"Requiem’s” existence as an Epitaphic fiction, a contrast to life What do you think of when one brings up Robert Louis Stevenson? Perhaps his great works, Treasure Island or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe his successful and adventurous life, full of travel and fame (Editors). What one may not think of is the areas of his life that were wrought with disease, struggle and homesickness. Stevenson’s life was full of adventure, but much of it was as a result of him attempting to escape his tubercular existence (Bosch). The themes presented in Robert Louis Stevenson’s lesser known poem, "Requiem, contains what is known as an Epitaphic fiction, a testament of one’s life which contrasts the way in which it was actually lived, a wish of how it should have gone, so to speak. Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem "Requiem displays the writer’s wishes to escape from his constant illness and wish return home, in the form of an Epitaphic fiction, an Epitaph contrary to how reality treated its recipient.
To begin, Robert Louis Stevenson was born into a middle class family in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850. He was the middle child of the family who gained most of his attention through his frequent illness (“Robert”). During the 1800s, a typical means to cure illness was travel, the Stevenson family attempted to cure roberts sickness by traveling Europe (“Timeline”). These European adventures by the Stevensons led them to many iconic European cities, from Naples to Genoa and from Rome to Innsbruck.
The deceased are often remembered in either the best of themselves or the worst. Family and friends usually look back and reminisce on the most striking qualities held by their lost loved ones. Death is a shocking and confusing period for those affected by it and the whirlwind of emotions, such as the various stages of grief, catch many by surprise. Born in 1908, Theodore Roethke was an American poet who was deemed one of the most proficient and leading poets of his generation. In his poem, “Elegy for Jane”, Roethke uses a variety of poetic devices to express the different themes of love, happiness, and grief. His use of imagery, symbolism, persona, tone and word choice, contribute to the deeper meaning of the poem, assisting in the expression of the speaker’s feelings for Jane and of how, Jane, herself felt.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Scotland. He was a 19th century writer notable for novels such as Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson uses imagery, diction, and details to create an ominous mood.
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too
As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.
Peter King’s comment on Phillip Larkin’s novel is reasonable because Larkin’s main themes are about death and failure. It is possible to outline both sides of the argument and Larkin’s use of imagery and characterisation supports this.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born into an upper middle class family that never had an issue of money. Stevenson was a sickly child, but this was no problem because the family was able to
Bryan Stevenson was born on November 14, 1959 in Milton, Delaware. His father, Howard Carlton Stevenson, Sr., had grown up in Milton, Delaware as well. His father left the area as a teen because there had been no colored high school nearby (Stevenson, 2014). He later returned with Bryan’s mother, Alice Gertrude Stevenson. Both parents would commute to the northern part of the state for work. His dad worked at a General Foods processing plant as a lab technician. His mother had a civilian job at an Air Force bar, she was a bookkeeper at Dover Air Force Base and became an equal opportunity officer. Stevenson has two siblings: an older brother Howard, Jr. and a sister Christy. As a child, Stevenson dealt with segregation and its legacy. He spent
In Robert Pack’s poem “To an Empty Page”, the narrator is uncertain about what comes with death. He worries about his future and what may happen to him. As he asks questions into the emptiness, he finds answers in the echoes of his voice. Robert Pack uses literary devices such as rhetorical questions, selection of detail, metaphors, and juxtaposition to construct the meaning of his poem.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. Throughout his childhood he was told morbid tales from the Bible, as well as Victorian penny-serial novels that he would carry with him throughout his years and what would place the greatest impact on his writing.[1] In 1886, he published a novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, based on a man with pure intentions, who ends up turning himself into a viscous murderer. Dr. Henry Jekyll is a well-known doctor and respected man, known for doing numerous acts of kindness and work for charities. However, since he was a young boy, he secretly engaged in wrongful behavior, and from then on, was determined to experiment and find a way to separate
Her main wish is that he would come to her once again. In this poem, there are details explaining love in an all rounded manner. She begins with the beauty of their relationship and the romance by mentioning the stars. She provokes the mind with the thought of passionate kisses and utilizes repetition to show the depth of her thought. The second power, however, the idea is the same, heartbreak but in a different manner. In any case, the poem "Funeral in My Brain" requires a greater sense of poetic expression. It is a portrayal of brokenness to the point of no return. In this poem, reader understands that there is heartbreak but fathoms not the situation before the break up. The poet does not explain entirely whether the relationship was romantic and full of love. She does not help the reader paint a clear picture in his or her mind. It is not to say that she does not entirely aid imagination, for she uses a style different from her
Stevenson had always been a very creative child. After the incident with Claudius, he continued to live in the Overworld. Knowing that Claudius would one day rise again, he created an army of humans. They were not like his and Sabastian previous creation that wandered aimlessly about their villages; the human had conscious thought. It talked and acted just himself and his brothers. They wandered for some time before one person in his group asked to be relieved of duty to explore the land on his own. Stevenson tossed and turned all night thinking about it and when he awoke the next day, he devised a solution.
How Robert Louis Stevenson's imagination came to be is what could possibly be every child's nightmare today. When Stevenson was young, his "…frequent ill-health enforced prolonged periods of physical inactivity but stimulated his imagination in stories of fantasy and adventure," (Panesar, "Stevenson, Robert Louis"). It would be no surprise then, that Stevenson would grow up to be one of the most innovative author's of his time. From creating works of fiction for children, to more horrific and weirder ones for adults, his works are critically acclaimed for their perspective on issues in the Victorian era and his ideas to overcome them.
Robert Frost is an iconic poet in American literature today, and is seen as one of the most well known, popular, or respected twentieth century American poets. In his lifetime, Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and the Congressional Gold Medal. However, Robert Frost’s life was not always full of fame and wealth; he had a very difficult life from the very beginning. At age 11, his father died of tuberculosis; fifteen years later, his mother died of cancer. Frost committed his younger sister to a mental hospital, and many years later, committed his own daughter to a mental hospital as well. Both Robert and his wife Elinor suffered from depression throughout their lives, but considering the premature deaths of three of their children and the suicide of another, both maintained sanity very well. (1)
Many of Robert Frost’s poems and short stories are a reflection of his personal life and events. Frost’s short story “Home Burial” emulates his experience living on a farm and the death of two of his sons. Frost gives an intimate view into the life and mind of a married couples’ struggle with grief and the strain it causes to their marriage. The characters Frost describes are synonymous, physically and emotionally, to his own life events.