A Poison Tree Poem Analysis

God would not have created humans if they were not meant to make mistakes. Everyone is prone to making mistakes, but they only become valuable when you take a lesson out of them. The main character, Duddy Kravitz, goes through a tough upbringing, in a family that continuously discriminates him. Throughout the story, he makes grave life mistakes which allow him to see the world more clearly. The discriminatory attitude of his family makes him go through a process of self-awareness and an understanding of his identity.

In the music video/song “Strange Fruit”, the phrase strange fruit doesn’t really refer to a fruit that is strange. It actually refers to people being lynched and hanging from trees. More specifically, the term strange fruit applies to the lynching of African Americans. This song was performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 at the Cafe Society in New York. The music video was actually a recorded performance from 1959. The song was written and performed because the purpose of was to raise awareness and fight against African American lynching because during that time, African Americans were being discriminated and abused. Billie Holiday in the music video/song “Strange Fruit” displays logos through context and imagery, pathos through her sorrowful tone and facial expressions, and lastly, ethos because she won many awards during her career in singing, and Strange Fruit is one of them.

In the story “The Scarlet Ibis” the theme is something very intense to think about. Sometimes, by the time we realize what we have done wrong, we can no longer fix the mistake; people have dealt with this sort of conflict in their lives before, many times. Personally, I have dealt with situations like this before in my lifetime. It’s difficult, because by the time we realize our fault, it’s too late to repair the damage.

The Cask of Amontillado, a story by Edgar Allen Poe, and A Poison Tree, a poem by William Blake, both focus on a character who wishes vengeance on another who has wronged them in some way. They tell of how two people have been said to have been wronged one too many times and felt the need to do something about it. In order to express their wrath felt towards these people, they both go as far as to successfully murder them. These two pieces of writing portray a similar message about those who seek revenge on others, showing the effects it can have on people. Blake and Poe use the literary device of conflict and figurative language to convey the theme that after a betrayal, a desire for revenge can bring out the worst in people and negatively impact the lives of themselves and others.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poem, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (“Poem for the Dead Californios”), is a commentary on what happened to the original inhabitants of California when California was still Mexico, and an address to the speaker's dead ancestors. Utilizing a unique dynamic, consistently alternating between Spanish and English, Cervantes accurately represents the fear, hatred, and humility experienced by the “Californios” through rhythm, arrangement, tone, and most importantly, through use of language.

In “Monkey Hill,” Stan Rice writes about the speaker of the poem who sits at a zoo with his friend observing the spider monkey exhibit. The two stay the whole day to observe these monkeys. The speaker becomes envious of these monkeys and their ability to be confident with exactly where they are and with who they are. Rice argues that our minds imprison us when we are worried about judgment from others. The monkeys in the exhibit felt free and at ease while the two observers were trapped in worrisome about the outside world in fear of how others would perceive them.

The poem creates the theme that holding in anger may lead to awful consequences through first person point of view by describing the poet’s struggle to release his emotions that eventually cause him to hurt his enemy. For instance, after stating that he told his friend about his anger, and his anger died, Blake says, “ I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.” This quote from the poem shows that this is written in a first person point of view. The poet then goes on to describe how he watered down his anger, and it continued growing. At the end,

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

In Woodchucks, a poem by Maxine Kumin, a gardener is having problems with woodchucks invading her garden. She attempts to kill the woodchucks with cyanide gas, but the Woodchucks wouldn’t die. The pacifist gardener, resorts to violence and shoots the woodchucks with a rifle. She was hoping for an easy solution but ended up going against her peace loving ways and turned violent. Throughout the poem, Maxine Kumin slowly reveals the underlying meaning of her writing. Kumin emphasizes that there are violent thoughts and tendencies in every individual by referencing real life events, by escalading the tone of the poem, and by using a series of literary devices.

The Caterpillar is a poem which focuses on the previously overlooked actions some of us may partake in, that may not be thought much of, but have short and long lasting effects on a scale we might not be very familiar with. Do we feel remorse for living organisms on a small macroscopic level, or is it just an insignificant part of our complex lives? Is the appreciation of life developed through experiences? Do we feel more pity for a single being that has been through trauma than we do for thousands that have not? In this poem, the conflict between caterpillars and humans is discussed in a such a way that brings up questions about how valuable we perceive other life to be, and how different

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

Trees are important not only physically but also spiritually and for many this fact is lost. Physically trees provide humans with beauty and a healthy ecosystem. Spiritually trees provide humans a connection to nature. Their importance has been lost in our modern times as humans further separate themselves from nature. While forgotten by many, their actions still resonate. The two modern poems “The Tree Agreement” by Elise Paschen and “Living Tree” by Robert Morgan trumpet the value trees hold in comparable ways. In the poem “The Tree Agreement” the speaker argues for the benefits of the Siberian Elm against a disagreeing neighbor. By structuring the poem in this manner, the poet highlights how people are blind to the services trees provide while simultaneously highlighting said services. The tree is portrayed almost as a friend or ally to the speaker. The speaker describes not only to the significance of the tree to humans like the neighbor and the speaker but also to the other living creatures surrounding them. The poem “Living Tree” focuses on the actions performed by trees in cemeteries. This poem follows a more spiritual route when compared to Paschen’s poem. This poem describes the process those who have been buried go through and the role trees play in this process. The trees in this poem are portrayed as lightning rods for the chemicals and spirits of the dead. This relationship is portrayed positively, as the trees are a monument to the passing of life. These poems

The meaning of the poem A Poison Tree is how hatred can be a powerful weapon that can lead to both physical and mental injuries if not controlled on time. In the first stanza of the poem the speaker gets angry with a friend and a foe. The speaker seizes their wrath with the friend, however, the speaker allowed their wrath to grow with their foe, “I was angry with my foe; / I told it not, my wrath did grow.” Throughout the second stanza, the speaker grows their wrath with mixed emotions, “And I water’d it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.” As the speaker kept growing their wrath, it blossomed to form new anger, new tricks and plans for destruction, “And it grew both day

Some of the poems and essays I have read during this class were relatable to me. Being away from college, I have struggled with not being at home. I have become a different person when I am at school, but when I am home, I feel like I am my normal self again. Some of these authors of the poems and essays that I have read throughout this class has struggled with being somewhere where they don’t belong and that they are someone else when they are not home. Unlike the other poems and essays we have read throughout the course. I enjoyed reading the ones about “home” because I actually understood what they are going through and that I can relate. Some of these poems and essays include “Going Home” by Maurice Kenny, Postcard from Kashmir”, by Agha Shahid Ali, “Returning” by Elias Miguel Munoz and “Hometown” by Luis Cabalquinto. All of these poems deal with duality.