Burial Rites Poem Analysis

Amidst the journey of the last woman executed in Iceland is the ‘nature [that] is watchful of all of us.’ Kent parallels the protagonist Agnes’ story alongside the force of the harsh Icelandic climate and country that ‘is as awake as you and I’ and often determines key events in the novel. The ominous foreshadowing of death represented in elements of the landscape highlights how the country is an essential aspect of the novel, often adding to the dramatic effect. Agnes’ road to spiritual redemption, both religion based and personal, is greatly influenced by the natural occurrences of the country. Ultimately, the harsh Icelandic conditions impact the lives

by using imagery and other literary devices to appeal to the reader. This poem was created to help society realize that there is a much needed change with young men who lives are constantly ending due to gang violence. The poem focuses on an undertaker who specializes in recreating the natural state of dead bodies, ones that have been mutilated. The undertaker specializes in this recreation for a specific group of young men, “gang members”.

The text Burial Rites written by Hannah Kent focuses on the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland, her punishment for playing part in the murder of two men. She is sent to wait out her days on the farm of a district officer, Jón Jónsson with his two daughters and wife. Naturally, the family are horrified to have a convicted murderer in their midst. Borne from this, the family refuse to talk to her. A young man, Toti is appointed as her spiritual guardian in the last days of her life, throughout the text, he attempts to redeem her soul by asking her to recount her life.

Burial Rites is a novel based on a true story by Hannah Kent, which provides a voice to Agnes Magnusdottir, a convicted criminal who was executed for a crime she may or may not have committed. Kent conveys the historical genre through the novel and utilises setting in order to engage readers by including modes of communication, transport and the way of life in the 1800’s that are not commonly used anymore. Throughout the novel, Kent optimises dialogue through the use of old terms and utilising old court documents which place readers in the 1800’s, engaging them in a historical event that has been silenced.

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

Her story of being “bundled along from farm to farm” evokes sympathy in not just the characters in the play but also the readers of the novel. According to Kent Agnes had been at many farms throughout her life either as a foster child “left to the mercy of the paupers” or as a work maid in the house. We as the readers are positioned to feel sympathy for Agnes being moved from house to house allowing no stability in what was her very short childhood. The audience is positioned to feel a sense of outrage as Agnes is left by her mother when she was five with nothing more than a stone to “talk to the birds”. Agnes conveys to Toti that the only happy memories of her childhood was where she found a “better family” at Kornsa which is ironically where she is sent to spend her final months before her execution. The fact that Agnes “no longer loved” her biological family was symbolic of her moving past her childhood toward adulthood at a very early age. As Agnes reflects on her past she notes how she is “quite alone” which evokes sympathy in the reader who feels that she “doesn’t have a friend in the world”. Agnes tells of the traumatic ordeal she went through in losing her foster mother Inga during childbirth. After this Agnes was then fostered out again and put on her journey hopping from farm to farm. It is this unstable and very brief childhood that allows

This essay will explore the function of the narrative which helps the readers to perceive the meaning of the narrative. It will do so in terms of the point of view, narrative voice as well as the structure of the narrative. Furthermore, the setting of the story will be another focus which exploits the generic convention which reflects the social anxiety behind the story at the time. I

Poverty and hardship are shown to create vulnerability in female characters, particularly the female servants, allowing powerful men to manipulate and sexually abuse them. Kent illustrates how poverty perpetuates maltreatment and abuse in a society like Burial Rites using the characters of Agnes’ mother Ingveldur and Agnes. Agnes’ mother is forced to make invidious choices as her children are “lugged along” from farm to farm, where she is sexually exploited by her employers. In spite of these circumstances, Agnes’ mother is commonly referred to as a whore in their society which abhors female promiscuity yet disregards male promiscuity as a harmless character trait; as in the case of Natan, who is merely “indiscreet” despite all his philandering. Born into poverty, Agnes experiences similar sexual coercion and manipulation from her “masters” and yet is labelled “a woman who is loose with her emotions and looser with her morals”. The severe poverty of Agnes is explicitly demonstrated to the reader by Kent through the intertextual reference of her entire belongings - a very dismal, piteous list to be “sold if a decent offer is presented”. Furthermore, Kent contrasts the situation of Agnes, a “landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty”, to the comparative security Steina has experienced using a rhetorical question from

On the story, she commented, “Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I supposed that by setting a particular brutal ancient rite in the present and in my village the story’s readers with a dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”

‘The Grave’ by Katherine Anne Porter is a story that illustrates the initiation of a child from innocence to experience. The underlying theme behind the central idea of innocence to experience is the cycle of life and death and rebirth. This theme is illustrated in the young protagonist, Miranda, and her epiphany on the concept of the cycle of life and rebirth. The dominant tone in ‘The Grave’ is melancholic, and that tone is created through the language elements of symbolism, diction, and imagery. The story’s tone is also supported by the fiction element character.

Funerals help us understand to a greater extent what these women do on a daily basis. As the center of the domus they exert an enormous amount of effort keeping the house in running order, but they cannot always keep it together. Woman are “assigned the task of keening a biography of the deceased,” illustrating the enormous amount of detail they knew about each person. Whilst the men are at the back, this is the moment women take center-stage. This moment characterized the fact that women brought the deceased into the world, shaped them into the person they were, and sending them off to the afterlife. This is a major role reversal that showed how fragile the balance necessary to keep a working household. In addition, the women were expected to speak about how the deceased fit into the domus and illustrate how good people lived within.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

The short stories, “Turned”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Good Corn”, by H.E Bates provide strong examples of how the representation of characters influence’s the reader’s perception of a text. Both stories depict similar characters: a middle-aged, childless wife, her husband and an 18-year old girl who works for them. They are both about a similar situation: man cheats on wife with girl and girl falls pregnant. However, the author’s of the text are from very different backgrounds and this is reflected in their stories. Although there are many similarities between “The Good Corn” and “Turned”, the values reflected in these stories, their resolutions and the reader’s perception of them are vastly different due to the contexts of

Abraham Lincoln said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Often times in our society young people push off responsibilities, it's easy to do. Technology and other innovations have made it convenient for us to become distracted and to push things off. However when growing up, sometimes taking responsibility cannot be avoided. In coming of age stories, the author uses symbolism to exemplify how the protagonists experience new independence and responsibility while they transition from childhood to adulthood.

The power of the story has been very much a part of the lives of humans throughout time. The story is able to bring the past to the present and the dead to the living. The story can make the blind see. The story is able to make others feel for events in time that they have never experienced. The story has a profound effect on both the teller and the audience. As the audience is thought to be the beneficiary or the storytelling process, the teller is able to relive the times of old, or even teach a valuable lesson to his or her audience. Thus, allowing both parties to gain something intangible throughout this process. In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien conveys the importance of storytelling and imagination by suggesting that the dead can be brought back to life in the minds of the people who hear it.