Pain vs. Love in Gerald Stern’s “The Dog”
Gerald Stern’s ‘The Dog,” gives an unique look into a dog’s mind after death. The speaker is the dog, and he is able to reflect on his feelings towards the poet after his” death. The dog goes through emotional changes during his time of pondering, however, he comes to the conclusion of what he truly yearns for since his death. What he yearns for is what any dog looks for, but some pass before they get a chance to achieve it. Throughout his pondering, the dog uses several tones and imagery to express his hurt and longing for love from the poet after his death.
The dog’s choices of words create a depressing tone in the poem. The dog describes the terrible moments before and after his death with vivid language. He uses the words “shrieking” and “whistling dirges” to describe his painful cries which adds on to the sadness in the beginning of the poem (Stern lines 6-7). Shrieking is usually applied to someone who is in pain or afraid while dirges refers to funeral songs or someone in mourning. The dog is mourning for his own life and the suddenness of his death. With these choices of words, the tone darkens. For the lover of dead things, the dog describes the poet looking terrified by stating, “ I think his pencil must be jerking and the terror of smell- and- sight- is overtaking him” (l. 15-16). Jerking is a strong verb for shaking violently and with “terror” added in the statement, the tone comes close to fear. The dog’s tone changes
Dogs have always played an important role in most American families. There has always been a saying “a dog is a man's best friend.” Through the poem you are able to look out into the world through a dog's perspective. In the poem “Golden Retrievals” by Mark Doty, the author uses informal diction, concrete diction, and repeated structure to show the dogs loving view of the world.
Due to the fact that the narrator could not actually know what the piano player is thinking, the reader can say that the narrator is actually describing his own actions after hearing the musician sing. Based on the lack of emotion given from the narrator and the blending of the narrator and the musician’s actions at the end of the poem, the speaker, has a common voice with the piano player, both of whom are
In stanza four the pronoun “you” is introduce. We assume its Collin prior relationship, as its only stanza that doesn’t contains Collin pet analogy and first evidence contributing to the theme. The metaphor shift to abstract when Collin deny her worthiness and what she meant to his life. But, as he subtracted himself to the “combination”, he was able to discover her value rather measuring his spouse love and intimacy. Repetitions occur, such as “awkward and bewildering” to represent the time when his spouse was companion to him, but he couldn’t reciprocate those same nurturing feelings back to her. In addition, his spouse “held” him more than he ever did. He regrets it now when he is holding his dog but the dog is incapable to measure that same actions and words because of law of nature. The last stanza line, “..now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhood.”, is another metaphor reference the way a lost dog might feel to his lost love that can’t ever be the same
To begin, the speaker of the poem “Thou famished grave” presents a resentful and aggressive attitude towards death. The poem, addressed to a “ famished grave” (1), personifies a grave as a starving beast that can “roar” (2), “gnaw” (3), and has “dismal jaws” (7). This represents death in a negative way because the description of the beast make it seem unpleasant and to be feared. Furthermore, the poem includes words and phrases when addressing the grave that follow the theme of starvation, such as, “famished grave” (1), “Gnaw thine own sides, fast on” (3), and “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey” which emphasizes that the beast of death is starving to take someone’s life. This animal-like aggressiveness adds to the already negative image of the beast. This imagery also shows how the speakers thinks of death since it comes from her words which shows that she sees death in a very negative way. Due to this, the speaker is angry and does not want to give death what it wants, which is to take someone’s life. Additionally, although death is something normally feared, the speaker shows that she is not fearful by saying “I have no fear / of thy dark project” (3-4) when speaking to the grave. She expresses that she does not want to die and her “heart is set / On living” (4-5), which explains her resentfulness towards death. She also understands that death is inevitable as she says, “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey / And thou shalt have me; but I dare defend / That I can stave thee off” (6-8). This shows that even though she knows that she will one day die, she still doesn’t want to give death what it wants and will fight as long as she can
While reading Dr. Bruce Perry’s The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, I found the case of Peter to be the most interesting. At the age of three Peter was rescued from the inhumane conditions of a Russian “baby warehouse” in which one caretaker was responsible for the wellbeing of thirty wailing newborns (Perry and Szalavitz 218). This less than ideal solution for the issue of finding appropriate childcare left Peter and hundreds of other infants deprived of human interaction. During such a crucial period of brain development, this lack of attention had serious repercussions. Luckily, Peter was adopted by extremely devoted American parents who would help pave
The speaker uses words such as “louring” (line 2), “deep deceit” (line 8), “grievous” (line 11) and “bale” (line 140. All of these words have sorrowful and despairing meanings to them which gives the whole poem an unhappy tone. The third and fourth lines discus that the speaker cannot even look at the beautiful face, which appears to grow more attractive daily, of the woman he loves. Moreover, the couplet tells the readers that the sorrow in the speaker’s eyes is there because of the pain he has felt due to his faulty relationship. The mouse that “lies aloof for fear of more mishap” (line 7) shows the misery felt by the speaker by using the words “aloof” and “mishap”. “Aloof” means to be stand-offish or reserved, which the speaker is because if he gets too close, he will be hurt again. “Mishap” means disaster or unfortune which altogether sounds miserable. Had the speaker used diction that was lighter or less depressed, the reader truly would not understand the misery the speaker has went through. The miserable diction depicts the deep wounds the speaker received from his love, shedding light to how much he really loved her and how bad she really hurt
I have never considered that a book about a dog could be so appealing and full of deep thoughts. But I changed my viewpoint after reading the autobiographical novel “Marley & Me” written by John Grogan which depicts an astonishing story about the neurotic and loyal, clumsy and loving dog named Marley. In fact, as the author mentioned in some interviews, he intended to write the “dog story”, but soon after he realized that it was impossible to do so without including the family life [2]. That is why the title “Marley & Me” encapsulates the main topic of the book such as the relationship between a human and a pet. To start with let me introduce main characters: John, Jenny, and Marley.
experiences a realization about life when there is an incident with a dog. The narrator then expresses his
The term epiphany is pretty common in literary terms, and most often means a moment of realization or self discovery. In a story, it’s when a character discovers an awareness or knowledge that really changes their views on life. They start to “see a new light” as some would say. In the story of “The Lady with the Dog,” there are four parts, and each of the four parts of the story involves an epiphany of some sort, one way or another.
In this book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time, Mark Haddon writes about Christopher John Francis Boone who is an autistic child. Throughout this story Christopher attempts to solve a murder case of his neighbor’s poodle. Christopher wakes up one day at seven minutes past midnight, and he notices the next-door neighbor’s dog laying on the ground. So he decides to go over and check out what happened, soon he found a garden fork sticking out of a dog named Wellington. Since Christopher likes murder mystery novels, he decided to write his own murder mystery novel starting with finding out what happened to Wellington. Throughout his attempt in solving the mystery of the
In the poem “Eating Poetry” the speaker has different commonalities that show with his odd behavior. The commonalities of the speaker’s odd behavior that I notice is that the speaker is acting as if it is a dog. His odd behaviors show different characteristics of a dog such as, “I
Dog’s Death by John Updike really touched me when I read it for the first time. His use of imagery in this poem is very touching. He makes the reader relate to the death of the dog by showing through his words the emotions of what the dog is going through as well as what his owners are feeling. This paper will show how I think the author was trying to use imagery to show the love between the dog and his owners.
Roald Dahl is well known as a children's author that wrote whimsical stories and created amazing fictional worlds. Some people may never think about the fact that before writing many of his great pieces, Roald Dahl actually wrote many short stories that were influenced by his traumatic and intriguing childhood; most of these stories were not as child-friendly as one might imagine. One of the most prominent examples would be in his story “Beware of the Dog”. In this story, there is a man that is in the air force who is fighting in World War 2 and lost a leg in a plane crash, due to being shot down. In the short story, “He throttled back, pulled off his helmet, undid his straps, and pushed the stick hard over to the left. The Spitfire
John Updike's "A Dog's Death" is a heart-wrenching poem in which a narrator remembers a puppy that he and his family rescued. In the poem, the puppy tragically dies due to unseen injuries that it had. In the poem, Updike illustrates how the puppy fought to live and did not give up despite the many obstacles that she faced. Through the use of imagery, Updike is able to describe the brief moments that the family had with the puppy and demonstrate how quickly circumstances changed for his family and the puppy.
My personal reactions to the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, were positive and enlightening. I would describe my reactions as enlightening because the content was written in a different perspective than I originally expected. This book is a small memoir of the author’s growth and development as a psychiatrist working with children suffering from severe trauma. It is rare to find a book so informative and practical and yet inspiring to read; I’m glad this was a required piece for this course.