Tuesday, November 20, 2012

In the poem“Dulce et Decorum Est” By Owen the speaker provides a good description of a gas attack in the battlefield during the first World War.  His description of imagery begins with the deplorable and dangerous condition that soldiers must face in the battlefield. As the poem progresses the speaker narrates a sudden gas attack he describes having the effect of killing men. he describes the effect when he mentions  “His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; / If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.”  (lines 20-24)., The words of the “friend” the speaker addresses in the end was difficult to understand.This difference between the imagery and the Latin words  suggest that war is nether glorious nor is it honorable. War, is an event characterized by unnecessary death, destruction, and sacrifice of innocent lives in the form of soldiers who are forced to kill one another. The use of vivid imagery may have been intended to instill shock upon the readers and  convince them of war’s futile and senseless spread of horror. and the absence of imagery to accompany the old Latin phrase firmly suggests that the notion of war being honorable and glorious is simply  invalid. And finally, the use of Latin as the language could have been a symbolic of the declining belief that war is a magnificent affair. And in place of this belief is the reality that war is rarely justified and inevitably destructive.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

option 1

William Blake's poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" express different emotions.  The level of diction in “The Lamb” is middle diction because it includes common words that are easy to understand, but they are  expressed in formal tone. Repetition is common because words,phrases, and lines are repeated several times that gives emphasis on the acts and meaning of existence of the lamb. the speaker tells the animal how he exists. the speaker also uses imagery to illustrate how and why the animal lives. for example the clothing of delight symbolizes security and comfort that the lamb should feel to be able to move forward and live the best he can. "The Tyger"  also uses middle diction because the terms that are used are common through the structure is formal.  repetition also exists in this poem, but it was not as obvious as "the Lamb" 
in "the tyger"  the poet includes imagery to justify why he is inquiring about the condition and position og the "tyger" for example the term "burning Bright" represents the power and authority of the "tyger" in the forest that tend to overpower the lamb.  therefore the two verses are related to each other  but they contain contradicting ideas because " the Lamb" is an expression of innocence while "the tyger" is a portrayal of experience