Category: Poetry

When you hear the name Shakespeare what do you think of? Do you think he was overrated or do you think he was a great established writer? At first, I thought he was overrated and didn’t want to study him and his work. Only after studying have I realized that he is very important to our history. Even though he passed away over 400 years ago we are still studying him but why?

Shakespeare is a mastermind who has helped shape the English language. He has created and popularised many words and phrases. Many of which we still use today! He has created over 1,700 words and phrases, some of the words include: Lonely, Dawn, unreal and so much more! Some of the phrases include: Jealousy is the green-eyed monster, In a pickle, Not slept one wink, and more! Surprising how much one person can contribute to a language isn’t it?

Movies are like modern-day versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Over the years, our technology has improved so much. How had Shakespeare even kept his audiences interested? Easily he used his imagination and his words. He uses a technique called soliloquy; this is when an actor thinks out loud when he is the only actor on stage. An example of this is in the play Macbeth “Is this a dagger which I see before me the handle toward my hand come let me clutch”. This causes the audience to get involved in the play and builds up the mystery as many will think of what he would do with the dagger.

Other than poems he has also written sonnets. I studied his most famous sonnet 18. When we were studying it my teacher put on an adaptation of it by Paul Kelly called sonnet 18. I wasn’t very excited as it was Shakespeare. When we first listened to it I didn’t like it. But then it kept getting stuck in my head and I realized I actually liked it and it was catchy. I even listen to it in my own time! I realized that my opinion of Shakespeare has made my mind immediately think anything related to him was terrible. I can guarantee that if I didn’t know it was Shakespeare I would have loved that song straight up! People are still making amazing adaptations of Shakespeare!

Sonnet 18 has a beautiful meaning behind it. He is comparing his love or muse to a summer’s day. He starts by saying “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” then continues by saying she/he is more lovely than a summer’s day, summer’s too short with you, he could compare you to heaven’s eye (sun) but sometimes it’s too hot and get covered by the clouds, beauty will fade from people but not yours, death can’t claim you because I have captured you in my writing, and as long as people keep reading you will be forever alive. He wrote this to show his love or muse his love for her/him is eternal and he will never stop loving them no matter what.

I’m glad that we still study Shakespeare because if my teacher had never said we were learning him I never would have found out I enjoyed his work. Shakespeare is a legend and we have kept his work alive for many years; how much longer is he going to live on? The answer is forever.

Summary of Sonnet 116

This is a true Shakespearean sonnet, also referred to as an Elizabethan or English sonnet. This type of sonnet contains fourteen lines, which are separated into three quatrains (four lines) and end with a rhyming couplet (two lines). The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. Like most of Shakespeare’s works, this sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, which means each line consists of ten syllables, and within those ten syllables, there are five pairs, which are called iambs (one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable). In this sonnet, the speaker is ruminating on love. He says that love never changes, and if it does, it was not true or real in the first place. He compares love to a star that is always seen and never changing. It is real and permanent, and it is something on which a person can count. Even though the people in love may change as time passes, their love will not. The speaker closes by saying if he is wrong about this, no man has ever truly loved before.

Analysis of Sonnet 116

While this sonnet is clumped in with the other sonnets that are assumed to be dedicated to an unknown young man in Shakespeare’s life, this poem does not seem to directly address anyone. In fact, this poem seems to be the speaker’s—in this case, perhaps Shakespeare’s—ruminations on love and what it is. The best way to analyze Shakespeare’s sonnets is to examine them line-by-line, which is what will follow.

In the first two lines, Shakespeare writes, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments.” These lines are perhaps the most famous in the history of poetry, regardless of whether or not one recognizes them as belonging to Shakespeare. Straight away, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of marriage to compare it to true, real love. He is saying that there is no reason why two people who truly love should not be together; nothing should stand in their way. Perhaps he is speaking about his feelings for the unknown young man for whom the sonnet is written. Shakespeare was unhappily married to Anne Hathaway, and so perhaps he was rationalizing his feelings for the young man by stating there was no reason, even if one is already married, that two people who are truly in love should not be together. The second half of the second line begins a new thought, which is then carried on into the third and fourth lines. He writes, “Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove.” Shakespeare is continuing with his thought that true love conquers all. In these lines, the speaker is telling the reader that if love changes, it is not true love because if it changes, or if someone tries to “remove” it, nothing will change it. Love does not stop just because something is altered. As clichéd as it sounds, true love, real love, lasts forever.

The second quatrain begins with some vivid and beautiful imagery, and it continues with the final thought pondered in the first quatrain. Now that Shakespeare has established what love is not—fleeting and ever-changing—he can now tell us what love is. He writes, “O no, it is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken…” Here, Shakespeare tells his readers that love is something that does not shift, change, or move; it is constant and in the same place, and it can weather even the most harrowing of storms, or tempests and is never even shaken, let alone defeated. While weak, it can be argued here that Shakespeare decides to personify love, since it is something that is intangible and not something that can be defeated by something tangible, such as a storm. In the next line, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of the North Star to discuss love. He writes, “It is the star to every wandering bark,/Whose worth’s unknown, although his height is taken. To Shakespeare, love is the star that guides every bark, or ship, on the water, and while it is priceless, it can be measured. These two lines are interesting and worth noting. Shakespeare concedes that love’s worth is not known, but he says it can be measured. How he neglects to tell his reader, but perhaps he is assuming the reader will understand the different ways in which one can measure love: through time and actions. With that thought, the second quatrain ends.

The third quatrain parallels the first, and Shakespeare returns to telling his readers what love is not. He writes, “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle’s compass come…” Notice the capitalization of the word “Time.” Shakespeare is personifying time as a person, specifically, Death. He says that love is not the fool of time. One’s rosy lips and cheeks will certainly pale with age, as “his bending sickle’s compass come.” Shakespeare’s diction is important here, particularly with his use of the word “sickle.” Who is the person with whom the sickle is most greatly associated? Death. We are assured here that Death will certainly come, but that will not stop love. It may kill the lover, but the love itself is eternal. This thought is continued in lines eleven and twelve, the final two lines of the third quatrain. Shakespeare writes, “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” He is simply stating here that love does not change over the course of time; instead, it continues on even after the world has ended (“the edge of doom”).

Shakespeare uses lines thirteen and fourteen, the final couplet of the poem, to assert just how truly he believes that love is everlasting and conquers all. He writes, “If this be error and upon me proved/I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Shakespeare is telling his reader that if someone proves he is wrong about love, then he never wrote the following words and no man ever loved. He is conveying here that if his words are untrue, nothing else would exist. The words he just wrote would have never been written, and no man would have ever loved them before. He is adamant about this, and his tough words are what strengthen the sonnet itself. The speaker and poet himself are convinced that love is real, true, and everlasting.

Historical Background of Sonnet 116

Many believe the mysterious young man for whom this and many other of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written was the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesly. Wriothesly was Shakespeare’s patron, and The Bard’s Venus and Adonis and Tarquin and Lucrece were both dedicated to the young man.

‘In oak terrace’ tells the routine life of an isolated elderly woman whilst bringing sympathy to her situation from the reader and making them reflect.

The poem begins with the blunt statement ‘Old and alone’ which perfectly introduces the protagonist. Clearly, it is evident that this woman is isolated and at the age where death awaits her, and this is only required by three words. This fronting introduces simplicity into both the poem and her life as she does not require any detailed description to create her image. The lack of intricacy during her introduction makes the reader feel sympathy toward her character. It’s almost as if she has lost anything worthy of proudly exhibiting and the only thing left is the ‘old and alone’ adjectives often with negative connotations. The path of emptiness and sympathy is constructed for the reader to feel in a mere three words.

When reading this poem, a sense of peace and conclusion is present as it alludes to the woman being near the end of her life. In the final line of the poem, it states that she ‘collects her night things, this being a metaphor for her closeness to death and liberty from this loneliness. It’s almost bittersweet as although she will no longer suffer in this isolated state, her life will effectively pay the price for this. When reading this final line and sitting with its effects, it’s enough to make the reader reflect on society’s views on the elderly and lonely. More can be done to release them of this loneliness before the arrival of death if only society didn’t disregard them as unimportant or helpless.

Both poems present the theme of loneliness whilst conveying a different type specific to their situation.

Whilst both poems have the destination of loneliness which the characters currently feel, the origins for this loneliness are greatly contrasting. ‘In oak terrace’, the woman is a victim of her loneliness from her old age as she is bluntly stated as ‘old and alone’. Her situation was overall unavoidable as old age is inevitable and unfortunately, isolation capitalizes on this. However, in ‘Those Winter Sundays’ the isolation of the two characters comes from a place of sacrifice, a choice. The father, as he imposes a strict work ethic on himself, routinely surrenders his own sense of community for the sake of his son. He is stated to work on ‘Sundays too’ implying that this was not a special act that he did, but one that was commonly done. A sense of ambiguity follows this as it is not specified on what days he would do this, but this hints that the father is in such a pit of loneliness, that time has lost meaning.

Memory is prominent in both poems, but this subject serves different purposes for each. ‘Those Winter Sundays’ has the premise that the narrator is reminiscing on the past and that none of the events are taking place in the present. A reflective tone is withstanding in the poem as the narrator uses the auxiliary verb ‘would’ frequently throughout. This recollective tone displays that the narrator has learned the lesson of isolation. His father would pay the price of loneliness if it meant his son would be comfortable where the ‘fires blaze’ instead of the ‘blue-black cold’. Through this involuntary lonely existence, he learned to appreciate the things his father did for him, even if he didn’t at the time. ‘In oak terrace’ uses memories as an explanation for the character’s loneliness. They come unwelcomed and uncontrollable as enjambement between stanzas two and three is used to introduce them and shows that they overpower her current world as only a stanza before viewing the ‘local births and deaths’ was being referenced as an activity. She, and others around her, have suffered ‘poverty, sickness, abandonment’ and most prominently a brother’s brain melting to madness’. The vivid imagery and alliteration of the final suffering emphasize its importance and impact on her as it is ingrained so well into her psyche. ‘Melting to madness’ as well reflects the idea that her sense of community has disintegrated as she lives this solitary life.

Both poems use the literary device of enjambment between lines and stanzas to reflect the theme of loneliness. Enjambment is used between the second and third stanza within ‘In oak terrace’ to introduce her memories which are the cause of her isolation, and ‘Those Winter Sundays’, in stanzas one and three, use enjambment to show the distance the father has placed himself away from his son. The end of the lines are bare compared to the ones embellished with commas or full stops which accentuates how much of a lone figure both the son and father are.

Unlike ‘In oak terrace’, ‘Those Winter Sundays’ uses fire and warmth to symbolize love and a sense of connection between the two, slightly combatting the loneliness present throughout. The father would get up early to combat the cold by making the ‘fires blaze’, and the rooms ‘warm’ until he had ‘driven out the cold’ just so that the son can feel comfort when he awakes. Although he doesn’t have time to physically show it, he clearly has a love for his son. A connection between the two, even though it is only brought about by one, is present through this heat and warmth felt by the two. Loneliness is still prominent in their relationship, but the warmth is able to bring them ever so slightly closer together.

No Second Troy is a poem by William Butler Yeats, and it is one of his most celebrated works. The poem is a typical lyric, and it expresses the feelings of a poet who is in a state of misery and pain. Overall, the poem centers on a single issue of his disappointment, pain, and agony. ‘Her’ in the poem indicates that the poet is addressing the woman he loves in his past days. Most of the sentences in the poem are questions, which speak of his thoughts that he must not blame his love for all the pain he is suffering from. The poem is mainly both the personal beauty and political passion of the poet in his own story. He describes that the individual beauty of a specific lady has the power to destroy the inner soul of a person as well as a nation from a critically mythological perspective.

The opening lines of the poem begin with a personal plan and a rhetorical question, ‘Why should I blame her that she filled my days/ With misery?” (Yeats 1910, 1-2), and the answer is implied in the question itself. The poet is in a state of misery and pain since his lover rejects him many times. In his poem, ‘her’ is referred to a lady who has not responded to Yeats’s love. On numerous occasions, she is rejecting him, and a number of his poems are directed point at her. The lines from the beginning of the poem indicate the pain and misery from which he is going through because of the involvement of this lady in his life. The poem reveals the combustible presence of the lady in Yeats’s life, and the first lines of the poem are his conflicted emotions with the lady he loves. The poet is unhappy that she has not responded to his love, but at the same time, he argues that he will not blame her for the pain and misery in her life. He has been able to squeeze his passion beautifully in these lines, and in the following sentences, he discusses political passion that relates to the lady.

The political passion of the poet reveals in the third line of the poem, “Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways’ (3). The poet criticizes the lady for teaching the common men several violent ways to behave. Speaking of the pain that the lady has caused her, he takes the discussion to the damage he thinks she has caused destructive things to those innocent men. From personal concerns with the lady herself, he starts commenting on the political problems that she has taught the revolutionary methods to get freedom for a specific thing such as a country. Yeats disdains the petty violence of those who would “hurl the little streets upon the great,” (4) that is, prompt the innocent people to expand violence against the lady’s rules, which is useless. Initially, after blaming the lady for hurting him personally from his love, he is unable to understand the political attitude from her point of view.

The author is sarcastic towards the lady’s act of teaching violence to the innocent people who live in ‘little streets’ against those who live on ‘great streets.’ There is a distinction between those two streets which the author compares with a different choice of words. In Yeats’s opinion, those people need a self-identity and courage before stepping into a war of independence, “Had they but courage equal to desire?”(5). This line also illustrates a lady is a person who is accused of the turmoil of people. The author’s intended meaning shows a combination of personal and political passion when he discusses the lady as a destructive figure. He describes the lady as social destruction and states that she can’t be peaceful as she has caused and spread violence to others. By comparing the lady with her personality, he is trying to make a point that her soul is not in harmony with her social environment. Hence, she is the source of destruction whose personality and beauty are not typical during the past society.

The heroic beauty of the lady is said to be tightened bow and her mind a fire of nobleness using a simile “That nobleness made simple as a fire/ With beauty like a tightened bow’ (7-8). Yeats has a strong sense of sarcasm toward her beauty. The tightened bow as a metaphor represents a tension in her heroic beauty, which is the cause of the destruction of others. Her leadership skills, her fierce beauty, stern commitment, and unparalleled bravery remind the author of a strong and powerful woman. Her heroic masks contrast with a modern sensibility. But at the same time, the poet doesn’t blame her beauty as her fault; he describes the negative aspects of the lady’s beauty in both personal and political terms.

In the end, Helen’s image strikes in the poet’s mind, and it answers all the questions in the poem “Was there another Troy for her to burn?”(12). In ancient Greek mythology, the poem points to Helen, the most beautiful woman of Greece who is responsible for the destruction and violence of Troy, and the lady in Yeats’s poem is also accountable for some responsibilities. Helen’s beauty describes as powerful over men in any circumstances. However, a woman’s beauty carries the destructiveness of future consequences that men never know. Helen is the reason why the Trojan War started with a conflict between her complicated triangles of love. By her beauty, many people from Greece and Troy died in many battles in the Trojan War with miseries and sad feelings.

In a nutshell, the poem is a call toward peace, and it elaborates on the poet’s personal and political passion. He is full of pain and woe, but because he loves the lady, he is unwilling to blame her for her destruction. By making a comparison of this lady and Helen of Troy, the poet hints at how an alluring beauty of a lady can be a cause of the destruction of an inner soul, primarily referring to a man’s heart.

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is a poignant and reflective poem that explores the complex relationship between a father and his child. Through a careful analysis of the poem, we can unravel its underlying themes, symbolism, and poetic devices, providing us with a deeper understanding of the emotional depth and complexity of the speaker’s experiences.

The poem opens with the speaker reminiscing about the cold Sunday mornings of their childhood. The father, depicted as a hardworking and selfless figure, wakes up early to stoke the fire and warm the house. The speaker, however, admits their lack of appreciation and understanding at the time, describing the father’s actions as “austere” and “chronic angers.” This juxtaposition sets the stage for the exploration of the speaker’s remorse and regret for not fully recognizing their father’s love and sacrifices.

Hayden’s use of vivid imagery and sensory details brings the poem to life. The speaker recalls the “blueblack cold” and the “cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather.” These descriptions not only emphasize the physical harshness of the environment but also evoke a sense of the father’s tireless work and dedication. The poem’s somber tone and the choice of words like “chronic angers” and “fearing the chronic angers of that house” convey a deep sense of emotional tension and turmoil within the household.

Symbolism plays a crucial role in the poem, enriching its meaning and adding layers of interpretation. The father’s actions, such as “polishing my good shoes as well,” symbolize his selflessness and his desire to provide for his child’s needs, even in the smallest ways. The recurring image of the fire represents both warmth and emotional distance. While the father’s efforts to keep the house warm are literal, they also hint at his longing to bridge the emotional gap between himself and the speaker.

The poem’s form and structure contribute to its overall effect. The use of a consistent and controlled iambic meter and the absence of end rhymes create a sense of quiet restraint, mirroring the suppressed emotions and unspoken sentiments within the family dynamic. The simplicity and directness of the language allow the reader to focus on the underlying emotions rather than being distracted by ornate language.

Through the critical analysis of “Those Winter Sundays,” we gain insight into the universal themes of love, regret, and the complexity of family relationships. Hayden’s masterful use of imagery, symbolism, and form allows us to connect with the speaker’s emotional journey and contemplate our own experiences with gratitude and empathy.

The poem serves as a poignant reminder to not take our loved ones for granted and to recognize the quiet acts of love and sacrifice that often go unnoticed. The speaker’s regret and longing serve as a powerful lesson to appreciate and honor those who have shaped our lives.

In conclusion, “Those Winter Sundays” is a deeply introspective and emotionally charged poem that invites readers to reflect on the complexities of familial love and the importance of appreciating the sacrifices made by our parents. Through its carefully crafted language and evocative imagery, the poem resonates with readers on a profound level, reminding us of the inherent power of love and the significance of acknowledging the often overlooked acts of kindness in our lives.

When people hear of the word poetry, they normally think it’s boring. A matter of fact, it’s actually not. Most teenagers hate the fact that they are taught poetry, they find no reason to learn it, they find it a waste of time, and they won’t need it in future. I think that classical poems should be studied in high school so that students develop an understanding for more diverse language. Additionally, to also see a different explanation of the human condition. Even though poetry might disengage readers, it has many benefits, for example, it can give a different perspective of love from just everyday words, and the language is more diverse and offers a variety of choices.

Teenagers love music, who doesn’t? If you didn’t know, by picking a song that matches your given poem, it can easily relate. Yes, maybe not at first glance, but after some deconstruction here and there, you’ll be able to see. The chosen classical poem is ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron, along with the selected song is ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ by the popular band, One Direction. By comparing and contrasting both of the chosen pieces, it can show high school students that music, particularly pop, they listen to everyday can relate to poetry, something they are required to learn.

‘She Walks in Beauty’ is a lyrical, rhyming poem that focuses on female beauty and explores the idea that physical appearance depends upon inner goodness and, if in harmony, can result in the romantic ideal of aesthetic perfection. While the meaning of ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ is about how a boy thinks a girl who walks through the door is beautiful, but she is utterly self-conscious about herself, but the boy tries to show her that she is truly beautiful. A key similarity is that they both talk and relate to beauty. While a difference includes that the song by One direction talks mainly about her outside appearance, while the poem talks about inner goodness was well as her outer goodness. This is one way it shows that poetry can benefit.

Most students are used to exhausting basic adjectives to describe things, because they haven’t or don’t want to learn poetry as poetry provides a more diverse language choice. For example, in ‘She Walks in Beauty’ compares a woman’s beauty to the night. “Cloudless climes and starry skies” is a utilized simile that enhances the effect and the optimism of beauty. Bryon also uses light and dark imagery to describe the woman’s features including her raven-colored hair. He praises the balance of “dark and bright” that meets in her eyes. This enhances the woman’s beauty, producing “tender light” that softens her features. The song portrays a few metaphors, including “Baby you light up my world like nobody else”. This specific metaphor for saying that just by looking at her beauty, he doesn’t need anything else in the world but her. This shows that poetry has more advanced and diverse words than your average everyday language.

The title of the poem perceived as a bit ambiguous. We do not know who ‘she’ is and why is she. Also, the fact that she ‘walks’ in beauty is quite strange, as one would think that beauty is to be expressed in some other way, e.g., face, clothes or personality. While ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ is straighter forward. But the title both talk about beauty or beautiful.

Tones identify the feeling of a piece, you figure out if you want to keep watching, listening or learning. ‘She Walks in Beauty’ is something delightful, very precious. Its moving to see how Lord Byron talks about this ‘she’. On the other hand, the tone is upbeat and happy, trying to get the beautiful insecure girl to see herself how other people see how beautiful she is: “Or softly lightens o’er her face;/ Where thoughts serenely sweet express,/ How pure, how dear their dwelling-place”.

The phrase of words in poetry picked out delicately to match perfectly, it takes time and effort. Teachers find poems that somewhat interest the students so they can teach them how to read and write and understand any text give to them. After studying and letting poetry take its place, teachers notice that students work is achieving higher levels for their English academic work. It shows kids how to write their assessment tasks and it develops their choice of words, it expands. So, students don’t have to use the first word that comes to their head in an exam but after learning poetry they have much a bigger vocabulary compacity.

After comparing and contrasting Lord Byron’s poem ‘She Walks in Beauty’ and One Direction’s ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, I fully believe that classic poems should be studied in high school so that students develop an understanding for more diverse language, as well as see a different explanation of the human condition. If you were against poetry, don’t be! Poetry must be supported so that children can learn!

This sonnet helped to start more on the theme of modern love from a woman’s point of view. The emphasis is on repeating and strengthening the love of the lecture for someone. It gives the sonnet the universal appeal of no mention of a particular name or gender.

The first line is peculiar because it is a question that is almost interactive. The poet challenged himself to sort out the reasons for her love, define her intense emotions, and define how her love can be expressed. Then the repetitive transformation of the love theme follows. It reminds me of the image of a woman making a counting list with her fingers. It’s a very modern 21st century that women can do. But this time it came from another era when most women were expected to stay at home as caretakers without writing love poems.

The second, third, and fourth lines suggest that her love extends all inclusively to the limit, even when she feels that her existence – the divine help of God-grace – is over. The love of her husband Robert will last. Focus on the contrast between using the words ‘soul’, ‘being’, and ‘grace’, which means intangible spirituality when trying to measure her love in rational languages like depth, width, and height. Her love goes beyond natural life and human-made theology. This is an important concept. Readers will find that this is not normal love in the early days of the sonnet. The phrases in the 2nd-4th lines contain phrases spanning themed phrases from the row to the next line. Does she recommend that the simple concept of love flows profoundly to people like that, but does not get in touch with everyday language and speech?

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning continues a passionate need to differentiate the various ways affection for her husband is manifested. In line 5, she clearly tells readers day and night that her love meets the daily silence of the quiet moments that occur between two people living together. Her love is unconditional and therefore free. It’s a force for the good consciously given because it feels like the right thing to do. She does not thank her for this free love. It is a modest kind of love that is not contaminated by the ego.

The septet starts on line 9. The series looks at the past and compares the new passion she discovers with the old passion of sadness. Elizabeth Barrett Browning has shown many negative attitudes in adult life. She saw only long-standing family, friends, and family who lived almost painfully like a recluse. In particular, her father oppressed her and did not allow her to marry. Her life had no romantic relationship in every story. She must have been kicked out to die happily. It’s not surprising that when Robert Browning came, she was given a new life lease. In contrast, she was happy when she was a kid, which she describes in the second half of line 10. The child’s faith is pure and presents new opportunities for all things. Returning to the 11 lines of religious sentiment, serial shooting refers to the lost love that the saints once had. Perhaps the Christian church is the love of traditional religions. Or can she look back on those who are sacred in her life and whom she respected and loved so much? She suggests that this love gives to her husband who is now back. She actually says on line 12, but with the deepest emotions, she is separated in a single dash. This returned love is soon her breath. Not only that, but it will be both the good and the bad that she had and will continue to do so. This is like her love. It all wraps around. And if God admits it in the last line, she continues to love her husband more even after she dies. So, her love is empowered and transcended beyond the grave.

In an effort to reestablish the tradition of the “intellectual poet” (“Metaphysical”), T. S. Eliot and the members of the imagist and early modernist schools employ a rather direct method: allusions to classic works of poetry. By incorporating references to texts that exemplify the “chaotic, irregular, fragmentary” (“Metaphysical”) style which mirrors one’s sensory experience of everyday life, Eliot adds both the historical context of the referenced work and the image conjured by the work itself to his own poetry. Pound, an imagist contemporary of Eliot, suggests that aspiring modernist poets “be influenced by as many great artists as [they] can” (Pound 95), a recommendation that Eliot appears to have interpreted through a multitude of allusions. These implied, passing references to the works of Dante, Ovid, and the great Greek epics interweave the context and content of the referenced works with Eliot’s own ideas to create a poem that revisits the literary glory of the past. This literary technique, however, can render a poem unapproachable and limit the poet’s experimental potential, leading Eliot’s contemporaries to search for alternate ways to present their poetic experiences. An opposing group of modernist poets, including Wallace Stevens, disagreed strongly with Eliot’s reliance on allusions and chose to focus on the synesthetic “brief words and sudden contrasts” (“Metaphysical”) characteristic of imagism. In “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” Stevens experiments with style and meter to conjure images of the future rather than returning to the past.

In order to capture poetic experiences as accurately as possible, Eliot uses contradictory imagery that he supplements with allusions, a tool that conjures both the image referenced and the socio-historical context and literary value of the referenced work itself. The early modernist concept of imagery grew from the short-lived literary movement of imagism, which prized direct presentation of objects through the unexpected association of contrasting concepts. Hoping to abandon the Romantic descriptions wrought with similes and comparisons, Eliot begins The Waste Land with a depiction of April as the “cruellest month” (Waste Land 5), inverting spring’s connotations of rebirth. Throwing the reader into such an image, composed of diametrically opposed concepts, forces him or her to experience the complexity of this desolate April. Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot alludes to texts that he felt exemplified the “mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience” (“Metaphysical”), including one of the most frequently referenced works, Dante’s Divine Comedy. By quoting Cantos III and IV in lines 63-64, he not only borrows the original image – the overwhelming masses of dead souls shuffling resignedly to their fate – but he also contrasts the orderliness of Hell and the sense of destiny in Dante’s text as a whole to the image of absurd, desolate crowds shuffling aimlessly over London Bridge. Other allusions, such as the reference to Baudelaire in the line “hypocrite lecteur! –mon semblable, – mon frère!” (Waste Land 7) serve a less literal purpose, and are employed primarily for the context surrounding them. The actual meaning of the line does not add much to the poem, but the source – Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, a scandalous collection of poetry that criticized the heavy industrialization and listless human spirit through decadent, symbolist imagery – contributes its themes to Eliot’s poem without directly voicing them. Eliot compares this effect to Keats’s use of a nightingale as the central subject of his Ode: the bird “contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale … served to bring together” (“Tradition”). In addition, these allusions serve to place Eliot’s poem within the context of literary history by forcing the reader to recall the works of Ovid and Aenid when experiencing The Waste Land. According to Eliot, a poem does not become a part of literary history simply by being written, but must actively recall the classic works of the past to gain entrance; “it cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor” (“Tradition”) from the poet through heavy allusion.

In the three pieces, every author employs varying forms of Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Kairos to support their work and ensure that their arguments are strong and persuasive, and compelling.

The first work in an essay written by Peggy McIntosh called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” was written to show what types of benefits she as a white woman receives in our society providing an exceedingly long list of each and every one of those benefits while also giving a discussion on racism and how she was incorrectly taught what it exactly meant. She also goes to great lengths to show these privileges that she mentioned shouldn’t be only offered to people with this privilege, but rather a normal standard for our society. Another topic she discusses was the fact that changes to the system may take several decades to accomplish as she feels that white people tend to not acknowledge this privilege granted to them because of the color of their skin and how this topic is considered taboo to openly discuss. She ends the essay by posing the question of whether her fellow white people will use what she calls this unearned power to rebuild the system of dominance. Her purpose for writing this essay as stated before is to show how this system of white privilege and racism benefits white people in our current system of society.

The second piece by Brent Staples called “Black Men and Public Space” goes into detail on what black men go through and the discrimination that they face when they are seen in public spaces while providing powerful personal stories of exactly what he has experienced. These personal stories all include him being in public spaces and describing how he images the people that see him and what they think. He describes the people’s thoughts of seeing him and making him out to be this nefarious villain that wants to maim and harm the people around him when he really is just minding his business in a public space. He also calls the people that saw him victims because they were in his presence, but really he was the one who was being victimized by these false notations and stereotypes. Another story that Staples provides is the one about how he was treated poorly while looking around inside a jewelry store and how the owner instead of treating him like a customer stereotypes him and believes that he is a thief and could potentially rob the store. He noticed this shift in behavior and prejudice in the owner and decided to leave the building fearing for his well-being. With these complying stories, his purpose for writing the essay was to show exactly how black men are unjustly perceived in society by just existing and being present in the area and how they are being treated as people who only bring harm wherever they go.

The last article was written by Amy Traub and her colleagues and is called “The Asset of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Gap” dives into the subject of the racial wage gap and debunks many of the myths that people use to say that the wage gap isn’t real. The authors then go on to cite various statistics that back up this idea that the racial wage gap is a problem and how the issue dates back to times of slavery and segregation and how policies and regulations were installed to ensure that white people were able to afford homes and attend college during the time period after World War II. One of the statistics mentioned was the notion that attending college would shrink the gap and is seen as a source of wealth. This, however, is not the case as the study showed that a person of color that attends college would make just as much compared to a white high school dropout. Another study that was cited was how working full-time also doesn’t close the gap stating that white families make more money than their person of color counterparts due to job availability and payments. One of the last studies that were shown was the idea that spending less also doesn’t shut the gap down as it is reported that white families spend more money than their colored counterparts in the same income group showing that even when the colored families save money the numbers still aren’t as how much white families are spending/saving. The purpose of the article is mainly to show that the racial wage gap is a very real and serious issue that is affecting people of color and their families to be able to live comfortably in our society as opposed to their white counterparts.

Every one of these works has a strong source of ethos and they use this credibility to show that they know about the work they are writing about to establish a sort of authority on the subject. For Staples’ work, he shows ethos by actually living through the experiences he discusses in his article and providing the stories of the things that have happened to him in his life. Traub displays ethos by having years of research on her belt on the subject of the widening racial wage gap and racial inequality in our society. For McIntosh’s essay, she provides the strongest example of ethos as her credibility on the matter of white privilege is unmatched. The main reason she has the best notation of ethos is that she is a white woman herself and provides a source of the benefits she has received just for existing in society.

Two of the works show a strong source of logos to provide logical support to their argument in order to better support it. The first one is McIntosh’s essay and it shows logos through the long list she provides in her essay that states all the advantages of being white. This is logos for the reason that McIntosh is showing an objective viewpoint of what being white entails. The second article with the strongest source of logos would have to be Traub and her colleagues’ essay as they provide the most statistics to prove that the racial wage gap is a big problem.

When it comes to pathos two of the pieces showed strong emotional appeals that bolstered the strength of their argument. The first piece that showed pathos is McIntosh’s and it was shown through the way that she describes racism as terrible things and not invisible systems that secretly cause an established hierarchy in society. The other piece with the strongest use of pathos would be Staples’s essay on his experience of being a black man in public spaces. He provides this strong emotional appeal by showcasing the stories of what he has experienced by being a black man in a society facing these cruel prejudices.

As for the strongest use of kairos for the three articles, all of them used it effectively to support their arguments and ideas. Staples’ essay was published in a magazine in 1986 and for that time an article like this would’ve been an effective way to make people see the kind of prejudice that black men suffer and continue to suffer in public spaces. Traub and her colleague’s essay which was published in 2017 also used kairos to show that even in these recent times people of color still struggle to compete with white people when it comes to wages. The strongest form of kairos, in my opinion, was McIntosh’s as her essay was published in 1989 in those times talk of white privilege was exceedingly rare so to publish an essay about the invisible benefits white people get in society at that time was a perfect use of kairos.

Although there are flaws in every argument, I felt that the most effective argument was McIntosh’s essay as the way that she conveyed ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos to provide a solid vision of exactly what white privilege and racism was and how people like her were unconsciously benefiting from it in our society. It was also most effective for me because this essay being published in 1989 would’ve been a rare discussion topic that would’ve most certainly brought discomfort to everyone around her. For these reasons Peggy McIntosh’s essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” was the best use of rhetorical tools to convince her readers of what she trying to show them about this issue of white privilege, racism, and systematic dominance in our society.

Works Cited

1. McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Louisville Anarchist Federation and No Borders, 2000. Accessed April 1, 2020
2. Staples, Brent. “Black Men and Public Space.” The Bedford Reader. Boston: Bedford St.Martin’s, 2014. Print. Accessed April 1, 2020
3. Traub, Amy, et al. “The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap.” Demos, www.demos.org/research/asset-value-whiteness-understanding-racial-wealth-gap. Accessed April 1, 2020

The Waste Land is a poem of breakdowns, psychological breakdowns of marriages and relationships, breakdowns of poetry and language and evidently the entire world. The carnage of the first World War had laid waste to Europe and made a mockery of civilisation thus starting the evolution of modernism and new forms of expression. After the war, it was T.S Eliot who had to represent and sustain a culture that was on the brink of collapse. First published in 1922, The Waste Land is full of people sleepwalking through their daily lives. Life had become mechanical and empty of meaning where moral propriety was long forgotten. Eliot was heavily influenced by vorticism; a movement inspired by cubism and futurism on the continent and in The Waste Land he wanted to create a modern tradition which connected with the past and he did so by borrowing voices and cadences of previous poets.

The Waste Land is a highly complex poem organized on the principle of five sections which opens with a compelling epigraph of the ancient prophetess, the Sibyl of Cumae who longs to die. Her pessimism is the first indication of the idea which develops into the central theme of the poem; sterility and the decay of the human civilisation. The Waste Land is a poem of spiritual mourning for a world that is lost and will never be regained. The poem abandons the syntax of a narrative but relies on the collocation of images. One could argue it is a modified dramatic monologue with no unitary voice, but rather a series of characters coming on the stage of Eliot’s consciousness. The Wasteland was uncommon for its time as shorter poems where more frequent, the poem is divided into 5 main sections whereby the Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey the theme of sterility. Robert Crawford notes, ‘lacking coherence this episodic structure moved closer to French avant-garde verse’ (Penguin 2015: 402). Eliot uses a vast range of allusions and references from religion, literature and blended quotations from several languages, mixing lyric moments with passages of direct speech to make the poem inaccessible to what he believes is the uncultured society of the modern world. Eliot himself states the narrative connectedness is not meant to appeal to logic of consciousness but the logic of imagination.

The Burial of the Dead

The theme of sterility is introduced with an image of death of vegetal barrenness, ‘April is the cruellest month… lilacs out of the dead land, mixing dull roots with spring rain’. Thwarted images of nature are marked by the conjuring of the seasonal cycles where one might associate springtime with fertility and love but here it is the season of death. The use of the word ‘winter’ provides an oxymoronic idea as winter is associated with cold and death but is the season that kept the reader ‘warm’. New Criticism states the life of the author ought to be irrelevant to the evaluation of a poem, however, The Waste Land is so tangled in biography and history it is impossible to separate the poet from the poem. Perhaps his perception of winter was in response to his own tribulations and privations during this time. By 1921, Eliot had split from his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Crawford remarks, ‘Tom’s creative endeavour and illness operated eerily in tandem’ (2005:402). Eliot ingeniously made is private grief into public grief without associating the two with each other. The tone of the poem shifts in lines 8-19 when we meet a new character, that of Marie Louise Larisch. Marie represents the superficial and sterile remnants of the old European aristocracy. The two experiences recounted by her could also well be seen as the dualistic nature of the world. From before the war – Marie and her cousin go sledding, that sense of elation and adventure, ‘in the mountains, there you feel free’, and then the reference to ‘drank coffee, and talked for an hour’, which could stand for the post-war world, one of culture adrift from natural seasonal values, monotonous and emptied of all nuance, unlike the pre-war world. Perhaps Eliot included the image of royalty here to symbolize the collapse of traditional forms of government and the blurring of class divisions. Eliot uses the technique of enjambment through the use of participles ‘ing’ such as ‘breeding, mixing, covering’, giving this section a sense of breathlessness, a sort of a quick slow pace which makes every thought seem unfinished.

Lines 19-26 see a shift in speaker where the theme of sterility develops further with an image of an imminent apocalypse. The speaker asks, ‘what branches grow out of this stoney rubbish’. This vision suggests the ‘branches of a tree’ represent the ordinary people and the ‘stoney rubbish’ represents culture, of which both are intertwined. Eliot who has influenced by Elizabethan and Jacobean culture viewed culture as a life stream to people and without it, it is impossible to make a civilisation worthy of fruitfulness if the environment in which it grows is empty. Eliot uses biblical imagery with ‘son of man’ to make this claim, stating you could not possibly understand as your life is, ‘a heap of broken images’, where you live a superficial and meaningless life without guidance and spiritual belief. The theme of sterility is further strengthened with the image of the desert with ‘dead trees, no sound of water where the only comfort is a red rock’. This emotive image reinforces the spiritual ‘drought’ and despondency in the modern world.

Eliot’s use of parallelism in lines 28 and 29 imply a certain mirroring effect with the two shadows, which gives you a disorientated sense of travelling into two opposite directions at once. The utterance of ‘dust’ symbolizes a human being’s presence here on earth, as we start as dust and end as dust, furthermore, representing sterility and lifelessness. The reference to the ‘hyacinth’ flower is another message of death, whereby a young prince caught the eye of Apollo and was mistakenly killed. Mourning the death of his love, he turned the drops of his blood into a flower, a hyacinth. The allusion to homosexuality would itself have been a taboo subject in early 20th century Europe, a topic rarely discussed openly.

While the enormity of what was happening in the trenches began to sink in at home, close to sixteen million soldiers died and with it so did the so-called ‘sophistication’ of the Western world. The war shifted the paradigms of what the educated and elite class were and reminded society of the sterility of death. From the tarot cards of Madame Sosostris, to the drowned Phoenician sailor (whose eyes have turned into pearls, hardened and dead), to the image of the Hanged Man, to the symbolic religious figures of Dante’s Inferno and the image of the Lady of the Rocks, the theme of sterility is littered throughout the poem much akin to the barrenness of the land itself. Eliot uses allusions as diverse as nursery rhymes to Dante’s Inferno to explain the human condition and emphasize just how little value is placed in culture anymore. By the 1920’s, pop culture had unequivocally murdered high culture, and with The Waste Land, Eliot ensured high culture got the eulogy it deserved. In lines 60-68 the speaker paints a cynical picture of modern urban life that references the ‘unreal’, unauthentic and corrupt city that is bound by time. It is here Eliot reminisces on classical literature with repetition of the rhyming couplet of ‘many’ and ‘feet’ and ‘street’ which further strengthens the overall sense of fragmentation and loss of cultural inheritance.

Game of Chess

Game of Chess begins with a steady meter and iambic pentameter which contributes to the sense of fluidity. In lines 111-114 the structure starts to break down just as the woman in this scene seems to be experiencing a mental breakdown. She begins the verse describing the decadence of pre-war luxury and ends it; a woman who lacks purpose and void of any meaningful cries. The second part of this section depicts two upper class women in a bar in modern day. They discuss their friend Lil’s infidelity and the nature of womanhood. Lil despite doing everything right, married her husband, bore children yet her aging body is no use anymore to her husband. The line ‘and if you don’t give it him, there’s others will’ implies how useless the nature of love is, it is viewed here as a duty rather than an act of love. It is interesting to see how Eliot has referenced historical female figures such as Cleopatra and Dido, both of whom were exemplary for their passion in love. In contrast to this we meet the modern couple, Albert and Lil, they are lacking passion and affection who use abortion as control over her fertility, ‘I took them pills to bring it off, she’s had five already’. The fact the women are discussing such a sensitive issue in a nonchalant manner in a public place further strengthens Eliot’s argument that the modern world is sterile and empty of reverence and respect for the wonder of life. The refrain of ‘HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME’ creates a sense of urgency throughout this section. The section ends with repetition of the words ‘good night’. This is in reference to the doomed Shakespearean heroine Ophelia, which is in stark contrast to the floating Cleopatra, both of which further develop the element of water. Perhaps Eliot might be suggesting that death is the only real escape from The Waste Land.

The Fire Sermon

In the third part, The Fire Sermon, London is described as a dirty industrial city where litter and dead bodies engulf the ‘Sweet Thames’. The motif of pollution, of moral and spiritual pollution is further characterised by the symbol of a rat, ‘dragging its slimy belly on the bank’, ‘White bodies naked on the low damp ground’. Eliot uses onomatopoeia, alliteration and cadences here with ‘twit’ and ‘jug’ to help this image flow. It is not only until we meet Tiresias, a hermaphrodite who has the ability to simultaneously see history past and present that the theme of sexual sterility is elaborated further. Tiresias offers one of his/her visions of a woman going about her everyday empty routine of doing chores before a young man arrives at her door. Eliot satirically uses this scene as an example of modern desires and while doing so uses a traditional end rhyming scheme with ‘rest’ and ‘guest’ and ‘guesses’ and ‘caresses’ to further emphasize the fantasy of heroic masculinity. Eliot demolishes the idea of modern love by describing the act of fornication as an obligation than passion with words such as ‘bored’, ‘tired’ and ‘assaults at once’. The man leaves almost immediately after their encounter but not before he gives her a meaningless, ‘patronizing kiss’. The unsatisfied woman exclaims, ‘I’m glad that’s over’ and slots back into her routine by turning on her gramophone. The scene conveys the emotional isolation of the modern world where nothing at all fulfils you, Eliot in a way is debasing vitality and sensuality. The sexual imagery throughout the poem is depicted as ‘squalid’, sleezy and never leading to reproduction. The theme of sterility is depicted through a variety of sexual encounters from homosexuality to prostitution to rape and abortion. From lines 266 onwards the form is shortened which impacts the pace of the poem. It is here also that the word, ‘nothing’ is repeated several times to further accentuate the barrenness of modern times.

The Waste Land presents a highly eloquent account of despair, its powerful vision of urban alienation spoke to a generation of young post war readers. It found a whole new language for poetry of the everyday world of motor cars, dirty canals, jazz records, he introduced into poetry words that everyone used in the streets. He deliberately chose sordid seeming subjects and in doing so creates a strange kind of beautiful. Eliot can’t accept change in society and his world and the world around him is echoing that change, he longs his old life personally.

‘If The Waste Land has come to being read as articulating Western civilisation’s sense of crisis, it can be heard also as a lasting cry, giving voice to darkness deep in the human psyche (2015:423).

The Waste Land it is called; & Mary Hutch, who has heard it more quietly, interprets it to be Tom’s autobiography- a melancholy one’ (Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolfe’ 2, 178).

One can not overlook Eliots personal circumstances when analysing this poem, his inherent lack of hope, optimism and wonder are undeniably destroyed much like the bombed of the buildings.