A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

On a street in Harlem

In the poem, “Harlem”, the similes create an image of a community of minority or a group of people that is being repressed and prejudiced. The poem gives me a sense of heaviness and sadness that portrayed to me as this old photograph. This snapshot shows the everyday life a group of African American who belong to the lower working class. The similes made with the objects of a dried raisin, a rotten meat, and hardened syrup- all implies to a sense of being abandoned, and neglected for a long period of time. The people in this photo merely just gathered around and sit, but does not seem like they are celebrating or having a good time with themselves. They looks empty as if they are just in idle with no sense of purpose in their life.

Hughes instead states his view on deferred dreams, he poses questions to evoke readers to think. He uses real objects to compare the consequences of deferred dreams. He asked whether unfulfilled dream just create defects to the original form and still harmless like a wrinkly raisin or a can of crystallized syrup; or, the deferred dream will become harmful and deadly, like a stinky piece of meat, or an infected sore, and even explode. The word, “dry”, “fester”, and “stinks” all convey a feeling of decay and waste.

The emotions of a deferred dream is abstract and it has different perspective on different people. Hughes uses similes without too much explanations to allow readers to have their own interpretations to the idea of an unfulfilled dream.

She is effective in communicating her idea, she uses of the object and the experience that people would normally encounter in their everyday life in that time period, which allow her to relate to her readers easier. The visual representation of using visual objects and senses enhance the idea, for example, the sense of stinkiness of a rotten meat does a better job in conveying the idea of decay. From my experience, the smell of a dead and decaying mouse gives off the most horrifying smell that is unavoidable and should be urgently noticed. Using real life objects is better to communicate ideas because it can easily evokes ones’ past experience.

This picture is taken from: http://www.stud.u-szeged.hu/Borthaiser.Nora/harlem.jpg

The Red Wheelbarrow

This picture is taken from:
http://inwhitefields.blogspot.com/2008/04/small-dose-of-william-carlos-williams.html

Figurative lanuages with Hughes and Plath

In Harlem, Hughes uses figurative language to explain the consequences of unattended dreams. A major section in this poem, the second stanza (line 2-8), uses similes of visual objects like a raisin, a sore, and syrup to describe the feelings of deferred dreams. In the second and third line, “Does it dry it like a raisin in the sun?”, the original dream is referred as a grape. A fresh grape that is at its best quality, is green, juicy, and plump; but when dream left abandoned, it turns unattractive-black, dry and wrinkly.
In the following line, “Or fester like a sore- And then run?”, the unfulfilled dreams are compared to a sore. A wound that becomes part of the body, and left untreated, it becomes infected and form pus. For line 6, “Does it stink like rotten meat?” The simile of a rotten meat and its foul smell refers to the unavoidable strong odor that gives off by a decaying dead meat. For line 8, it continues with more senses, “Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?”, comparing unused syrups turn crusty and becomes unusable. These objects all refer a sense of decay and waste when dream become referred.

The use of tangible objects and senses helps to convey the poet’s emotions. He uses smell, taste, and objects that everyone can experience in everyday life, it would help readers to have a better understanding of the feelings that expressed by the figurative language. Hughes uses these similes because he wants to target his audience to a community of lower working class people. The use of simile with the food and the experience that those people would eat and encounter normally at that time would helps to relate the image better with the audience.

In the poem "Daddy", Plath also uses figurative language to describe her complex relationship with her dad by using images of a historical event-the Holocaust. She also uses repetitive words and similes to convey for emotions. The most prevalent image, as written in line 32 to 35, "Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.", she views her father as a Nazi and herself as a Jew to represent that she was in a oppressed relationship that her father is strictly controlling her. Living with her father, she feels like a prisoner that is trapped in a German concentration death camp. The usage of a unforgettable historical event exaggerates the tension and a sense of horror that she feels like the genocide of Jews. This world-known historical event reveals the hatred and victimization that she wants to communicate with her readers.

She also used tangible objects as similes, in the first stanza of this poem, "You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breath of Achoo". She refers herself as a foot that is stuck in a shoe, and because her life is always encased by a shoe which symbolizes her father's rule. This makes her never have a chance to experience the outside world and be exposed to the sun; moreover, she is suffocated in her father's rule. As Hughes, Plath uses simile to allow readers to form a mental image of comparison which would increase the understanding of her emotions.

Imagery of the poem "In a Station of the Metro"

"Faces in the crowd" in the Metro at La Concorde, Paris.







"Petals on a wet, black bough."






The images are taken from:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yelloo/2444110734/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcnjoanne/2123941073/

"In a Station of the Metro"

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

In the poem, Ezra Pound uses vivid imagery to describe his view in the train station. He was people watching and he was in awe by the sight, according to the word “apparition”. He was shocked when he discovered the people’s faces when he stepped into the crowded metro station, probably during a rush hour. In the second line, he compares the station, which is a mechanical and industrial object, using a beautiful imagery of a living flower. He morph the scene into an image of flower petals which stands out in the background of wet, black branches. The soft and feathery flower petals contrast with heavy, black, and unattractive branches. Linking these completely different images are interesting. Comparing in terms of the view of people in a fast paced industrial environment and the soothing view of a naturally beautiful petals on a tree branch.

Poetic form

Sonnet 73

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

Paraphase
You see the glowing of a fire
That is on the ashes that remain from the flame of my youth,
As on a death bed where youth must die
(The flame is) Consumed by that which once fed it (ashes).


The form of this poem enhances the meaning more than the prose version I provide. The prose only clarifies the hidden meaning but it loses the aesthetic value from the rhyme of the words and the form of the poem. The original version is written in iambic pentameter with ten syllables in each line. This organized form of the poem gives a very expected and structured feel.

This poem follows the form of the Shakespearean sonnet (AKA English sonnet),which uses the structure of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. The form of this quatrain (EFEF) helps to develop an expected pattern of symbols and connotations to portray Shakespeare’s depressing old age. On the other hand, this quatrain is designedto prepare for a clever, unexpected turn at the heroic couplet at the end of the sonnet. Compared to the previous three quatrains, the couplet serves as closure to the sonnet and gives a startling turn. The depressing symbolism that developed throughout the poem has an abrupt turn and ends with a positive thought of love that grew stronger as the time of Shakespeare’s life becomes limited.

For the first line in the third quatrain, “In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,” and the first line in the second quatrain, “In me thou seest the twilight of such day”, they are extremely similar. Only two words are different. This repetition gives a structured feel of the poem. Also, the location of these two lines serves as an introduction to their following lines in the quatrain.This is shown in the third quatrain, which mentions the dying of fire.

Becoming a blogging blogger

This is my first official blog! I am pretty excited about it. Keep the creativity flowing!!