LITERARY INTERPRETATIONSimile, Metaphor, Personification, and Paradox

SIMILE

I heard a fly buzz when I died;      The stillness round my formWas like the stillness in the air      Between the heaves of storm.

Emily Dickinson

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.

o John Keats

o A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, as one great furnace flamed.

o John Milton

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than

the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to

sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above

it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe

Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats        5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question …        10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.

METAPHOR

A figure of speech that compares two unlike things describing one as if it were the other

Does not use “like” or “as” “My brother’s room is a pigpen.”

EMILY DICKINSON

Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put awayMy labor, and my leisure too,For his civility.

We passed the school, where children stroveAt recess, in the ring;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.

Time Waits for No Man Proverb

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Lord Tennyson

The Wind Cries Mary Jimi Hendrix

PERSONIFICATION \PƏR-ˌSÄ-NƏ-FƏ-ˈKĀ-SHƏN\

The use of human characteristics to describe animals, things, or ideas.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? 

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. 

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, 

Who is already sick and pale with grief, 

That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

I must be cruel to be kind. Shakespeare, Hamlet

I’m nobody! Who are you? Emily Dickinson

I can resist anything except temptation. Oscar Wilde

Art is a lie which tells the truth. Jean Cocteau (or Pablo Picasso)

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

PARADOX

A contradiction that is true. Oxymoron Irony

Cowards die many times before their deaths.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, scene ii

SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

.

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing

sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on

the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love

as rare As any she belied with false compare.

IMAGERY

Sensory details in literature (images). Words that describe what we:

See (visual)Feel (tactile)Hear (auditory)Smell (olfactory)Taste (gustatory)

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;        5  

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,        10  

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.        15  

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 

THE RAVEN

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.‘'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -Only this, and nothing more.'

DYLAN THOMASDo not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

SONNET 73 That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west;Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the deathbed whereon it must expire,Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.