he kept inquiring about the college boy he worked
with on the farm a few years back. He and the boy argued all the time; now the
old man wants to "make things right." In the poem, Frost outlines the
traditions of duty and hard work that he explores in many of his other poems.
Silas returns to the farm so that he can fulfill his broken contract to Warren
and die honorably. It also signals the importance of the work that he performed
on the farm as a way to give his life meaning and satisfaction.
The husband shakes his head. No, he
will not take Silas back. The old man walked away one too many times. You can’t
depend on him to stay and finish the job when someone comes around offering him
a little "pocket money" to go elsewhere. Indeed, Silas’s brother is
the president of a bank; why doesn’t he go to his brother for help? At last the
husband quiets down and goes in to see the old man, who is presumably asleep
beside the stove. A few moments later, he returns to the porch. To his wife’s
query, "’Dead,’ was all he answered."
The hired hand has returned
"home" to die. Though kinship would suggest that the old man’s rich
brother ought to provide a home for him, Silas evidently feels more at home
with the farm couple, who have supported him over the years. The poem presents
two definitions of "home": " ’Home is the place where, when you
have to go there, / They have to take you in.’ / ’I should have called it /
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’ "In this case Silas appears to
have come "home" by both definitions. Despite his initial refusal, it
looks as if Warren (the farmer) will have to take his old hand in, though Silas
has done nothing to deserve it. Of course, when the moment of truth arrives,
Silas is already dead.
Ironically, even after Silas’
attempt to die in the companionship of Mary and Warren, the people whom he
views as family more than any others, he ultimately dies alone. Moreover, he
dies without ever fulfilling his contract to ditch the meadow and clear the
upper pasture. For all his attempts to fulfill his duty, achieve satisfaction
through hard work, and find a sense of family, Silas’ efforts are unsuccessful.
Even the way in which his death is introduced expresses its bleak isolation:
Warren merely declares, “Dead.”
The poem also creates a clear
dichotomy between Mary and Warren, between Mary’s compassionate willingness to
help Silas and Warren’s feelings of resentment over the broken contract. Mary
follows the model of Christian forgiveness that expects her to help Silas
because he needs it, not because he deserves it. Warren, on the other hand,
does not believe that they owe anything to Silas and feels that they are not
bound to help him. It is interesting to note that, of the two, only Mary
actually sees Silas over the course of the poem. She finds him huddled against
the barn and instantly recognizes the extent of his illness. As a result, she
is automatically more willing to be compassionate toward him. Having not seen
Silas in his current state, Warren takes the more rational view of the
situation. Had Warren found Silas first, his treatment of the former farmhand
would no doubt have been more compassionate.
Amy Lowells’ ‘Patterns’
Lowell captures the love the woman in her
poem holds for her lover by having her follow a set of patterns. The pattern of
her dress, the tears she shed for her lover, and the garden she paces through
each day gives the readers a sense of this woman’s incompleteness. Lowell also
shows how these patterns are destroyed. The one event of the lover’s death
caused the hopeful patterns to be useless. We all follow patterns in our own
lives. Most of these patterns, however, will constantly need changing for the
rest of our lives.
Lowell speaks of a “stiff, brocaded gown”
that this woman wears throughout the entire poem. This dress is none other than
a wedding gown. The woman in the story is waiting to marry her lover who has
gone off to war, and while she awaits his return, she wears this wedding gown.
In the first stanza, the woman speaks of the elegance of her dress, and all the
pains taken to look as she does.”Not a softness anywhere about me,/ only
whalebone and brocade”. In the third stanza, the woman in the poem begins to
tire of her richly-made gown. Despite the discomfort this woman feels in her
gown, she still carries within herself the hope that her lover will be
returning soon.
The woman begins to dream of her lover’s
return in the fourth stanza. The two young lovers childishly run through the
gardens without having any cares. However, the woman still wears her wedding
dress, while her lover wears his uniform.
Everything that the pattern of her life follows is for her lover. When
she dreams that the two of them are finally together, she is “very like to
swoon”.
After finding out about her lover’s death,
the woman in the poem reverts to bitterness. In the fifth stanza and on through
the rest of the poem, she refers to her dress as a “stiff brochade”. Her
wedding dress no longer has any meaning when the man she loves is dead. The
gown is no longer a beautiful symbol of these two lovers’ lives together, but
simply a stiff, uncomfortable dress.
Lowell also uses a pattern of water in her
poem. The water is a symbol of the tears that this woman sheds for her husband.
This particular pattern, however, is not mentioned until the twenty-fifth line
in the poem. The reasoning behind this is that the longer the woman’s lover is
away, the harder it becomes for the woman to carry on with her daily patterns.
The symbolism – if this one young flower is chosen to die of all the flowers on
the lime-tree, the same could hold true for her lover. Although she
optimistically hopes for the return of her husband, she nevertheless cries
harder than before.
The last pattern that this woman follows is
the pattern in the gardens. Throughout the poem, it is noted that the woman
walks up and down the gardens. The only thing that changes is the scenery of
the garden : bright and cheery atmosphere to that one of despair.
After receiving the message that her lover
is dead, the woman begins to think back to her words her lover spoke to her
while they were still together. She believed all that her lover had told her
and now how can she trust what is dead? All the patterns she followed while her
lover was away, where they all a waste? “Christ! What are patterns for?”
Robinson’s ‘Richard Cory’
The poem ‘Richard Cory’ is a man’s
life-story distilled into sixteen lines.
The first two lines suggest Richard Cory’s distinction, his separation
from ordinary folk. The second two lines tell what it is in his natural
appearance that sets him off. The next two mention the habitual demeanor that
elevates him still more in men’s regard: his apparent lack of vanity, his
rejection of the eminence that his fellows would accord him. At the beginning
of the third stanza, “rich” might seem to be an anticlimax – as the second line indicates, in their eyes
wealth is everything. The last two lines of the stanza record a total
impression of a life that perfectly realizes the dream that most men have of an
ideal existence; while the first two lines of the last stanza bring us back
with bitter emphasis to the poem’s beginning, and the impassable gulf, for most
people – but not, they think, for Richard Cory – between dream and fact. Thus
the first fourteen lines are a painstaking preparation for the last two, with
their stunning overturn of the popular belief.
Robinson has sketched in Cory’s
gentlemanliness and his wealth, but not his despondency, and he lets the
suicide seal the identity of the man forever beyond our knowing or judging. On
the other hand, he can characterize the chorus just because they lack
individuality. Those who count over what they lack and fail to bless the good
before their eyes are truly desperate. The blind see only what they can covet
or envy. With their mean complaining, they are right enough about their being
in darkness, and their dead-gray triviality illuminates by contrast Cory’s
absolute commitment to despair.
The irony of these lines, and the poem as a
whole, depends on the contrast between the serenity of Cory’s appearance and
the violence of his death; its melancholy, upon our recognizing that Cory – for
all his privileges – is as acutely isolated and spiritually starved as anyone
else. “There is more in every person’s soul than we think”, Robinson observed
once, “Even the happy mortals we term ordinary….act their own mental tragedies
and live a far deeper and wider life than we are inclined to believe possible
in the light of our prejudices.” This is precisely the lesson that the ‘we’ of
the poem, Cory’s neighbours in Tilbury Town, never learn: the night on which
Cory shoots himself remains ‘calm’ in their view, and the use of that word only
underlines the distance between him and them.
The speaker appears to contradict himself,
or, more exactly, state the truth about Richard Cory. Cory is not a king, he is
human. The narrator then confesses through his own hyperbole, his own
exaggerated viewpoint of the man. In the next line, the narrator even
acknowledges (“But still”) the collective fault of the people; the lines might
be paraphrased as follows: even though we knew deep inside us Cory was a human,
something else inside compelled us to blow up his proportions(“he fluttered
pulses” and “he glittered”). The narrator admits essentially to this view in
lines eleven and twelve.
In light of the narrator’s attitude line
one establishes that it is Richard Cory who comes down town; in other words,
Richard Cory makes an attempt to communicate with the people. His activity
contrasts with their passivity or stasis(‘on we worked and waited”). Nowhere in
the poem it is suggested that the people try to come to Cory. Quite simply the
people have erected a barrier around themselves and their only reaction to Cory
is stasis and silence. The phrase “when he talked” even suggests that Cory
makes more than a token effort.
SYLVIA PLATH’S ‘LADY LAZARUS’
The title ‘Lady Lazarus’ is reminiscent of
the biblical John Lazarus – resurrected from the death. The ‘lady’ projects an
image of a powerful woman – reincarnated after each suicide attempt. The first
stanza acts as an introduction to the poem and it introduces the idea of
attempted suicide and death.
Plath alludes herself as “a sort of walking
miracle” echoing the title. She then uses a powerful comparison ‘bright as a
Nazi lampshade” to describe her skin and the suicidal tyrant that lives within
her. This image is contrasted with a subdued metaphor – “a featureless, fine /
Jew linen” to depict her face – the victim of the suicidal tyrant. This pair of
contrasting images demonstrates how she imposes death on her body as Nazi’s
onto the Jews. The suicidal tyrant has fixated on her firmly.
The next section is the beginning of the
crude sarcasm the author would be using throughout the poem. Plath dares her
enemy to “peel off the napkin” followed by a rhetorical question “Do I
terrify?” as a spectacle of suicidal tyrant. She assures the listeners that she
can get over the “grave cave(death)” and restore “a smiling woman” in a day’s
time.
Next she states her age with the pride of
someone who has a lifetime ahead of them and makes a witty comparison with the
cat, which both have “nine times to die”. Then, in a boastful tone, she
declares that “This is Number Three”. The capitalization effectively blows out
of proportion the somber event as a grand and exciting occasion. Next she
refers to her one per decade near-death experiences, the last two being
attempted suicides in self-disgust – “a million filament”.
The usage of “gentleman and ladies” is
satirical and used to mock the “peanut crunching crowd” to whom Plath offers
herself as a vulgar piece of meat. Plath acts as a guide to her features.
“These are my hands/My knees”. She reassures us that she is the “same identical
woman” inspite of her altered physical appearances.
She briefs about her first two near-death
experiences, the second time she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills in a
well-hidden spot in her home. She was found out only three days later
practically dead with earthworms crawling over her.
Plath considers herself as an expert in the
art of dying. “Dying is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally
well” to the point of obsession that she calls her suicide attempts as “a
call”. Plath finds it easy to commit suicide and to summon death upon herself.
She also describes her disappointment that she feels when she realizes she is
still alive among the peanut crunching crowd. As she is resurrected, the crowd
is in awe and entertained but completely indifferent to the fact that she is
alive still. She has a dig at the holocaust business.
Addressing the “Doktor”, she is defining
what she represents for him. Otto Plath may be whom she is talking to, as she
says she is his “valuable/ the pure gold baby” and that she knows that he is
trying to do what he thinks is best for her. Her sarcastic tone reveals that
she does not want anyone to save her or to have pity on her.
Plath feels disgusted at her own
dehumanization and she would love to triumph over her enemy after she dies even
after she is burnt to nothingness. Although nothing much remains of her at this
point, she knows the enemy will be profiting from her death. In an access of
anger and grandiosity, she warns the great powers from above and below:
"Herr God, Herr Lucifer / Beware / Beware." Additionally, she
acknowledges no power greater than herself, as Plath accomplishes her own
resurrection, unlike the biblical miracle of Lazarus of Bethany. We can clearly
see how she grows stronger by the end of the poem as she rises "Out of the
ash" like a phoenix with "red hair." Finally, with her
concluding and blatantly feministic verse, "I eat men like air," she
declares that she has defeated all her enemies, all the men in her life: the
doctors who kept reviving her, the businessmen who sold her body to the crowd,
and perhaps her father. In concluding this poem, Sylvia Plath finally has
triumphed as her own puppet and puppet master.
WALLACE STEVENS ‘ANECDOTE OF THE JAR’
In the poem, Anecdote of the Jar,
Stevens portrays the complex relationship of human to nature through confusion
of who is greater than whom, how they depend on each other, the connection
between the two, and the form the poem is written in. Stevens forces the reader
to feel the confusion and chaos present between the jar (a symbol for humans)
and nature. This relationship can be felt and read through the form the poem is
written in.The poem uses confusing wording to show the relationship of humans to nature. For example, line 9 says, "It took dominion everywhere." "It" referring to nature, means the power that nature has over the jar (humans). Nature's dominant overpowering weakens humans. Another line proving this dominance states, "The jar was gray and bare." This line describes the jar of being plain and simple. This normalcy becomes ineffective and powerless. The ordinary doesn't have as much power as the objects that stick out from the crowd. Humans don't seem to stand out in the vastness of the wilderness.
The next line turns the control in an interesting way: "It did not give of bird or bush." Because the jar was in the previous line, it is natural to think "it" in this line refers to the jar. The plot begins to thicken as it was previously suggested that the wilderness had all the control in the relationship. The jar now becomes an authority because it will not give into the natural world. To the reader, the relationship just became undefined. The power was turned over from nature to man.
Stevens also shows the dominance issue in the beginning of the poem. He says, "It made the slovenly wilderness /Surround that hill." The authority is placed again in front of the jar. The wilderness is careless and aware of this new object placed in its environment. Then the poem states, "The wilderness rose up to it, / And sprawled around no longer wild." The roles are reversed once again. The wilderness is now in charge. The reversal of the roles contained the poem in an environment of utter confusion. Stevens showed the audience that this relationship really was chaotic, throughout the poem, to prove his point. With all the confusion in the poem, Stevens reveals an underlying message to the reader. Line 7 in the poem reads, "The jar was round upon the ground. " This section of the poem shows the dependency of humans on nature. Through the rhymes of "round" and "ground", we can see the relationship.
The next line (8) also supports this hidden security of the relationship between human and the natural world. It says, "And tall and of a port in air." This line represents the unseen connection between human and nature. The "port" refers to a connecting force that ties the relationship together. The jar, being "tall" in the air, represents the depth of the relationship. Above the initial confusion and chaos, there is a deeper meaning to the relationship. The "port" runs through the confusion to get above it and reveal the true relationship. Stevens used the word "air" to represent the unseen connection. We, as humans, depend on air to survive. Although we have never seen, touched, or heard air, we know that it is there and depend on it to live. Stevens refers to air to show the unseen connection between mankind and the natural world. This connection is very important and crucial to the relationship. In fact, the relationship depends on this connection.
O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’
O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’ is a
story about two friends who separated twenty years ago. One went to west
leaving New York to make a fortune, the other one was a simpleton and a good
fellow and stayed in New York. They had promised each other that they would
meet exactly twenty years later at ten pm. So the first arrived. The story
takes place around 10 p.m. along a dark, windy New York City business avenue,
mostly within the darkened doorway of a closed hardware store. This particular
location had been a restaurant until five years ago. The weather worsens as the
drama builds going from "chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain"
to a "fine, cold drizzle falling, and wind had risen from its uncertain
puffs into a steady blow." The plot begins with a policeman "on the
beat" who discovers a man standing in the dark doorway. The man then
proceeds to explain why he is there. He and his best friend, Jimmy Wells had
parted exactly twenty years ago to make their fortunes and had promised to meet
at that spot after twenty years. He had gone west and became rich and was sure
his friend, Jimmy would meet him if at all possible. They talked a while and
the policeman carried on.
After some time his friend Jimmy Wells comes
and they talk, but due to difference in features Bob realizes that he is not
the real Jimmy. It is then that Bob is told that he is arrested and is handed a
note from the patrolling policeman who was the actual Jimmy that he had reached
on time but could not arrest his friend himself. Sometimes honesty is more
important than personal loyalty.
O. Henry's stories frequently have surprise endings. In his
day, he was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote
plot twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful. His stories
are also known for witty narration. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his
own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for
the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses. O. Henry's
work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands
of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of
class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable
hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible
economy and grace of language.
The Tell-Tale Heart
The protagonist of the "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a
classic example of Poe's unreliable narrator, a man who cannot be trusted to
tell the objective truth of what is occurring. His unreliability becomes
immediately evident in the first paragraph of the story, when he insists on his
clarity of mind and attributes any signs of madness to his nervousness and
oversensitivity, particularly in the area of hearing. However, as soon as he
finishes his declaration of sanity, he offers an account that has a series of
apparent logical gaps that can only be explained by insanity. In his writings,
Poe often sought to capture the state of mind of psychotic characters.The narrator's emotional instability provides a clear counterargument to his assertions of good judgment. In almost no cases does he respond in the manner that one would expect. He is so bothered by the old man's vulture-like eye that his loathing overcomes his love for the man, leading him to premeditate a murder. Later, when he finally succeeds in killing the victim, he becomes positively cheerful, feeling that he has accomplished his goal cleverly and with the rationality that he associates with sanity. However, the unsuspecting behavior of the policemen suggests that the narrator has become essentially unaware of his behavior and his surroundings. Because he cannot maintain the distance between reality and his inner thoughts, he mistakes his mental agitation for physical agitation and misinterprets the innocent chatter of the policemen for malevolence. Nevertheless, he imagines the whole time that he has correctly and rationally interpreted all the events of the story, suggesting that in Poe's mind, the key to irrationality is the belief in one's rationality.
Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. Poe’s economic style and pointed language thus contribute to the narrative content, and perhaps this association of form and content truly exemplifies obsession.
Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between the narrator’s capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here a psychological mystery—that people sometimes harm those whom they love or need in their lives. Poe’s narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old man’s wealth, nor vengeful because of any slight. The narrator thus eliminates motives that might normally inspire such a violent murder. As he proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old man’s vulture-eye. He reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive fashion. He wants to separate the man from his “Evil Eye” so he can spare the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the eye itself. The narrator fails to see that the eye is the “I” of the old man, an inherent part of his identity that cannot be isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.
The narrator’s newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, as he proves unwilling or unable to distinguish between real and imagined sounds. Because of his warped sense of reality, he obsesses over the low beats of the man’s heart yet shows little concern about the man’s shrieks, which are loud enough both to attract a neighbor’s attention and to draw the police to the scene of the crime. The police do not perform a traditional, judgmental role in this story. Ironically, they aren’t terrifying agents of authority or brutality. Poe’s interest is less in external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of the mind can hold over an individual. The narrator’s paranoia and guilt make it inevitable that he will give himself away. The police arrive on the scene to give him the opportunity to betray himself. The more the narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old man’s heart. As he confesses to the crime in the final sentence, he addresses the policemen as “[v]illains,” indicating his inability to distinguish between their real identity and his own villainy.
The
Tell-Tale Heart: Summary
Before beginning his account, the
unnamed narrator claims that he is nervous and oversensitive but not mad, and
offers his calmness in the narration as proof of his sanity. He then explains
how although he loved a certain old man who had never done him wrong and
desired none of his money, the narrator could not stand the sight of the old
man's pale, filmy blue eye. The narrator claims that he was so afraid of the
eye, which reminds him of a vulture's, that he decided to kill the man so he
would no longer have to see it.
Although the narrator is aware that
this rationalization seems to indicate his insanity, he explains that he cannot
be mad because instead of being foolish about his desires, he went about
murdering the old man with "caution" and "foresight." In
the week before the murder, the narrator is very kind to the old man, and every
night around midnight, he sneaks into the old man's room and cautiously shines
a lantern onto the man's eye. However, because the eye is always closed and the
narrator wishes to rid himself of the eye rather than the man, the narrator
never tries to kill him, and the next morning, he again enters the chamber and
cheerfully asks how the old man has slept, in order to avoid suspicion.
On the eighth night, the narrator is
particularly careful while opening the door, but this time, his thumb slips on
the lantern's fastening, waking the old man. The narrator freezes, but even after
an hour, the old man does not return to sleep because he feels afraid and
senses someone's presence. At length, the narrator decides to slowly open the
lantern until the light shines on the old man's eye, which is wide open. The
narrator's nerves are wracked by the sight, and he fancies that because of his
oversensitivity, he has begun to hear the beating of the old man's heart.
The beating firms his resolve as he
continues to increase the intensity of the light on the man's eye. The beating
grows louder and louder until the narrator begins to worry that a neighbor will
hear the noise, so he decides to attack. The old man screams once before the
narrator drags him to the floor and stifles him with the mattress. When the
narrator stops hearing the beating, he examines the corpse before dismembering
it and concealing it beneath the floorboards. He laughs somewhat hysterically
as he describes how the tub caught all the blood, leaving no stains on the
floor.
By the time he finishes the
clean-up, it is four in the morning, and someone knocks on the door. In a
cheerful mood, the narrator answers the door only to find three policemen who
have come to investigate because a neighbor heard the old man's shriek and
alerted the police to the possibility of foul play. The narrator invites them
inside, knowing that he has nothing to fear, and he explains that he had been
the one to yell as a result of a bad dream and that the old man is currently
out visiting the country. He shows the policemen the house and confidently allows
them to search it before bringing out chairs which he, in his assurance, places
on top of the floorboards that hide the corpse.
The narrator's lack of suspicious
behavior convinces the policemen that nothing is wrong, and they sit down on
the chairs and chat with him. However, after a while, the narrator begins to
wish that the policemen would leave, as his head aches and he hears a ringing
in his ears. The ringing increases in volume, for which the narrator
compensates by chatting more jovially, but it finally turns into a dull beating
which also begins to rise in volume. The narrator becomes more and more
agitated in his behavior, gesturing wildly and pacing back and forth, but the
policemen hear and suspect nothing.
Soon, the narrator begins to suspect
that the pleasantries of the policemen are merely a ruse to ridicule his
distress. However, he cannot stand the intensity of the beating and grows tired
of what he perceives as the mockery of the policemen. He feels that he
"must scream or die," so he finally shrieks the truth, telling the
policemen to tear up the floorboards and reveal the beating of the old man's
heart.
Young GoodMan Brown
In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne reveals what he sees as
the corruptibility that results from Puritan society’s emphasis on public
morality, which often weakens private religious faith. Although Goodman Brown
has decided to come into the forest and meet with the devil, he still hides
when he sees Goody Cloyse and hears the minister and Deacon Gookin. He seems more
concerned with how his faith appears to other people than with the fact that he
has decided to meet with the devil. Goodman Brown’s religious convictions are
rooted in his belief that those around him are also religious. This kind of
faith, which depends so much on other people’s views, is easily weakened. When
Goodman Brown discovers that his father, grandfather, Goody Cloyse, the
minister, Deacon Gookin, and Faith are all in league with the devil, Goodman
Brown quickly decides that he might as well do the same. Hawthorne seems to
suggest that the danger of basing a society on moral principles and religious
faith lies in the fact that members of the society do not arrive at their own
moral decisions. When they copy the beliefs of the people around them, their
faith becomes weak and rootless.
Goodman Brown shows both innocence
and corruptibility as he vacillates between believing in the inherent goodness
of the people around him and believing that the devil has taken over the minds
of all the people he loves. At the beginning of the story, Goodman Brown
believes in the goodness of his father and grandfather, until the old man,
likely the devil, tells him that he knew them both. Goodman Brown believes in
the Christian nature of Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin, until
the devil shows him that Goody Cloyse is a witch and the other two are his
followers. Finally, he believes that Faith is pure and good, until the devil
reveals at the ceremony that Faith, too, is corruptible. This vacillation
reveals Goodman Brown’s lack of true religion—his belief is easy to shake—as
well as of the good and evil sides of human nature.
Through Goodman Brown’s awakening to
the evil nature of those around him, Hawthorne comments on what he sees as the
hidden corruption of Puritan society. Goodman Brown believes in the public
professions of faith made by his father and the elders of his church and in the
societal structures that are built upon that faith. Hawthorne suggests,
however, that behind the public face of godliness, the Puritans’ actions were
not always Christian. The devil in the story says that he was present when
Brown’s father and grandfather whipped Quakers and set fire to Indian villages,
making it clear that the story of the founding of New England has a dark side
that religion fails to explain. The very fact that Goodman Brown is willing to
visit the forest when he has an idea of what will happen there is an indication
of the corruptibility and evil at the heart of even the most faithful Puritan.
Young GoodmanBrown suggests an
‘everyman’. The story is set in 17th century Salem and includes
characters who were actually condemned and executed in the witchcraft
persecution viz., Goody Cloyse. But Hawthorne’s principal concern is with the
crisis in Brown’s mind and soul.
MARKTWAIN’S ‘LUCK’
Mark
Twain uses the narrator as a literary device in his short story Luck ' The
author first uses his own voice to give the story an air of authenticity . He
then changes narrators , building on the original air of authenticity to create
a second authentic narrator . The first person narrator that Twain chooses to
tell the majority of the story is ostensibly a unnamed clergyman , formerly a
cornet (second lieutenant ) in the British army under a lieutenant-general the
first narrator gives the pseudonym Scoresby ' Simply by setting the fiction of
the need for a pseudonym for the lieutenant general , Twain has created the
suggestion of literal truth for the story about to follow . The second narrator
, however , is an unreliable one .
By
stating that Scoresby 's success comes solely from luck , it is clearly
apparent that the clergyman 's opinion would differ from that of the lieutenant
general . There is some question as to why these opinions would differ at least
from the clergyman 's perspective . While it should come as no surprise that
Scoresby would certainly prefer to characterize his success as deriving from
skill, the clergyman could have one of three reasons for having a different
opinion . All of these reasons extend from his knowledge of how Scoresby came
to be a member of the military First, it is possible that Scoresby is truly an
inept , but lucky man. The reader is left to reason for him or herself whether
Scoresby could possibly be that fortunate .
The story
traces the career of a military hero from his modest beginnings at Woolwich to
his triumph in battle against the Russians. Years after the war's end a
celebratory dinner is held to honor the famous general, and it is at this point
that the tale begins. During the banquet the narrator, who has been joining in
the chorus of adulation, meets an old acquaintance: a clergyman of undoubted
probity, who dissents from the view that the general is a military genius.
Surprised and intrigued, the narrator asks for more detail, which the clergyman
agrees to supply a few days later. The rest of the short tale is told
retrospectively by this clergyman, who becomes the de facto
narrator from this point on. The clergyman had been the general's tutor when he
was a cadet at Woolwich, and had followed him to the Crimea. The burden of his
message is that the general, far from deserving his fame, was merely the
beneficiary of an incredible string of lucky coincidences.
The narrator knows the clergyman to be honest and reliable,
but his bare assertion that Scoresby's success was due to luck alone would not
be believable without supporting detail. This is precisely what the clergyman
supplies. (According to him, Scoresby was a complete failure as a student,
hopelessly stupid, an absolute fool. Out of pity, the clergyman had tutored him
in Caesar's history; as luck would have it, the examiners asked him only about
what he had been tutored in, with the result that he passed with flying colors.
Next came mathematics. Once again the clergyman helped prepare him, with
results that were even more astounding: Because he was once again asked only
what he happened to know, Scoresby took first place. With such sterling marks,
he was able to graduate and become an officer. ) The Clergyman establishes
three stages in Scoresby's luck: first with Caesar, second with math, finally
in the Crimea. One needs to keep in mind, however, that Scoresby is not pretending to be anything he is not. The point of the repetition of the word "unconsciousness" in the opening paragraph is to emphasize that Scoresby is not performing in the sense of playing a role. His only performance is the carrying out of his military duties. He is not engaged in creating a public persona. It is true that the clergyman comments that Scoresby is "the supremest fool in the universe; and until half an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me." But aside from this assertion the story itself gives no indication that Scoresby shares this awareness. He is unconscious of being misperceived. A natural fool, he is incapable of deceit. The clergyman's further assertion in the final paragraph that Scoresby is as "unpretending as a man can be" confirms this.
LOCOMOTIVE 38, THE OBIJWAY
It is about an American teenager called Aram who is
befriended by a native American who comes to his small town and asks for his
help in buying a car and driving him around. The stated reason being that he
does not know how to drive. So the teenager becomes the man’s chauffeur during
the summer, and they strike up a sort of friendship. The man’s name in his
native tongue translates, it seems, to Locomotive 38. At the end of the summer,
Locomotive suddenly disappears, and when Aram enquires about town, he learns
that the man drove off in his car. The story ends with the following lines: “He
was just a young man who’d come to town on a donkey, bored to death or
something, who’d taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a
small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That’s the only way I could figure
it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.”
AMERICAN LITERATURE – II
Section – A (20 marks)
Answer any TEN of the following questions
in about 50 words each : (10x2=20)
1.
How does Bradstreet express her
modesty in the beginning of ‘The Prologue’?
2.
How does Whitman describe his
entry into the mystic state in ‘Song of myself’?
3.
Whom does Dickinson dedicate
her ‘The soul selects her own society’?
4.
How does Wallace Stevens
differentiate ‘perception’ from ‘reality’ in ‘Anecdote of the Jar’?
5.
Explain the Biblical reference
in ‘Lady Lazarus’.
6.
Explain ‘Goodman’ in ‘Young
Goodman Brown’.
7.
How does Hemingway describe the
appearance of Santiago?
8.
What does Santiago symbolize in
‘The Old man and the Sea’?
9.
What does the title ‘Hamatreya’
refer to?
10.
What is the setting of ‘Young
Goodman Brown’?
11.
What is the theme of Poe’s ‘The
Raven’?
12.
What is Frost’s definition of
poetry?
Section – B (25 marks)
Answer any Five of the
following questions in about 150 words each:
(5x5=25)
13.
Bring out the influence of
Hindu mythology on Emerson.
14.
Elucidate the lyrical beauty of
‘The Raven’.
15.
Comment on the obscurity of
‘the anecdote of the jar’.
16.
Consider Emily Dickinson a
recluse with reference to ‘The Soul selects her own society’.
17.
Examine the role played by
Manolin in ‘The Old man and the sea’.
18.
Bring out the elements of
suspense in Poe’s ‘Tell Tale Hearts’.
19.
Write an appreciation of
O’Henry’s ‘After Twenty Years’.
Section – c (30 marks)
Answer any THREE of the
following in about 300 words each:
(3x10=30)
20.
Illustrate the mystical quality
of ‘song of myself’.
21.
Examine ‘the death of a hired
man’ in the light of Frost’s own definition of poetry.
22.
Comment on the confessional
tone of ‘Lady Lazarus’.
23.
Discuss Hemingway’s philosophy
of life as revealed in ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
24. Appreciate Twain’s art of story telling with reference to ‘Luck’.
No comments:
Post a Comment