Significant discoveries often challenge an individual’s perceptions and ideas. This fosters a unique lens of perspective which can lead to renewed and intensely meaningful understandings of ourselves and the world around us. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s bildungsroman memoir ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ (1995) details his travels through impoverished Latin America with comrade Alberto Granado, which subsequently altered his perspective of the lower class proletariat. In the process accentuating that the catalyst for ideological discoveries, is the exposure to different contexts. Likewise, in pondering upon his childhood tendency to wander from home, the protagonist in Philip Nikolayev’s retrospective poem ‘Tendency Toward Vagrancy’(2006) uncovers emotional …show more content…
At the ‘local flea market, which was not at all safe to do’ the boys discover a man selling guns. This surprising experience morphs a jovial trip into a dangerous encounter. The shift in tone in the poem metamorphic of the poet’s growing knowledge of his isolation within a society and home of poverty; ‘no bathroom or running water’, violence ‘she will scold me later’ and in which there is no place for his harmless childhood ‘tendency to wander’. This surprising and transformative understanding is heightened in the repetition of his ‘crying mother set against the sunset. The symbolic close-of-day, reveling with regrets, acts as a reminder of the child’s captivity for the adult speaker. The final stanza unmistakably portrays the speaker’s emotional discoveries as he acknowledges to not understanding ‘back then’ and ‘how alienated one can be from the the greatest paradox of all, a happy Soviet Childhood’. The reflective tone accentuates that through the process of reflection an individual can obtain a fresh and renewed perception of the world. This consequently leads to emotional discoveries in a more mature perspective of his behaviour as a child, in coming to terms that his ‘tendency toward vagrancy’ was ‘not simply a diagnosis of otherness’ or cultivated by ‘Soviet psychiatrists’, but stemmed in the ‘alienation’ he experienced in his impoverished childhood, highlighting how through reflecting on past experiences serendipitous discoveries may be
This project’s purpose is to record a people who have lived through the promises and outcomes of the Bolivarian Revolution, an idea that captured Venezuela’s spirit and spread across 16 Latin America nations as the Pink Tide. The poor and working class will be a fundamental component of this story as I investigate the role the revolution has played in shaping the lives of this perpetually overlooked group of people. Simultaneously, the nature of these issues will create a portal into the world of Venezuelan heritage, traditions, and political and civic culture. What I write will be the reality of the situation; the interpretation will be left up to the reader.
Concisely, child abuse in the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” is clear through the provided context clues such as setting, emotions and word choice. By the end of the poem, readers get a family portrait with a drunken father, angry mother, and abused child (Janssen 43). The construction of the poem allows the reader to get a better understanding of the poem by the end. The poem also permits the readers to get an insight at child abuse and how it
In their lives a distant and cold character exists. When the war began in Sarajevo the men on the hills cut off the city’s water. Kenan’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Ristovski thrusted her plastic bottles towards him when he opened the door and all she said was “A promise is a promise.” and left him standing at the doorway. Even before the war Mrs. Ristovski had always acted abrasively; knocking on their door early in the morning and complaining about their first born’s crying. Not once has she shown
He portrays scientific research as dangerous by declaring that a “single step can also take one of a cliff.” This further emphasizes the courage prerequisite to scientists and hearkens back to the fear of the unknown. The fact that all of one’s work may be dashed into pieces by a single finding in the laboratory conveys the tenacity of researchers. Barry’s description of the process by which a scientist decides which “tools” are appropriate to the task at hand, exemplifies the tedious and often inglorious labor involved in most scientific research. Barry finally predicts that if a scientist is successful a “flood” of colleagues and others will “pave roads” over the paths so painstakingly laid, taking one within minutes to the very place the scientist spent so long searching for. This suggests that in the wake of major discovery, the actual pioneer of this breakthrough may be forgotten. Countless researchers have made valuable contributions to the human understanding of the world, and faded into obscurity over the course of the history of science. Barry’s conceit conveys the fact that, like exploring uncharted wilderness, scientific research can be both treacherous and thankless, but all the more noble for
The use of simile in the last stanza ‘matchstick hands as pale as the violet stems they lived among’ is used to compare a frog to violet flowers, which are very delicate and easily broken. The innocence of childhood is painted through this visual technique as the narrator only sees the frogs being very delicate, but to the readers the simile also creates a vivid image of the condition of the ‘Frogs’/ the French. The use of first person helps to create a reminiscent tone about the narrator’s experiences, and further helps to stress the ideas of childhood innocence and the influence of war on children because the poem is written from a child’s perspective. The use of enjambment generates a conversational and personal tone, emphasizing to the readers the reality of the themes discussed throughout the poem. The use of symbolism of frogs as pets and also representing the French highlights the idea that adults saw ‘Frogs’ as insignificant or unworthy to speak about, whereas the children could not understand this adult thought, and they placed exemplary regard to the wellbeing of the
In the analysis of Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” and Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” both modernistic and highly respected poets similarly write with a sense of reminiscence of childhood experiences. Similarly, both poems are about a memory as a boy looking back at a specific time in their lives and the love they have for their respected fathers. A similar implication is expressed in the way of their lives not being perfect, but still remaining a humble family. This is shown within the first stanza of “My Papa’s Waltz” with an intoxicated father, as well as the first stanza of “Those Winter Sundays” with a hard-working, yet poor and achy father. Both poets’ usage of figurative language is present in ways of metaphorically speaking and alliteration. For example, in Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” the speaker compares the cold to an object that can splinter and break, by insinuating “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.” (Hayden, line 5) More so, in Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” the term “But I hung on like death” (Roethke, line 3) is presented as a metaphor as well. They have some common poetic themes shared between such as love, family, and admiration, however, they are presented in different ways in accordance their tones, making them unique. In analyzing the two, although quite similar, the structure, mechanics, tones, settings, and the interpreted mood of the poem, brings justification on their differences.
Ross Gay’s book Against Which, portrays his poetry to readers allowing them to gain understanding of the cruel world that one lives in. Moreover, the unusual brutalities that people are inevitable confronted with in life. The common denominators within Gay’s poems such as violence, love, fear, and loss allows the reader to visualize characters’ transformation within his poems. In a world of calamity, Gay has created poems that portray the corporal conforming to gender and sex but also human development. Using a reader-response criticism lens, I will be demonstrating my interpretation of Ross Gay’s poems and the meaning that I believe to be a common interpretation of his work. Within, Gay’s poems, “It Starts at Birth” and Angels Out of Reach” one is able to see a pattern of human transformation. By experiencing pain, love, loss, fear, and wisdom one is able to see Gay’s characters evolve through the narrators and readers gaze. In doing so, one is able to reflect on Gay’s poems and gain wisdom themselves.
The past is described as stunning, radiant, and eloquent in his memories. However, the present is dull, harsh, and lifeless. This use of lyrical syntax is another branch under deconstructive criticism, which illuminates the appeal of the world before the dilapidation of the normal society. Due to his yearning for a better life, or the life he once had, the dreams he experiences only cause him to seek death more. The only thing keeping him alive, of course, is his son.
An individual’s discovery is transformative on their perceptions of the world. This is the case for the book ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and Keats’s sonnet “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer”. In this book, we are taken on Che’s journey as he travels Latin America as a young man, before the fame. His diary entries lead the reader into his own eyes, as a typical young man on an adventure, not the revolutionary figure we all associate him with. Through his descriptive entries of the landscape he journeys across, we discover his deeper connection to the land of South America and the love he has for its people. As well as the beautiful things that South America has to
1984, by George Orwell, is a novel that is ultimately about a totalitarian form of government and it's negative aspects that it imposes on society. The readers clearly see that George Orwell opposes this form of government because it limits not only freedoms, but the idea of freedom itself. The idea of pure freedom is shattered as we see the protagonist's mission to overthrow Big Brother fail. Big Brother may have not even been real. However, the fear that this imaginery person/ organization imposed on society was real. Winston Smith, the protagonist, feels like the only person who sees what Big Brother is doing to society- watching thier every movements, limiting their freedoms, lying through the news, and distracting people from
The story of Ernesto Guevara, a child who was born to a well-to-do Argentine family who went on to become a medical doctor sounds like a success story. Ernesto Guevara probably isn’t a name many people recognize, add the word “Che” to the name—Ernesto “Che” Guevara—and many people recognize the name of a famed revolutionary of the 1960’s. Even now, forty-four years after his death, his name and image remain popular. To some Che Guevara is idolized as a man of the people, a freedom fighter for the downtrodden, who gave his life in the struggle to free peoples of the world to live in a “better” society; for others he was a ruthless killer who was willing to die to be a martyr for his cause. This paper will look at the life of Che Guevara and
In the October of 1951, 23-year-old medical student, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, and close friend and biochemist Alberto Granado, unanimously decided to embark on a journey via motorbike, that would take them on an adventure the entire span of South America, including Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Throughout this trip however, Ernesto and Alberto are confronted by the harsh reality of a land filled with injustice, suffering, and the oppression of its people. It is this confrontation of inequality, and Guevara’s own visceral experiences of hunger, cold, illness and fear that resonates throughout the text and contains insight into how young Ernesto became increasingly conscious of the contrasts between the extent of poverty in South America and his own privileged
Into this atmosphere of spiritual paralysis the boy bears, with blind hopes and romantic dreams, his encounter with first love. In the face of ugly, drab reality-"amid the curses of laborers," "jostled by drunken men and bargaining women"-he carries his aunt's parcels as she shops in the market place, imagining that he bears, not parcels, but a "chalice through a throng of foes." The "noises converged in a single sensation of life" and in a blending of Romantic and Christian symbols he transforms in his mind a perfectly ordinary girl into an enchanted princess: untouchable, promising, saintly. Setting in this scene depicts the harsh, dirty reality of life which the boy blindly ignores. The contrast between the real and the boy's dreams is ironically drawn and clearly foreshadows the boy's inability to keep the dream, to remain blind.
The concept of the malign nature of the tenement is developed throughout the first stanza with Crichton Smith exploring his own role in his mother 's confinement. He tells the reader that whilst he drove away, his mother would 'wave from the window. ' Again the poet successfully employs alliterative words to draw our attention - this time to the image of his frail mother still lovingly 'waving ' from her prison 'window '. This notion is supported by Crichton Smith comparing himself to
The poet depicts his physical as well as spiritual listlessness and discomfort, indicating his longing for solace and guidance and possibly his disappointment and dissatisfaction for the status quo. As he enters the store, the poet utters “[w]hat peaches and what penumbras!”(7). He express his irritation when eyeing “[w]hole family shopping at night” and “[a]isles full of husbands”(8). The term “neon” reveals the the nature of illusion of his experience in the supermarket. As he enters the store, the poet utters “[w]hat peaches and what penumbras!”(7).