Hills, elephants and life

“Hills like white elephants”, by Ernest Hemingway, goes around the conflict of abortion. But what are the relations between them? How the title is related to the pregnancy matter? We can see the presence of the ‘hills’ during the tale. The first statement talks about characteristics of the hills: “long and white”. When the girl makes the comparison she is like lost in her thoughts, as we see: “…the girl was looking of at the lines of hills”, and then she says: “they look like white elephants”. How can it be linked to her situation? She was pregnant but the baby was not in her boyfriend’s plans. He thought the arrival of the child would complicate their lives, just like a “white elephant”, so he doesn’t want it. He wants things to keep on going on the same way, as we can see when he says “…just like we were before”. She feels he doesn’t want the baby anyway, so she prefers to “dream” with the hills like white elephants than face the hard situation of accepting his rejection. Why elephants? Why hills? In many cultures elephant is seen as a symbol of fertility. After making the comparison the girl says: “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant […] through the trees” and “across, on the other side, were fields of grain…” In these two excerpts we can see an opposition between girl’s and man’s points of view. Hills bring the idea of a hard way, lacking of life, uninhabitable. On the other hand, field makes us remember productivity, happiness, life. The hills can be compared to the man’s thoughts, by thinking they were on the “dry side of the valley” with trees, but possibly not fruitful. But when the girl walked to the end of the station, she saw a productive field, full of life – completely related to her feelings about maternity, because she did want the child – different from the idea of white elephants she retrieved from the hills.

 

Adelia Ribeiro, Bleyne Catyelle.

Separated by the cycle of life

“The Voyage”, written by Katherine Mansfield (1921), has the theme of traveling as a change of life, but this change can’t be avoided. Our objective is to show that after her mother’s death, Fenella was obliged to leave her father forever and to travel with her grandmother to live with her grandparents.  Let’s start looking at this part: “‘Good-bye, Fenella. Be a good girl.’ Fenella’s father said. But Fenella caught hold of the lapels of his coat”. And she said: “How long am I going to stay?” and her father answered: “We’ll see about that”. So, Fenella didn’t have a choice, she was obliged to say goodbye to her father. We can see also that in “The Voyage” the point of view is the third person omniscient limited, so the first person point of view is disguised as a third person, because Fenella is the de facto narrator. As we can see in “… and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a white woolly shawl, was jerked along angrily between his father and mother; he looked like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream”. It’s clear that the description of the scene was made by a child.

         Alunos: Naraiza Almeida

            Maria Clara Melo

            Tâmara Cerqueira

            Carlos Henrrique

            Alysson Barbosa

DREAMS

Analysis of the poem “DREAM VARIATIONS”:

DREAMS

Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and columnist. In the poem “Dream Variation” he talks about the dream. What is a dream? It’s something that somebody wishes to fulfill. Like to fling the “arms wide in some place of the sun”, “to whirl and to dance” all day, and in the night to rest. That is a dream of somebody. A dream very easy to come, true because all the things there are in the nature are free. Example: the sun, the night, the tree.  The speaker of the poem “Dream Variations” in the first stanza  feels overwhelmed and has the desire to realize the dream of throwing their arms  somewhere in the sun, spinning and dancing, then rest under a tree, while the night comes gently falling dark like him or her. However, in the second stanza the speaker shows that it was a dream that has now become reality, he demonstrates that throwing his arms “in the faced the sun”, and orders to dance, spin, the day is now fast, the tree is thin and. Now the night comes tenderly and black like him. The dream is seen at first in the text as something impossible, distant, unreachable, but as it passes from day to night, it appears that everything changes, and it is possible to achieve it because everything in the universe can make it real.

By: Rosânia Santos de Souza

Cultural Context

Cultural context

Analysis of the poem ‘When In Rome’

 

This poem was first published in 1970, the author, Mary Evans (born in Toledo, Ohio) is an African-American poet with a tendency to write black poems. She was a membership of the African Heritage Studies Association and wrote some books of poetry, plays and poems, and the poem in question here is taught in many high schools and college English classes. “When in Rome” is a dialogue poem between a possible black servant. The objective here is to analyze this text, observing the idea o the cultural context present in it. To begin With, from different stanzas one can perceive easily the presence of some variety of foods which is show on some lines: “an egg or soup”, “there is sardine”, “there is endive there”. Nevertheless, all these sort of foods seems to be unfamiliar to Mattie, this unfamiliarity becomes more clear on lines twelve and thirteen of the poem: “Whew! If I had some black-eyed peas…”. So this call the attention to the fact that Mattie can be a African-American servant, due to some factors which are included in the culture. Later, the poem confirms this fact, considering the passage in the text which shows a linguistic variety besides certain kinds of foods that are not part of Mattie’s culture. Analyzing the structure of the poem, the culture is divided by left and right side within the dialogues, the first column show off formal English, while the second brings a more informal use of the language. The linguistic varieties in the poem that cross social, economic and cultural divergences turn more easy the extraction of a idea of disagreement between the two cultures. Altogether, it becomes clear that the cultural context in the poem contribute in a substantial way to reveal the/a meaning of the text, showing some evidences to the readers which facilitates them to understand the poem better.

 

 

Students:

Flávio Soares Bezerra

Linderval Alves

Maria Betânia Bento Silva

Quézia Raíssa

Rogério de Jesus Santana

Analysis about Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX

Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX is a reflection on mourning of his lost friend and it is also called duty sonnet, because it sucks up to someone. William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peek by the end of the 16th century. He was very criticized because his sonnets has a deep meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time. According to the Wikipedia website, the production of Shakespeare’s sonnets was in some way influenced by the Italian sonnet: “it was popularised by Dante and Petrarch and refined in Spain and France by DuBellay and Ronsard.” Regarding his sexuality, there are few details known. One of them is, despite he had been married with Anne Hathaway,  it is known that his sonnets are an evidence of his love for a guy. My objective here is to discuss about Shakespeare’s sonnet, taking into account the alliteration as a metaphor of continuation. To begin with, it is important to remember that alliteration is the repetition of the initial consonant sounds or the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed sylables, while metaphor is a figure of speech that constructs an analogy between two things that have something in common. By way of explanation, here is one example:

When to | the sess | ions of | sweet si | lent thought

I summ | on up | remem | brance of | things past…

This alliteration allows the reader to realize that there are a mix between the present and the past, because it constructs a continuation of the meaning with the continuous sounds /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /S/, the metaphor arise as a support for the interpretation. For this, observe the sonnet:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

The metaphor begins with the words “sessions” and is continuing through “summon up”, “precious”, “cancell’d”, “expense”, “tell o’er”, “account”, “pay” and “paid”, to  “losses are restor’d”. It probably refers to financial senses, because the sonnet plays with the speaker’s feelings as a non-paid account. Besides that, the words “lack”, “dear”, “waste”, “unused”, “dateless”, “foregone”, and “dear” again carry with themselves a secondary financial sense. Regarding to the poet’s sorrows, the words “sigh”,”old woes”, “new wail”, “drown an eye”, “unused to flow”, “weep afresh”, “moan”, “grieve at grievances”, “heavily”, “from woe to woe” “sad”, “fore-bemoaned moan”, and “sorrows” suggest the creation of another image. Although its elements are being metaphorical, it is not of our interest. The metaphor here is between the sighs and tears and the cancelling of debts and the spending money, according to some analysis. But the alliteration here occurs between “grieve at grievances” as a shape of continuation of the past in the present. On the one hand,  it provokes an idea of the financial sense, because its elements refer to it and, on the other hand, the idea here is a crystallization of the speaker’s sorrows, because those words point out to that too. But the more important than bringing to light these shapes of alliteration is to understand how they affect the sonnet meaning. The word “dateless”, for instance, suggests that the death has no end, because the death of friends is only a poetic subject or a negotiation between the statement of the sonnet and the metaphoric reference in the text. Conversely, both images are referring to the death or loss of friend. Nevertheless, the Sonnet XXX, reflects about the love between friends and what happening when one of them dies, using for this purpose some alliterations and metaphoric shapes to evidence that are a continuation of the past in the present and perhaps in the future.

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by José André Santos de Santana

The importance of lamb

“The Tyger” was published by William Blake in Songs of Experience (1794). It is considered one of Blake’s best known and most analyzed poems and I intend to analyze the importance of Jesus’ reference. When I read this sentence “Did he who made the lamb make thee?”, I associated the lamb to Jesus Christ because the Bible refers to Jesus as a Lamb of God who died for the sins of his people like other lambs which were sacrificed daily with the same purpose in that era. On the nineteenth line “Did he smile his work to see?”, the speaker confirms that the poem talks about Jesus because He felt satisfied to see his work and the twelfth and thirteenth lines give us more details about Jesus’ crucification : “What dread hand and what dread feet? / What the hammer? What the chain?”, but the poem also calls our attention for the predominant interrogative form, and we should provide answers. Why did Jesus suffer all those situations if He is the son of God? He can be considered God himself but he was on Earth as a human being so he felt each pain on the cross as on the eleventh line: “And, when thy heart began to beat”. So, almost all lines remind us of Jesus crucification with some important details of His life and His death.

By Vanessa Martins Ferreira

A Look Over The Tyger

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Published in Song of Experience (1794),  William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is

a short poem which shows a huge difference in the relationship between creator and creation. My objetive here is to explain what the poem means. To begin with, let us show what the poem suggests. The tyger is God because, in the first sight, the tyger seems to be God. The creation is present in the text when the poem shows us that is necessary to separate body and soul, evil and good. For instance, observe this stanza here: “ When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?”

It’s proper to observe that meaning of this statement can be only constructed socially. So, it’s possible to arise other interpretations for this passage, such as, the difference between heaven and hell, nature and humanity. Besides that, it’s most probably that the poem refers to the power in society, because the tyger has all characteristics that a political leader must to have, mainly if it takes into account the dictatorship period. But more important here is that the poem can only be well read if the reader observe the culture around the text and if it takes into account the author side in the text, this aspect is called text identity. Conversely, no one is able to read appropriately the poem, because the cultural symbols in the text nor even it is known by everyone. Nevertheless, Blake’s poem is an enigmatic text that criticizes its society, its religion and, why not, the sexuality aspects of mankind, because it uses meaningful adjectives and expressions, such as: burning bright, immortal hand or eye, fearful symmetry, distant deeps, thine eyes, dread hand and dread feet,  deadly terrors clasp, watered heaven.

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José André Santos de Santana

The Oneness

The poem “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” was written by William Wordsworth, an English Romantic poet, in 1800 and it was printed in Lyrical Ballads (a volume of Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems). It was the best known work of Wordsworth’s series of five works which talks about Lucy. The most interesting aspect about the poem appears when he talks about oneness. He makes the readers wonder what really means all those things that appear in the text.

The poem points out singularity as it makes us wonder why the idea of loneliness is spread all over the text. More than loneliness, uniqueness appears as a qualification to the lonely “objects” and they (objects) become part of Lucy’s story. An unknown and humble person who used to visit simple places and stare at simple spots and views. Till her simple death and ordinary burying, she had made no difference, now she makes difference to “me” (the speaker who is telling about her story).

“But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!”

– Radamés E. S. Soares

– Lucimeire da Silva Mendonça

The complexity of simplicity

“What looks simple is often the most difficult.”
(Conan Doyle)

Just to make us think about it!

“Richard Cory” is an apparently pretty simple short poem, written by Edwin Arlington Robinson and first published in 1897. In regard to the internal structure, we divided the poem into two main parts: lines 1-12 which illustrate the “deification” those people built, by feeding their own minds with an image that aroused admiration and envy, but that still reflects the facts that belonged only to the world of ideas of those people who saw him from a formal distance and for this reason didn’t know him. Nothing ensures that Richard Cory’s traces were such as those that had been believed by those people. Lines 13-16, although they could be subdivided into two distinct parts, choose to place them together for one simple reason – these last four lines are linked to reality. Those people, in fact, lived as if there was a shadow in their lives, something that prevented them from being happy and this was something that made the idealization of Richard Cory, and in fact, Richard Cory killed himself, ironically, on a night characterized by the author as “calm summer night” which translates to us as a pleasant feeling, hindering further those people’s understanding of the reason why Richard Cory had committed such an act. By the way, we saw the poem as a process of gradation, which reached a certain point. We can consider as a kind of apex “To make us wish That We Were in his place”, when those people clearly confess that really Richard Cory in his “perfection” bothered them so much, that they wanted to take his place – and after that, the poem falls into a deep abyss where all that poetic flourishing thrown over Richard Cory becomes a succession of negative events, which deviates from the narrative of positive events that the poem had been advancing until then. We can also highlight that the poem only seems simple on the surface; however a poem that leads us to reflection about so many kinds of subjects, in no manner may be considered ordinary, but a jewel waiting to be discovered by an attentive reader.

About “Richard Cory” – Edwin Arlington Robinson – this text was written by:

• Josiene Ferreira
• Eduardo
• Felipe
• Wesley
• Josivan

Richard Cory: Construct and ideology

Richard Cory: Construct and ideology

Richard Cory is a narrative poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson, first published in 1897. The poem describes Richard Cory as a wealthy, well educated, mannerly person and admired by the people in his town. In this analysis, we look at how the speakers construct Richard Cory and how ideologies help the meaning of poem. First of all we need to realize who the speaker in the poem is. On line two we have “we people”, in the third stanza we have “we thought” and in the last one we have “we worked”, showing us that the speakers are people in the town where Richard lives. Because of this, we need to have in mind that all adjectives in the text came from those people and Richard Cory doesn’t speak about himself anytime. With these adjectives the speaker builds the Richard Cory’s image, as we. In the first stanza, line three, we have “He was a gentleman from sole to crown”, this image reinforces the construction of Richard’s image. These characteristics lead us to the question of ideology present in the text. For those people, all things will be possible when they will get money and status, so they dream about it all the time. “To make us wish that we were in his place” creates a reality completely different for most of people in town. Richard is a representation of all dreams and everybody in town talks about him in a way that idealizes him as someone who has everything. In the end, there is the frustration of that ideology: everything that people in town wanted and considered so perfect and beautiful collapsed at the moment when he “went home and put a bullet through his head”, all this caused astonishment in every reader as well. Ultimately the reader reflects upon the intensity of the poem, created by the contrast of the somber people of the community, on the one hand, and the brilliant heroic stature of Cory on the other.

Students:

Anderson Andrade Santos

César vieira dos Santos

Douglas dos Santos Fonsêca

Karlúcia Santos Rodrigues

Lígia Alves Lunguinho Santos