During their adolescent lives, teenagers can face a multitude of problems and struggles. Poetry is used by some youth to reflect on issues such as divorce, sexuality and parental expectations. It is also easy to express emotion through poetry, which makes it a useful creative outlet for teenagers coping with their issues. It is not difficult to relate to these poems, as they all focus on common problems that teenagers go through on a daily basis. Three pieces of poetry that are used to discuss these issues are "Beyond Pastel," "I Perform All My Duties", and "Warren Pryor."
The first poem is called "Beyond Pastel," by Katherine Lawrence. The main conflict of this poem is a divorce between two parents and the internal struggle of their
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In this poem, the struggle that the teenager is facing is coping with his homosexuality. He believes that no one would accept him if he were to be true to himself, so he hides it. He does not want to disappoint his peers, or to be bullied, so he keeps it a secret for his whole life. The author of this piece expertly uses repetition of the phrase "I'm a perfect little," and the word "must." Throughout the author's life, he acts as if he were a robot, obeying every command and wish. He wants to be a perfect, well-behaved child so that his parents are not unhappy with him, and feels that his homosexuality is equivalent to letting his parents down. He says, "must be careful of how I act. There can't be any gay stereotypes." This line shows us that he is extremely considerate of how he portrays himself to the point of having to watch how he acts. A few lines later, he says "mustn't show any sign of falling apart," and a break in the repetition of 'must' makes it evident that he is having a very tough time internally, and that he really is falling apart. In the end, he marries a woman, has children, and has a family, but it is clear it is not what he …show more content…
His parents worked and endured much toil to send him off to an expensive school for him to graduate and get a job. It is said that they were "slaving to free him from the stony fields, the meager acreage that bore them down," which implied that their land may not have been taking in very much money for the family. At that point, it would seem as though anyone would want to get away from the farm and go to work at a much nicer job. Eventually, Warren Pryor did graduate, and as he picked up his diploma - a "passport from the years of brutal toil" - his parents were content and proud. The author used the metaphor comparing the diploma to a passport to show just how relieving it would be for anyone to finally be able to leave the old farmland. When Warren's parents came to visit him at his new job as a bank teller, they were clearly amazed. They believed that they had saved his life, and had "saved him from their thistle-strewn farm and it's red dirt." But the mood of this poem changes from cheerful and positive to gloomy when it's said that Warren is "hard and serious, like a young bear in it's teller's cage." He feels out of place in his job, and that it isn't the place for him. He had done what his parents wanted for him, so that he could make them proud, but he did not speak up about how he
Equally essential as the narrative in poetic writing is the overall effect of language structure and description. Although there is no distinct rhythm or rhyme to this poem, it is through language and structure that the text is made inviting. In the blank verse, “Why are you still seventeen.../ dragging a shadow you’ve found?” (1), this metaphor for a borrowed lifestyle facilitates a feeling of lost identity and nostalgia for the past. By incorporating such language, and by choosing a self-proclaimed rhetorical question, the speaker adds to the effect of personal obscurity. An immense component of the entire poem are the combined stanzas: “that's not the road you want,/ though you have it to yourself.” This emulates the feeling of regret. In continuation of the metaphorical self-evaluation of the poem, it supports the idea
“Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past” written by Tyron Edwards. Sometimes changing your behavior is the only way to make up for a past, because you learn what are right actions, and what are wrong actions.
In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.
The book in Contempt was written by Paul Hawken. Paul Hawken is a famous environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author on the subject of corporate sustainability. In his book, Paul Hawken charges business and industry as, one, the major culprit in causing the deterioration of the biosphere, and, two, the only institution that is large, pervasive and powerful enough, to really lead humankind out of this situation. The book focus on the total of damage to the ecosystem and the risks that it poses for mankind. Environmental risks comes from in the extinction of many different species, and many species have already become extinct due to human. All and every species is a part of the ecosystem and each species play a role in the global system. When
Two distinct points of views can be seen in this poem, one is that of the father and then the son. The father's point of view is more common and used more than that of the son but both displays and add to the complexity of their relationship. From the father’s point of view, he shows his concern for disappointing his son by not coming up with great stories and losing his son as five years old matures which increases his anxiety as he sees the future approaching. The father fears of a fallout in the relationship with his son “...he thinks the boy will give up on his father”(9). The sons point of view
In today's society, you are judged by the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the car you drive, and other materialistic items. Regardless of whether you are a adult or a child, envying those with more is human nature. A less fortunate person will always feel inferior to those with more because they feel they are being judged. Rick Bragg, having to earn his way into the middle class, envied those who were born into rich families. He then soon realized it was an achievement on his part by having to work for what he now has: justification.
The poem “Between the World and Me” by Richard Wright reanimates the horrible scene of a racial lynching and forces the reader to endure the victim's pain through the first person’s narrative voice. The poem contains structured lines and visual division into three stanzas. Moreover, there is one more type of division in the poem. The author uses an ellipsis four times throughout the poem. This punctuation mark frames the poem into the timeline, where the historical past of the African American poet becomes the present experience of any human, despite the race. The climax of the poem is presented in the middle of stanza two. The animated moment, which starts from the sentence “the ground gripped my feet”, dramatically shifts the
In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank
The young man in the poem loses his identity as he develops into the ruthless world of adulthood with its dehumanizing competition of ‘money-hungry, back-stabbing’ and ‘so-and-so.’ These exaggerated words and clichés
The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both
I am going to argue why lying is immoral no matter who you might be lying to, friends, family, and even someone you do not know. This is immoral because even though lying to someone may bring relief or happiness it’s still hiding the truth from that person. Hiding something they deserve to know even though it may hurt them may also be a form of lying. There are many situations where lying may end friendships, relationships, or even tare families apart because most people want to know the truth no matter how harsh, because eventually the truth may come out. In addition to hiding information, there are also other forms of lying. Telling someone false information as well as withholding information are forms of lying. The worst part about telling a lie is that the more you do it the more comfortable one may become. Lying becomes a habit to many people, a habit they have a hard time breaking. Lying can simply be defined in one word, deception.
Throughout the poem, the speaker uses specific details that show the conflict between the speaker’s son and his parents. In the first stanza, the speaker recalls exchanges of dialogue between the speaker and his or her son. For example, the speaker’s son exclaims, “I did the problem / and my teacher said I was right!” (Nye 3-4). The child validated his teacher’s opinion but ridiculed his parents’ opinion. This is further explained through more details in a later part of the same stanza. The mother explains how the son believed his parents were “idiots / without worksheets to back us up” (Nye 9-10). The speaker’s son had entrusted his teacher and thought of his teacher as highly intelligent, but believed that way because of foolish reasoning. In addition, the speaker lists examples of minor mistakes the parents made that caused the son to be embarrassed of them. Through distinct details, the speaker describes how the son’s “mother never remembers / what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once / and smashed his head on the drinks cart” (Nye 10-12). By choosing to include these particular details, the poet outlines the foundation of the conflict between the son and his parents.
A child’s future is usually determined by how their parent’s raise them. Their characteristics reflect how life at home was like, if it had an impeccable effect or destroyed the child’s entire outlook on life. Usually, authors of any type of literature use their experiences in life to help inspire their writing and develop emotion to their works. Poetry is a type of literary work in which there is an intensity given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinct styles and rhythm. These distinct styles include different types of poems such as sonnets, villanelles, free verse, imagist poems, and many more. And these distinct styles are accentuated with the use of literary devices such as metaphors, similes, imagery, personification, rhyme, meter, and more. As a whole, a poem depicts emotions the author and reader’s can relate to. In the poem’s “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, and “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, we read about two different parent and child relationships. These two poems help portray the flaws and strength’s parents exhibit and how their children follow their actions and use it as a take away in their grown up lives.
The sense throughout the entire poem is that the speaker is nervous about embarking on a new journey in their life. Something encapsulated perfectly when the speaker says “this is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself” (24). The irony here is that many children dream of becoming older from the time they can talk. Hell, maybe even before that. They see a distorted view of freedom in adulthood and oppression in childhood. This speaker’s view of blossoming out of childhood, however, is bleak and contrast with what most children want. Maybe the speaker is scared of getting closer to going to high school, having to leave certain things or people behind or, maybe they just fear change in general. The poem does not hand the correct interpretation to the reader and leaves it up for interpretation, something that makes the poem more powerful by allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions as to why the speaker is apprehensive about reaching their new milestone. Thus rings the bell, calling for a pause of reading and the start of thinking. This openness leaves different readers with different backgrounds, different experiences and different personalities to all read differently into what the speaker fears about growing up. A reader who grew up affluent may attribute this concern as a normal progression of feelings which starts as fear but grows into excitement due to having new experiences to enjoy. A reader who grew up poor may think the speaker realizes they will have to make tough decisions to survive and that the best years of their life are behind them. This openness of having different people read differently into the speaker’s irony is why a thirty-two-line poem leads to an infinite amount of interpretations. As well as being used for humour, irony is also used to highlight certain expectations of growing
Memories can last a life time, so we tend to only remember the extraordinary ones. Extraordinary like the essay “The Yellow Ribbon” by Pete Hamill, in which he talks about how a person named Vingo, was riding on a, bus recently released from jail, to this oak tree explaining to some passengers that he had told his wife to leave him if she wanted, since he went to jail or to go to this oak tree and tie a yellow ribbon around it to see if she wants him to stick around and he will go and check it out. In the end, he saw hundreds of ribbons tied on to the tree. Not only is this an amazing story, but also very unforgettable one as well, because he finds out that after four years in jail his wife has enough love for him to go to this tree and tie hundreds of ribbons just to show the type of love the women had for Vingo. I have to say that, I believe this story is truly unforgettable, but I also got a story that is very extraordinary, like the time that I got my very first car. Furthermore, I didn’t just get a car, I got the love of two truly loving parents.