... and the poet are victims of the environment around them. The circumstances around them have relegated them to being tossed about from one place to another. “ To catch at the barbed wire and hang there, shaking, like a riddled prisoner.� The poet tells us using strong images of pain and injury that the tumbleweed was thrown against a fence, a kind of prison from which it is difficult to escape. So the tumbleweed and the poet are both thrust against the barbed wire of life. This is another metaphor for the poet's difficult life. The poet and the tumbleweed are stuck in a painful, difficult situation. They are pris ...

... conflict and cowardice to discover courage, humility and wisdom in this most confused situation of total confrontation. Many veterans of the American Civil War praised Stephen Crane for his uncanny image, to envision and replicate the essence of actual combat. Stephen who had not witnessed any warfare brilliantly accomplishes this in his book. Crane thereafter, got a real taste of combat, when he covered the Greco-Turkish War in 1897 and the Spanish-American War in 1898 as a war correspondent for The New York Journal newspaper. It was during these two conflicts that he perhaps drew the conclusion that war was not a ...

... when they returned, victorious. There was so much pressure on the ‘boys’ (‘who were soon to become men’) to join the army, with the many recruitment devices such as posters and famously, the poems by Jessie Pope. Pope wrote from the safety of her own home, as a civilian. She had not had any first hand experience of war. In fact, it seems that she had absolutely no idea about what war was like. It was poets like her who had a large influence over the public. Her amazing naiveté made her renowned amongst the British during war- time and in my opinion, her recruiting poem; “Who’s for the Game� is ir ...

... turned their interests to remote and faraway places; the medieval past; folklore and legends, and nature and the common man.� Edgar Allen Poe is noted as one of the few American “Romantic� poets. Poe's poem “The Raven� portrays Romanticism as characterized by emotion, exotica, and imagination. A friend of Edgar Allen Poe, R. H. Horne, wrote of “The Raven�, “the poet intends to represent a very painful condition of the mind, as of an imagination that was liable to topple over into some delirium or an abyss of melancholy, from the continuity of one unvaried emotion.� Edgar Allen Poe, a ...

... the way he uses their mythologies in his poetry. In his poem ‘No Return’ there is an obvious use of culture’s mythology: “her journey to Pulotu has no dawn.� (p109) Pulotu is the spirit world in Polynesian mythology. In ‘The Mountains of Ta’u’ he draws on the famous legend of Maui: “like spinning tops or Maui’s endlessly / inventing mind.� (p110) Maui is an important part of Polynesian mythology; Maui is a demigod who is used to tell of many stories. There are also reflections of Polynesian cultural inheritances in Hone Tuwhare’s use of mythology in his poetry. Tuwhare was born in Kaikohe, an ...

... speaker is a man who is traveling through the countryside on a beautiful winter evening. He is completely surrounded with feelings of loneliness. The speaker views a snow-covered field as a deserted place. "A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/ With no expression, nothing to express". Whiteness and blankness are two key ideas in this poem. The white symbolizes open and empty spaces. The snow is a white blanket that covers up everything living. The blankness symbolizes the emptiness that the speaker feels. To him there is nothing else around except for the unfeeling snow and his lonely thoughts. The speake ...

... the globe are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom.� Instead of referring to death he uses the word “slumber.� These connections continue in a number of places. Other examples include lines 57 and 66. In line 57 he writes, “In their last sleep the dead reign there alone,� and in line 66, referring to death and burial, Bryant writes, “And make their bed with thee.� This connection between death and sleep creates an intriguing metaphor which adds depth and meaning to the poem. By using this strange metaphor I believe Bryant wishes to suggest his faith in an afterlife. While exa ...

... heart of the Christian to help people but wants the selfish rewards of Paganism. Shild's funeral is another example of Paganism, it takes place at the end of the prologue. The people that were under his reign put him on the deck of a ship and surrounded him with jewels, gold, helmets, swords, etc. The importance of material goods are one of the cardinal characteristics of the Pagan's beliefs. Hrothgar and his counselors make useless attempts to appease Grendel in Verse 2. They can't offer him gold or land, as they might an ordinary enemy. Like most people in a time of crisis they slip back into old ways of th ...

... for herself and suffered from anxiety and self-doubt when it appeared that she would not reach her goals. Many women feel that their homes, children and marriages are not perfect and perceive themselves as failures, in 1932 according to Bill Gilson in her biography Sylvia Plath was born in to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She published her first poem when she was eight. Her father's death in 1940 from gangrene ( the consequence of a diabetic condition that he refused to treat), Plath was only eight years old, this was the crucial event of her childhood. In her poem "Daddy" we see Plath's i ...

... Kiltartan’s poor,� alludes to a group of Roman Catholics who were directly related to the Air Force. These people had there own tartan, or color for their kilts that they wore. The different tartan colors represented different groups of people. The “Kiltartan poor,� exemplifies the Kiltartan people, who are unfairly ruled citizens of Ireland, who are poor because the do not have their own country. He then tells how no outcome of the war would do any harm to Britain, The Irish were the only ones with something to lose. And, that nothing would make the Irish forget the war. They would never be as happy ...