Paradise lost as a Tragedy

Paradise lost as a Tragedy

Tragedy stresses on what is past and real and lays emphasis on convergent thinking; likewise Paradise Lost has no room for imaginative freeplay. It tends to be more information-gathering that explains Adam’s desire to gain more and more knowledge from the angel Raphael. However there is uncritical thinking as with Tragedies which is why Adam cannot weigh the possibility of man’ s Fall against his love for Eve. Emotional engagement is another feature of tragedy where the tragic heroes tend to respond with great passion be it hatred, lust, love, revenge.etc. Likewise Adam responds with insatiable lust after his action of devouring the forbidden apple. Tragic heroes are idealistic and attached values to abstract concepts such as Justice, Truth, Honour, Innocence that Adam gives preference to before the fall of Eve. The Finality of leading to inevitable consequences is there, but there is also the possibility of reversing the same through the resurrection of Christ. The Tragic tends to value human spirit that is quite often dualistic prizing the soul over the body.

There is preference for the familiar as with tragedies which is why Adam and Eve choose primarily not to violate the norms; the preference and norm is for known knowledge than unknown knowledge. It abides by the order and process of classical tragedies and the structure is logical with no loose ends. Characters in a tragedy are larger than life or superhuman. Likewise Adam is semi divine here, holds the distinction as the first of mankind and the father of the entire human race. Offending a tragic hero resulted in vengeance as with Hamlet Or Othello but I this case Adam is not revengeful, and Satan though obsessed with vengeance does not fit into the framework of a tragic hero. Tragedies are often male-dominated; so is the case of Paradise Lost where Eve is constructed from the ribs of Adam ,and he gains precedence in all scenes. Eve is not allowed to listen to the sound advices of the angels,as she is considered to be without intellect. The primary reason she eats the forbidden apple is to become like a Man. There is respect for Tradition in the typical tragedy. Here there is no tradition as there is no history and the world has just began ;and the hero has no personality as Adam and Eden have just been created.Tragedy follows rule-based ethics that is the results of disobeying the accepted order of things is stressed upon: Paradise Lost‘religiously’ adheres to in the form of God and his tenets. Also, the hero deals with unexceptional suffering and agony as with tragedies; and this state of despair is contrasted with his previous glory. We find the same in Paradise Lost where the hero is transported into earth characterized by death and suffering from Eden typified with immortality and never-ending bliss. There is the introduction of supernatural elements with reference to God, Satan and the angels. However, there is not no abnormal mental condition with as in Shakespearean tragedies like hallucinations, somnambulism, insanity.etc.

The prologue to Book IX says that the work must now take on a tragic tone, and that this acclaimed Christian epic is considered to be greater in stature than theIlliad and the Aeneid. Milton disagrees with the kind of heroism that staple tragedies deal with . He asserts that the heroism associated with Paradise Lost is higher than that of traditional tragedies as it not only pertains to an individual or a nation but the whole of the human race. In tragedies, the hero is characterized by ‘hamartia’ or tragic flaw that lead to his downfall. There is anagnorisis (knowledge of the true circumstances); and peripeteia (reversal of fortunes).The tragedy leaves us with a feeling of catharsis leading to pity for the protagonist and fear for spectator/reader. Here the ‘tragic flaw’ of Adam is that his love for Eve dominates over the dictates of God. This leads him to devour the apple that leads to his doom.Adam is is nowhere characterized by hubris or overbearing pride in oneself. He is neither typified with vengeance as with typical tragic heroes and archetypal militarism as with the warrior heroes of It does not abide by the three basic unities particularly the unity of time, and the setting that transmogrifies from Eden to earth. It does not include ‘the ekkylema’ or ‘a cart which was wheeled out at the end of a play, to display the aftermath of some great battle so bodies were often laid on it and brought out;the people are transfigured into human beings vulnerable to death, and the stage is set for procreation of the human race susceptible to death. The general feeling that tragedy leaves us with is a sense of waste that Paradise Lost does not leave us with. It rather leaves us with a positive streak of optimism that the paradise and Edenic glory will be regained. Tragic heroes approach problems in a set of binaries, but for Adam here the bad option leads not to an irreversible bad future but there is the positive streak of redemption. There is social isolation in Tragedies, the people and heroes of high stature are regarded as individuals. They are not linked to the society that they thrive in .For instance, Shakespeare’s King Lear deals with the fall of an individual and the ramifications on the nation are not dealt with. Edward Bond wrote Lear to signify that the actions of an individual at the seat of power has consequences on the society or kingdom also. So Paradise Lost does not deal with an individual only unlike the classic tragedies that generally portray the downfall of an individu

al ; the flaw of the protagonist here results in the doom of the whole of human race.
However, at the end of a tragedy there is the death of the hero with no hope of regeneration. In Paradise Lost, there is the hope of redemption in the form of the savior. Man is also given the opportunity to make amends for his sin. If there is a mistake, it is a felix cupla or happy mistake that leads to Adam’s downfall. Therefore, Paradise Lost is not a tragedy in the true sense of its conventions.

Keats: A Sensuous Mystic

Keats: A Sensuous Mystic
Sensuousness is such a prominent feature of Keats’ poetry. Most readers tend to overlook his intends love towards suffering humanity. When Keats asserts “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” he does not mean by beauty, he means something which pleases the eyes and other sense organs, rather, then goodness.

The word “Sensuousness”, according to Coleridge means “which belongs to five senses”. Sensuousness in poetry is that quality which appeals our five senses. In other words, it is a quality which affected our five senses of smell, taste, touch, hear, sight at once. Keats’ sensuousness is universal: the song of the bird, rustle of an animal, changing pattern of the wind, a smile of a child’s face--- nothing escaped from his watchful eyes. He composes his famous and last ode To Autumn after being inspired by “the stubble fields…………during his Sunday’s walk”. Just observes the sensuous appeal from the poem:
“Hedge cricket sing, and now with treble soft,
The red breast whistle, from the garden croft,
And gathering swallows twittering in the skies”.
 The above lines gives comfort to our ears that is why Compton Rickett finds “symphony of sound” in these lines.

Matthew Arnold being overpowered by his sensuousness and asks “whether he is anything else”, and the answer is that as his mind matured, his sympathies broadended, there in him developed a sense of identification with human heart in travail. In his mature poetry, sensuousness is still wearing its fairy pattern but now the colouring is different. The trouble of the world come thick upon him when he watches his brother, Tom “specture thin” and lingering towards death. In his mature poetry, the love for nature is touched with the “still sad music of humanity”.

Now, just observes the sensuous appeal of sound from the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn in which Keats exhorts the piper to play on:
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter, therefore, ye soft pipe, play on,
Not for the sensual ear, but more endear’d
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone”.
 These lines show that Keats had a unique gift of communicating with senses. The sensuousness in his poetry is so deep that Louis McNeice calls him “Sensuous Mystic”.

Keats believes that poetry should not advocate any philosophy and it should certainly minister the five senses. And the poet should present beautiful and colourful pictures appealing to the five senses. The following stanza from The Eve of the St. Agnis appeals to our five senses:
“All of its wreathed pearls her hairs she frees
Unclasps her warm jewel one by one
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees,
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees,
Half hidden like a mermaid in sea weed”.

A nightingale’s song heard in a garden inspired the poet to compose Ode to a Nightingale, however the most sensuous of Keats’ odes. He heard the nightingale’s song when
“The happy Queen-Moon on her throne
Cluster’d around her starry fays
But there is no light………..”
 Now just observes the sensuous appeal to nature:
“Charm’d magic casements, opening the foam
Of perilous sea, in fairy lands forlorn”.
 These two example shows that like Wordsworth, Keats also finds sensuousness and imaginative inspiration in nature, but like him, he never finds a guide and teacher there.

Some critic believes that Keats’ sensuousness sometimes degenerates into sensuality. They maintain that he becomes extremely bluntly in some of his poems. But the fact is that he may be lewdly sensuous in his early poetry but as he gained evolved he becomes astisitically sensuousness. In his mature poetry his voluptuousness is fall of vitality and his sensuousness has fine sentiments. Just see the asthetic beauty of the following lines from Ode on a Grecian Urn:
“Bold love, never, can’st thou kiss
Though near winning the goal- yet do not grieve
She cannot fade, thought thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair”.

Beauty was the creed of Keats, so he escapes into the world of beauty away from the work-a-day world of weariness. He is capable of extracting sensuous delight from the far off things. Cazamian says that Keats aspired depict the sensuous beauty in his poetry. Keats pictorial quality enables him to depict sensuous joys in an excellent manner.

In sum, poetry comes to him as “joy wrought in sensation”. Be it odes or sonnet or narrative poetry, Keats is richly sensuous. His sensuousness is not only delicate and delicious, but also asthetic and tasteful. In spite of its intensity, it does not degenerate into sensuality. Prominent Keatsian critics--- Arnold, F.W. Owen, Robert Bridges, Sidney Colvin, Salincourt--- in a article on Keats, in John Keats’ Memorial Volume(1922) come to the conclusion that Keats was not exclusive a sensuous poet, a literary artist whose interest begins and ends with sensuous beauty. Keats writes to Mr. Forman “O, for a life of sensation rather, than thoughts”. Hence, no question eminence in the Keats’ poetry of the quality of sensuousness.

Themes in Portrait of the Artist

Themes in Portrait of the Artist

Portrait of the Artist is ultimately the story of a

search for true identity. We know from the title

that the protagonist’s fate is to become an

artist, but we still follow the emotional suspense

of his periods of uncertainty and confusion. Our

hero struggles with the sense that there is

some great destiny waiting for him, but he has

difficulty perceiving what it is. His consistent

feeling of difference and increasing alienation

show that he sees himself as someone marked

by fate to stand outside society. Speaking of

society, Joyce also questions the value of Irish

national identity in a country on the brink

One might argue that the only things that

actually happen in Portrait of the Artist are a

series of transformations. One might then argue

that this demonstrates that growing up is

simply a series of transformations. Either way,

transformation in this text is associated with

two things.

 First, it’s related to the slow shift

from childhood to adulthood. Stephen has to

pass through distinct phases before he is an

independent adult. Secondly, transformation is

likened to the process of artistic development;

his intellectual transformations help forge his

identity as an artist and shape his future

writing. The proof of this is Joyce himself –

after all, this story partially stems from his own

experiences.of revOne might guess from the

title that Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Manhas something to do with Youth. This book

is a classic coming-of-age story that allows us

to follow the development of the main

character’s consciousness from childhood to

adulthood. Included in this is a heightened

awareness of what old people wistfully like to

call "the folly of youth." Since this is a very

loosely veiled autobiography, Joyce was

obviously also very aware of the folly of his own

youth, which he demonstrates through this

novel. The book as a whole is a meditation on

the process of growing up; one of its truly great

accomplishments is the almost scientific

precision with which it depicts the protagonist’s

changing mind and body.

Many of the events of this novel are seen

through a haze of murky discontent. Joyce

poses dissatisfaction as a necessity of the

developing artist. Our protagonist’s

unhappiness with his setting, his family, and

most of all, himself, are fundamental to his

eventual transformation from observant child to

blooming writer. Until he realizes that his

vocation is to become a writer, he feels

aimless, alone, and uncertain. However, we get

the feeling that he could never arrive at this

conclusion without undergoing his period of

profound dissatisfaction. It is this lingering

sense of malcontent that forces Joyce’s

character to confront his personal anxieties and

uncertainties in order to get past them.

Stephen’s fixation on language is what alerts us

to his artistic inclinations from the very

beginning of the novel. Both Joyce and his

protagonist demonstrate a deep fascination with

the purely aesthetic elements of language.

Sometimes elements like repetition, rhythm, and

rhyme take over the narrative completely. This

demonstrates the novel’s stance on

Communication: it highlights the arbitrary and

sometimes meaningless ways in which

language works – and doesn’t work. While the

goal of language is to clarify and enlighten, it

doesn’t always succeed and is often misused.

Joyce and many of his Modernist colleagues

(especially T.S. Eliot) were very concerned with

the failure of language to successfully

communicate ideas.

Marx famously wrote that religion is a kind of

drug constructed to keep the masses bovine

(cow-like) and contented, chewing their cud

comfortably and not confronting the true natureof life. Joyce delivers a similarly cynical and

unflinchingly critical picture of religion in

Portrait of the Artist; our hero, albeit in a

markedly un-cow-like and intensely cerebral

fashion, also latches on to religion as a system

of definite explanation

Critical appreciation of Ted Hughes poem Chaucer

Critical appreciation of Ted Hughes poem Chaucer

INTRODUCTION

The poem ‘Chaucer’ as its name clearly suggests, is a tribute from Ted Hughes to the great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. In one of his interviews talking about influences on his poetry Hughes said: “….One poet I have read more than any of these is Chaucer…’. In this poem, “Chaucer” Hughes advocates in reply to the criticism from conservative and conventional critics on Chaucer’s treatment of thought of metre.

The very first line of the poem ‘what that Aprille with his shoures soote’ serves as a literary allusion and directly refers to the prologue of the all-time-famous creation of Chaucer: ‘Canterbury Tales’. According to Hughes, the shower of Chaucer’s verse has cleaned and rendered freshness to the bushes and plants. It suggests that the poetry of Chaucer rendered a freshness to and newness to the prevailing poetic tradition of his times.
Chaucer is considered to be the father of English literature. He stands head and shoulders above the classical figures of the English literature. His experimentation with metre and language paved the way for modern poetry with realistic approach. That is what Hughes has tried to set in this poem.

CRITICAL APPRECIATION
‘Chaucer’ as its name suggests, is a tribute from Ted Hughes to the great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. In one of his interviews talking about influences on his poetry Hughes said: “….One poet I have read more than any of these is Chaucer…’. In “Chaucer” Hughes stands in face of the criticism from conservative and conventional critics on Chaucer’s treatment of thought of metre and defends Chaucer.
The very first line of the poem ‘what that Aprille with his shoures soote’ serves as a literary allusion and directly refers to the prologue of the all-time-famous creation of Chaucer: ‘Canterbury Tales’. Chaucer is considered to be the father of English literature. His experimentation with metre and language paved the way for modern poetry with realistic approach. Talking about the less knowledgeable critics who criticise Chaucer’s experimentation with metre and poetic art, Hughes calls them ‘cows’ for they keep on practicing and preaching the old ideas like cows who keep on chewing the fodder. They are not ready to accept the change and freshness brought to literature. Hughes talks about their animal instinct that attracts them to sensual beauty of nature. The poem moves ahead with a slow tempo. Hughes starts it by quoting a line from Prologue to Canterbury Tales and then moves on to introduce us with Chaucer’s art and work. Hughes seems to have two kind of groups in his mind: one, the readers who shall read this poem, the other, the imaginary audience whom he is looking with his poetic eye and at the same time he has in his mind the actual critics who talk against Chaucer’s art and techniques though the imaginary audience and the actual somewhat anti-Chaucerian critics are part of one whole. It is, no doubt, his poetic skills that he takes along these groups skilfully with the flow of the poem. The poem has, clearly, a satirical note in it however it has a blend of humour as well. Hughes’s branding the name cows for the so called critics and their reaction to the character of wife of Bath are noteworthy in this respect. The language of the poem is not a selected one or some specific language. It is simple yet impressive and is beautified more with the imagery style used by Hughes.

An introduction to 'Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a DREAM

An introduction to 'Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream'

Dr Seamus Perry considers the composition and publication history of 'Kubla Khan', and explores how Coleridge transforms language into both image and music.

Coleridge’s famous and mysterious poem was written, probably, in the autumn of 1797. According to a note written at the bottom of the one manuscript that survives (it is in the British Library) Coleridge was taken ill at a farmhouse, presumably while out walking; and he took some opium to quell the pain. Opium has an exotic or transgressive tang to a modern reader, but it was the pain-killer freely available in Coleridge’s day: he didn’t take the drug to provoke a dream vision, but that (so he claims) is what happened, ‘in a sort of Reverie’.

The pleasure dome

What did he see? The short answer is, to begin with, an extraordinary piece of architecture, ‘A stately pleasure-dome’ (l. 2), which was built in the Mongolian summer capital by one of the great Emperors of ancient Tartary, Kubla, the grandson of Genghis Khan; but Coleridge’s interest does not seem especially drawn by the cruel despotism that would probably have been his reader’s first association. Coleridge’s Khan is a kind of artist, summoning into being with a God-like command not only the beauty of the pleasure-dome but the ordered loveliness of its cultivated gardens, full of sweet smells and tinkling streams, all sheltered from the outside world by robust ‘walls and towers’ (l. 7).
The natural history of Xanadu

The second verse then turns to picture that outside world, which it places in stark antithesis to the pleasures of the garden: ‘But oh!’ Outside, nature is exuberant, tumultuous, violent, ‘savage’, full of erotic feeling (‘woman wailing for her demon-lover’), and punctuated chiefly by exclamation marks (l. 12; l. 14; l. 16). The energy of the scene is superbly conveyed through breathless, on-running sentences, and the verse comes to a close with a vivid sense of that energy’s potential for destruction:

‘And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war!’ (ll. 29-30).

We learn no more about the character of this strange family curse, if that is what it is; but the mention is enough to cast some doubt on the survival of the pleasure-dome, a magnificent creation which now feels perhaps somewhat over-shadowed by the unruly splendour of the sublime scenery that surrounds it.

‘A miracle of rare device’

At this point Coleridge pulls off one of the great surprises of the poem: having set before us two antithetical territories of the imagination, he now finds a way of blending them together, as though a fuller kind of creativity should partake of both. The blending happens, not in the objective world, but within an act of consciousness: we are to imagine someone standing by the river, seeing the dome’s ‘shadow’ (which can mean ‘reflection’ at this period) on the water, and at the same time listening (‘Where was heard’) to the sound of the mighty fountain, which is its source, and the noise of the dark underground caverns into which it crashes (l. 31; l. 33). The opposing ingredients of the poem are brought together in ‘a miracle of rare device’ (‘device’ meaning ‘devising’, ‘inventing’): this act of artistry feels like it surpasses even what the mighty Khan had managed in the first verse (l. 35). Many years later Coleridge would describe how the imagination reveals ‘itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities’[1], a view which his early poem seems to anticipate in more intuitively sensory terms.

A damsel with a dulcimer

But then the poem makes its second surprising turn: when it felt like it had done its dialectical business, miraculously synthesising opposites into reconciliation, it changes tack with an almost comic abruptness, introducing the ‘I’ of the poet for the first time. He imagines an enigmatic ‘damsel’, playing on a musical instrument, and singing about ‘Mount Abora’ or, as Coleridge originally had it, ‘Mount Amara’ (l. 37; l. 41). Like the poem at large, this is as much a lovely piece of word music as it is a gesture to a real geography; but it carries meaning too: Mount Amara was one of the candidates for the site of Paradise that Milton mentions in Paradise Lost (Book 4, l. 283); and the thought of Eden, once set loose in the poem, now casts its retrospective influence on our sense of the fragility of Kubla’s walled garden. The damsel is a figure of poetic inspiration, but her powers are evoked here only to be felt missing: were she to sing, the poet would then be able to recreate the dome and its landscape; but the conditional mood of the lines (‘Could I…’, ‘I would…’) conveys this to be a wish rather than any realised achievement (l. 42; l. 46). The troubled reception his possible act of creation would gain is very striking, and suggests one last bursting out of the disruptive energies which the poem, like the Khan, has struggled to restrain: the hypothetical audience treats the inspired poet as a danger, best kept within the safety zone of the woven circle.

So, Coleridge ends his poem on an unexpectedly ambiguous note, with the triumphant act of creativity that we might reasonably have thought we had just witnessed turning out to be deferred to another day and more propitious circumstances. Coleridge’s attitude towards his ‘Kubla Khan’ is correspondingly hard to pin down. He did not print the poem for years, and when finally he did publish it, in 1816, he added a preface which described it as a mere ‘psychological curiosity’ and told an elaborate story about its composition.

The poem, he says, was inspired by a sentence from the Renaissance historian Samuel Purchas: ‘Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall’. (What Purchas actually wrote was closer to the poem: ‘In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately palace, encompassing sixteene Miles of Plaine ground with a wall…’.) The poem arises magically unbidden in Coleridge’s sleep (‘all the images rose up before him as things’); and upon waking he begins to transcribe what his inward eye had seen – at which point he is interrupted by a tenacious ‘person on business from Porlock’ who detains him so long that when he gets back to his desk he has forgotten the rest. It is a great piece of mythmaking, and in its funny and rueful way, it rehearses the note of incomplete creativity that the poem will generate much more charismatically.

But is the poem itself really unfinished? It is hard to think of a poem that sounds more utterly completed when we arrive at its last lines (‘And drank the milk of Paradise’); but then, as the distinguished scholar John Beer once remarked, ‘One can continue a poem in the middle .. as well as at the end’.[2]

Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan 
Kublai Khan(1215-1294) was the greatest of the Mongol emperors after Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty in China. He was the fourth son of Tule, one of the four sons of Genghis by his favorite wife, Bourtai.Raised in the nomadic traditions of the Mongolian stepped by his father, Tolui, and mother, Sorghaghtani Beki, Kublai was taught the art of warfare from a young age and, while still a boy, became a skilled fighter, hunter and horseman.
Strong, brave, and intelligent, Kublai was Genghis's favorite grandson.He distinguished himself from his predecessors by ruling through an administrative apparatus that respected and embraced the local customs of conquered peoples, rather than by might alone.
His subjugation of the Song Dynasty in southern China made him the first Mongol to rule over the entire country and led to a long period of prosperity for the empire.
Kublai Khan's rule was distinguished by its improvements​ in infrastructure, religious tolerance, use of paper money as the primary means of exchange and trade expansion with the West.
He died on February 18, 1294, at the age of 79.

Coleridge's Poems Summary and Analysis of "Kubla Khan" (1798)

Coleridge's Poems Summary and Analysis of "Kubla Khan" (1798)

Summary

The unnamed speaker of the poem tells of how a man named Kubla khan traveled to the land of Xanadu. In Xanadu, Kubla found a fascinating pleasure-dome that was “a miracle of rare device” because the dome was made of caves of ice and located in a sunny area. The speaker describes the contrasting composition of Xanadu. While there are gardens blossoming with incense-bearing trees and “sunny spots of greenery,” across the “deep romantic chasm” in Xanadu there are “caverns measureless to man” and a fountain from which “huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.” Amid this hostile atmosphere of Nature, Kubla also hears “ancestral voices prophesying war.” However, Kubla finds relief from this tumultuous atmosphere through his discovery of the miraculous sunny pleasure-dome made of ice.

In the last stanza of the poem, the narrator longs to revive a song about Mount Abora that he once heard a woman play on a dulcimer. The speaker believes that the song would transport him to a dream world in which he could “build that dome in air” and in which he can drink “the milk of Paradise.”

Analysis

For other commentators, “Kubla Khan” is clearly an allegory about the creation of art. As the artist decided to create his work of art, so does Kubla Khan decide to have his pleasure-dome constructed. The poem’s structure refutes Coleridge’s claim about its origins, since the first thirty-six lines describe what Kubla has ordered built, and the last eighteen lines deal with the narrator’s desire to approximate the creation of the pleasure-dome.

Xanadu is an example of humanity imposing its will upon nature to create a vision of paradise, since the palace is surrounded by an elaborate park. That the forests are “ancient as the hills” makes the imposing of order upon them more of a challenge. Like a work of art, Xanadu results from an act of inspiration and is a “holy and enchanted” place. Within this man-decreed creation are natural creations such as the river that bursts from the earth. The origin of Alph is depicted almost in sexual terms, with the earth breathing “in fast thick pants” before ejaculating the river, a “mighty fountain,” in an explosion of rocks. The sexual imagery helps reinforce the creation theme of “Kubla Khan.”

Like Kubla’s pleasure-dome, a work of art is a “miracle of rare device,” and the last paragraph of the poem depicts the narrator’s desire to emulate Kubla’s act through music. As with Kubla, the narrator wants to impose order on a tumultuous world. Like Xanadu, art offers a refuge from the chaos. The narrator, as with a poet, is inspired by a muse, the Abyssinian maid, and wants to re-create her song. The resulting music would be the equivalent “in air” of the pleasure-dome. As an artist, the narrator would then stand apart from a society that fears those who create, those who have “drunk the milk of Paradise.”

Kubla Khan Plot Mood Language Imagery

"Kubla Khan: or a Vision in a Dream" is a poem that describes to us another world. It places us in the middle of a strange and wondrous setting. He describes his world in a vivid and epic manner, making it appear as ancient verse, perhaps descended from an oral legend. His use of metaphor, simile, and language all give a better view of his world by establishing the mood of the poem, each line bringing the world further to life. The first five lines immediately gives us the basic core of the poem: both in plot, mood, and language. By conveying his imagination by using language, the vocabulary used by Coleridge is of great importance. The vocabulary used throughout the poem helps convey these themes in images to the reader. The strangeness of such words as 'Xanadu' and 'pleasure-dome' are very effective in placing us in a setting that is very different from any we normally know. We are also given a feeling of wondrous and epic things.

Coleridge depicts a powerful character who "did ... a stately pleasure dome decree". The fact that Kubla Khan is able merely to decree a pleasure-dome and know that his orders will be executed implies that he is a character of both strong will and great power. The Khan decrees that a pleasure-dome be built and his order is immediately executed: 'So twice five miles of fertile ground/ With walls and towers were girdled round'

Conflicts in Life of Galileo

Conflicts  in Life of Galileo

In his notes, Bertolt Brecht says of this play, "But it would be highly dangerous, particularly nowadays, to treat a matter like Galileo's fight for freedom of research as a religious one; for thereby attention would be most unhappily deflected from present-day reactionary authorities of a totally un-ecclesiastical kind."

With this comment, Brecht demands that his audience sees this play as more than a battle between science and religion. It is, as he says, a conflict between progressive and conservative thinking, it is a conflict between political activism and political indifference, a conflict between freedom and oppression and a conflict between the individual and authority. Underlying all these is the central tenet of inquiry.

Without inquiry, without "hypothesis" or "doubt", we are merely "gawping", and "Gawping isn't seeing". Life of Galileo suggests that it is only through the process of questioning – and engaging that society can learn and grow. How much success we have depends on our preparedness to "have a look for ourselves".

What do you do when you are considered a dissident and your views are considered reactionary? What do you do when regardless of where you go, you are an exile? Such a dilemma was faced by Brecht.

In Germany, during the rise of Hitler and the Nazis he was labelled an insurgent. His outspoken views were in conflict with those of the Nazi party and so he escaped from the tyranny of Nazi Germany in 1933. He moved to Russia, only to escape the Nazis again in 1941. Relocating to the United States, his communist philosophies caused him to make a quick exit but not before being called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1947.

So it makes sense that Life of Galileo would reflect Brecht's own observations and experiences with fascism, Nazism, communism and atomic warfare. Through Andrea, Brecht proposes, "One cannot fly through the air on a broomstick. It must at least have a machine on it. And as yet there is no machine. Perhaps there never will be, for man is too heavy. But, of course, one cannot tell. We don't know nearly enough, Giuseppe. We are only at the beginning."

And, of course, it is in these final lines that the audience understands Brecht's comment to the world; that scepticism, doubt and inquiry are essential if humankind is to learn from life – from conflict. To question and challenge, as Galileo does, is inextricably linked to movement and growth.

Having endured a life of conflict, Brecht uses Galileo as a vehicle to truth, "belief ... is one thing; facts, tangible facts, are another ... Gentlemen, I beseech you in all humanity to trust your eyes."

So what does it mean then, that Galileo recants on his beliefs? Does it suggest that he "buckles under the pressure"? Does it suggest that Galileo is weak in conflict? For a man who is at first so determined to prove heliocentrism – a contentious and dangerous belief that the Earth moved around the sun, to then recant these views in order to escape execution, would suggest so.

Working with a prompt

In developing a piece of writing using Life of Galileo it is essential that complex thinking take place before writing occurs. Any piece of writing must convey a close knowledge of the text, its issues and the contexts that "generated" the writing in the first place, hence the importance of thinking about Brecht and his time in conjunction with Galileo and his time.

Examine the exchange between Galileo and Vanni in scene 11. As Galileo and Virginia wait in the lobby of the Medici Palace, the conversation that takes place could easily work as a comment about Brecht's interrogation at the HUAC trials. Rector Gaffone, according to Galileo is a "fool [who] will involve me in another hour-long conversation". A pejorative comment aimed at those who entertain "blackcoat" beliefs.

Vanni's pronouncement, "They are holding you responsible for those pamphlets against the Bible which have lately been on sale everywhere" could easily be transposed to echo Brecht's own interrogation during the HUAC trials,

"Well, from an examination of the works which Mr Brecht has written, particularly in collaboration with Mr Hanns Eisler, he seems to be a person of international importance to the Communist revolutionary movement. Now, Mr Brecht, is it true you have written articles which have appeared in publications in the Soviet zone of Germany within the past few months?"

So begins the process of thinking about the play and how it suggests conflict. Remember a prompt is, as the word suggests, a starting point for investigation. In a way it is the very same process Galileo demands of the young Andrea: "What do you see? You see nothing. You only goggle. Goggling is not seeing."

What does Galileo mean by this quote? How does it suggest a conflict? What is implied in the way Andrea is "learning"? It can be hypothesized that there is a conflict between passive and active learning. Why could this be important to Galileo, in fact to Brecht? Go back to Brecht's beckoning to the audience to question and doubt, "Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race."

For example, take last year's VCE exam prompt, "The experience of conflict changes people's priorities." In developing and shaping your ideas on the play it would be judicious to ask – and keep asking – What is this text's message about conflict? What do all Galileo's actions and exchanges reveal about conflict?

More specifically, how does this text suggest, confirm or deny that in Life of Galileo conflict changes people's priorities? So the process of "doubting" begins; whose priorities are changed and why are they changed? It is worthwhile to remember that the audience, too, may change its priorities from the conflict it witnesses in the play.

To conclude that this play is only about the conflict between fact and belief is naive, and is the very "goggling" to which Galileo refers. Rather than conclude that Galileo is weak for recanting, ask, "What does the play suggest from his gesture in handing the 'Discorsi' or manuscript to Andrea?"

Could it be that in recanting, it actually allows Galileo to continue his work "without interruption"? Why might this be important to him?

In scene 9 Signora Sarti says to Galileo, "You have set yourself up against the authorities and they have already warned you once ... you show signs of sense and tell me that you know you must control yourself because it's dangerous, but two days' experimenting and you're as bad as ever."

Perhaps there is no conflict within Galileo; his truth is the indulgence in the sensual and a fundamental belief in "the eyes". His priorities never change.

Symbolism in To ‘The Lighthouse’ To The Lighthouse

Symbolism in To ‘The Lighthouse’
To The Lighthouse

This novel is published on 5th May – 1927. The novel is landmark of high modernism. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf used the language of psychoanalysis. Reader can find stream of consciousness during reading the novel. The novel set on duration of 10 years (it deals with the year - 1910 to 1920). The centre of the novel is Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and their visit to the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Virginia Woolf wrote about this novel that – “I suppose that I did this work for myself.”

The novel captures its readers with its characterization of Ramsay family and their guest who meet at their holiday home on Isle of Skye, an island near the Scottish mainland. As we know that novel is set on a ten years period of time,

1) The novel’s first section taking place on a day before the First World War,
2) A Middle period in which all the action happens “off stage” during the war
3) Last section taking place on a day after the First World War.

Symbolism in To the Lighthouse

As a being Modernist writer, Virginia Woolf used may symbol in her work. If we look from normal eye site, we cannot find any image for the use of that symbol, but if we see it from different perspective, reader can understand the use of that symbol. Woolf did not follow the tradition of writing style in To the Lighthouses, the reader can tell that an image or object that appears in the novel is significant, it shows something but it may be hard to understand that what exactly it means – shows.
What is Symbolism?

• the artistic method of revealing ideas or truths through the use of symbols
Above definition may lead us towards that it a method, which draws our idea, thought in particular way with the use of some image or symbol.
To the lighthouse, this novel is full with the use of symbol; the symbol which is used in the novel can be interpreted in different way or perspective from various critics. The symbols in novel is used properly, one or another way it reflects the idea of writer. In the novel there are many symbols, they all are giving glimpses of some another idea. It draws towards the showing something else.
Let’s see variety of the symbols are used in the novel. Symbols used are in which context and let’s interpreted it. The all symbols are woven with each other. Let them study closely under the following heads.
v Lighthouse: Titular Significance
v Lily’s Painting
v Ramsay’s Summer House
v The Boar’s Skull
v Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears
v The Sea, the Storms, the rock, reefs and shallow water
v The Window
v Lighthouse: Titular Significance

This is the most important symbol in the novel. As it is also included in the title, the Lighthouse is also a symbol. This symbol is interpreted by different critic by different ways. It reflects the life of mankind. Building of The Lighthouse is showing something. As we see the building of Lighthouse is tall, huge and big stand alone on rock or island. It has light and darkness. During the night time it gives Light to ships and sea fares.
It stands alone and tall in both light and darkness and it, along with its beacon, is a focal point which Symbolizes strength, guidance and safe harbor; it is Spiritual hermit guiding all those who are traveling by sea.

If we apply to character of the novel, each character has different meaning of the lighthouse.

If we see the lighthouse from the perspective of Mr. Ramsay, he sees the lighthouse as source of stability and comfort. It stands as strong feelings of ownership.

To Mrs. Ramsay, the predictability of the lighthouse is most important, implying that truth lies in the cycles that govern life.
For Lily Briscoe, the lighthouse becomes a sort of fixation during her final artistic vision – she is watching Mr. Ramsay’s boat reached at the lighthouse as she approaches the solution of how to finish her painting. As the lighthouse is difficult to understand just like that Lily Briscoe finding problem to complete the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Finally
"the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze" (308)
And with this she is finally relieved, and her painting is finished. As the lighthouse disappear and Lily got some Idea to finish her picture. Thus, this suggest that the lighthouse is also inspirable to her and she got her vision.
For, James the lighthouse is also symbolized strongest feelings. At the beginning of the novel, it was ambition of James to go the lighthouse, at the end of the novel they reached at the lighthouse. Sees that:
"The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye…." (276)
James arrives only to realize that it is not at all the mist-shrouded destination of his childhood. Instead, he is made to recon cite two competing and contradictory images of the tower-how it appeared to him when he was a boy and how it appears to him when he is a man. He decided that both of these images contribute to the essence of the lighthouse.
And at the end of novel, Mr. Ramsay admires the effort of James. And their relation becomes stronger. Thus the lighthouse is symbol of goodness. The lighthouse surrounded by sea always describes and clarifies the human condition in some way. If we see from the perspective of general way that the lighthouse is symbols for something goodness.
The lighthouse is stand alone on a rock with the huge construction. At night it stands alone and the tip of lighthouse there is a ray of light. That light symbolized the ray of goodness, that light gives direction of sea voyages. So at this debate we can say that the lighthouse is symbolized and it gives glimpses of that it is source of snspiration.it is symbolized like truth triumph over darkness.

Let’s see that how different critic has explained this symbol in a different ways…

For example
Russel declares that the lighthouse is the feminine creative principle.
Jon Bennett calls the alternate light and shadows of the lighthouse the rhythm of joy and sorrow, understanding and misunderstanding.
F.L. Overcarsh, finds the novel as a whole an allegory of the old and New Testements: Mrs. Ramsay is Eve, the Blessed virgin and Chirst; Mr. Ramsay is among other things God the Father; the lighthouse is Eden and Heaven.
The strokes of the lighthouse are the persons of the Trinity, the third of them, long and steady representing the Holy Ghost.
The lighthouse as symbol has not one meaning, that it is a vital synthesis of time and eternity: an objective correlative for Mrs. Ramsay’s vision, after whose death it is her meaning.
It has been said to represent a religious symbol by some critics, a phallic symbol by some others. Metaphorically, as the element of Water represents the emotions, the Lighthouse is a Symbol for the Spiritual Strength and Emotional Guidance which is available to us during the times we feel we are being helplessly tossed around in a sea of inner turmoil. Mrs. Ramsay stands strong like the lighthouse amidst emotionally shattered beings; viz., Michael Ramsay, James, Lily, Carmichael, etc.
v Lily’s Painting
Lily’s painting is another and important symbol of this novel. Lily’s painting represents a struggle against gender convention, represented by Charles Tinsley’s statement that: “women can’t paint or write.” This symbol of picture is symbolizes the condition of woman during those days. It shows woman’s struggle of woman in the patriarchal society. She desire to express Mrs. Ramsay’s essence as an individual wife and mother in her painting. Lily’s vision depends on balanced and synthesis: how to bring together disparate thing in harmony; this mirror Woolf’s writing creed – “the novel is a both a critique and a tribute to the enduring power of Mrs. Ramsay.
This symbol is started in the starting of the novel and completed in the end of the novel when James and Mr. Ramsays reached at the lighthouse. Perhaps the meaning of Lily’s Painting is unclear and the process of making that painting is difficult. The reflection of her Woolf’s character can be finding in Lily’s character. It is often suggested that Lily Briscoe is a semi-autobiographical character representing Woolf herself and her artistic process. The process of Lily’s painting throughout the novel can be seen as not only a symbol of the artistic dilemma faced by the modern artist, but especially o a female artist.
At the beginning of the novel, Lily is clearly self-conscious about her art - when looking at her painting, she sees only what could be different about it, constantly comparing it to how other painters would have depicted it, not wanting others to look at it
Lily’s Picture: Lily sees that Mrs. Ramsay’s gift of harmonizing human relationship into memorable moments is “almost like a work of art” and in the book art is the ultimate symbol for the enduring ‘reality’.

In life, as Mrs. Ramsay herself well knows relationships are doomed to imperfection, and are the spot of time and change; but in art the temporal and the eternal unity in an unchanging form- through, as in Lily’s picture, the form may be very inadequate. We cannot doubt that Lily’s struggles with the composition and texture of her painting are a counter part of Virginia

Woolf’s tussles and triumphs in her own medium, but she chooses poetry as the image that reminds mankind that the ever changing can yet become immortal. Lily is a Postimpressionist painter, descendant of a poor family, and has spent most of her life taking care of her father. In many ways, Lily is the chorus figure of the book—providing the histories of the characters and commenting on their actions. The beginning and completion of her painting form the frame of To the Lighthouse, and her final line, “I have had my vision,” is the final line of the novel, acting as Woolf's own comment on her book.

The painting also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed through Lily’s anxiety over showing it to William Bankes. In deciding that completing the painting regardless of what happens to it is the most important thing, Lily makes the choice to establish her own artistic voice. In the end, she decides that her vision depends on balance.

Her desire is to express Mrs. Ramsay’s essence as a wife and mother in the painting. The painting also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed through lily’s anxiety over showing it to William Bankes. Lily decides that her vision depends on balance and synthesis, How to bring disparate things together in harmony.
v Ramsay’s Summer House
Ramsay’s summer house is also one of the important symbols of the novel. This is a crucial symbol to understand. This is the place where all deed happens. Ramsay’s House is a place where Woolf and her characters explain their belief and observation. During her dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay’s sees her house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her inability to preserve beauty. The house stands for the collective consciousness of those who stay in it. From the dinner party to the journey to The Lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle.
The section of the novel that this symbol is especially important is in "Time Passes". Here the house takes over the plot development, all references to the main characters are brief and made parenthetically, literally. Ten years pass during this section, and with the Ramsay’s gone, the passage of time is conveyed through the house's gradual decay. There is huge use of personification in this section, with light, dark, wind, air, and other forces of nature portrayed almost as spirits taking over the house. These forces are given action verbs usually reserved for more human beings - "creeping", "toying", "musing", "nosing, "rubbing" – finally these airs "all together gave off an aimless gust of lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied; swung wide; admitted nothing; and slammed to" (190-91).
During the dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay sees her house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her inability to preserve the beauty.
 The way nature is portrayed as an intruder, invading the house, causing its eventual decay, symbolizes the impermanence of man and his constructions - the question is explicitly posed in this section: "Did Nature [with a capital "N"] supplement what man advanced?" (201). The fact that the house is the primary image through which the effects of time are conveyed, even though time has profound effect on the Ramsay's - Mrs. Ramsay, Prue, and Andrew all die - represents the irrelevance of humanity on the grand scale of time and how nature alone ultimately persists, which is yet another common modernist theme.

There are several other images throughout the novel that serve as symbols for death, colonialisation, sex, but these three are the most predominate throughout the novel, so hopefully this explanation can help give a general overview of Woolf's use of symbolism and the ideas being portrayed through her symbols.
In the “Time Passes” section, the ravages of war and destruction and the passage of time are reflected in the condition of the house rather than in the emotional development or observable aging of the characters. The house stands in for the collective consciousness of those who stay in it. At times the characters long to escape it, while at other times it serves as refuge. From the dinner party to the journey to the lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle, and its structure and contents mirror the interior of the characters that inhabit it.
v The Boar’s Skull
This is one of the important and mysterious symbols of the novel. It shows the reality and universal truth. It leads toward right way of life. That death is ultimate reality.
After the completing of dinner party, Children went upstairs for plating some games. Then Mrs. Ramsay went upstairs to find the children wide-awake, bothered by the boar’s skull that hangs on the nursery wall. The presence of that skull is something unpleasant and disturbing. This skull reminder us that death is always at hand. Even during life’s blissful moments. It explains that if we are so happy in any time, we should keep in mind that we have to die at some moment of life. We have to leave all things here. This symbol shows ultimate reality of this cruel life that we can die any time.
If we see in the play ‘Hamlet’ we can find that there is also a scene of Grave Digging Scene. We can see that there is also a symbol of ultimate reality of life that A great person were dead and their body convert into ashes. Thus we can say that Death is ultimate truth, no one can avoid it. Thus the symbol of boar’s skull is symbolized with death. Boar’s skull points out about the futility of life and death.
v Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears (The Fruit Basket)
The arrangement of fruits in the basket by Rose, it symbolized some truth of life and death. Metaphorically it gives message. This is very important symbol of the novel. Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mother’s dinner party that serves to draw the partygoers out of their private suffering and unite them. Although Augustus Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the arrangement differently—he rips a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb it—the pair is brought harmoniously, if briefly, together. The basket testifies both to the “frozen” quality of beauty that Lily describes and to beauty’s seductive and soothing quality. The absence of fruit basket in 3rd part signifies the transitory nature of beauty, art and truth.
v The Sea, the Storms, the rock, reefs and shallow water
• The Sea
The symbol of Sea appears throughout the novel. The Sea shows the instability of time and life. The water of sea is symbolic one. The sound of waves of sea can be heard throughout the novel. It symbolizes the eternal flux of time and life, in the midst of which we all exist; it constantly changes its character.
To Mrs. Ramsay at one moment it sounds soothing and consoling like a cradlesong,
at others, “like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beating a warning of death it brings terror. Sometimes its power “sweeping savagely in, “seems to reduce the individual to nothingness, at others it sends up ‘a fountain of bright water” – which seems to match the sudden springs of vitality in the human spirit.
Woolf describes the sea lovingly and beautifully, but her most evocative depictions of it point to its violence. As a force that brings destruction, has the power to decimate islands, and, as Mr. Ramsay reflects, “Eats away the ground we stand on,” the
sea is a powerful reminder of the impermanence and delicacy of human life and accomplishments.
Sometime Sea is beautiful but it may also be dangerous and also can become violent to destroy everything.
• The Storm
The Storm is symbolized something horrible thing of life and death. As can see that in the storm there is a element of Air and Wind. It contains both the thing in it. Both are the constructive element of life. Air is representing the mind, and water is representing the emotion of life. The Storm symbolized agitated thoughts and emotions. Metaphorically, storms are our inner Demons which torment both our mind and subconscious.
• The rock, Reefs and Shallow water
These symbols are showing certainty of life. The rock show the life is too hard to life. It gives suffer, as Mrs. Ramsays survived her life. The rocks, reefs and shallow water symbolized the final danger and miseries which seem to accompany the end of any turbulent voyage. Just as the saying. “its always seems always darkest before the dawn”, things always seem the most dangerous and hopeless as we reach the end of emotional turmoil. This is the point when we feel like tossing up our hands and giving up.
v The Window
The Window, a view to oneself: It is from the window that we have the little of the part-I of To the Lighthouse. It is not a transparent but a separating sheet of glass between reality and Mrs. Ramsay’s mind. Mrs. Ramsay experiences such moments of revelation and integration at watching the window.
Conclusion
At the near of our destiny you may be near to death or danger, because in Christianity it shows that there is a way to hell near the gate of haven. If u have done good deed throughout the life it may be possible that you may be in hell perhaps you may have done good deeds in your life, your life may be in misery or in good condition.

While finding symbols in the novel, it is still a subject of debates. Still critics are interpreting the symbols in different ways. Hopefully this brief overview of some of the major images throughout the novel can help give an idea of their basic symbolism while reading this novel. . To The Lighthouse is a masterpiece of construction through symbolism. It is an organic whole.

Full Moon and Little Frieda Introduction

Full Moon and Little Frieda

Introduction

"Full Moon and Little Frieda" was written for his daughter, who was three at that time, and was learning new things. They were living in the countryside, where everything was quiet and still at night, the nature around them.

Ted Hughes wrote “Full Moon and Little Frieda” to record the moment that his daughter uttered her first words, which is very interesting as she is the daughter of two literary master-minds.
Hughes creates a dramatic atmosphere, and carefully chooses his words to build up tension and bring the poem to climax.

Literary Devices Used

1. Metaphor
2. Simile
3. Personification
4. Alliteration
5. Imagery

• Metaphor: 
Line one- ‘a cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket’. Compares the evening to the sound of a dog's bark or clank of a bucket.

• Simile:
"The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work" is a simile. Hughes uses a simile “like an artist gazing amazed at a work” to depict the surprise. This surprise is because Frieda is so innocent and so pure that she cries out “moon” as if it were a scientific breakthrough. It seems as if the moon is jealous of her purity, because the moon itself connotes purity and is astonished to find a more innocent person,

Personification:
“To tempt a first star to a tremor” and “Cows are going home” and “The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

• Alliteration:
“warm wreaths”, “boulders, balancing” and “Moon! Moon!”

• Imagery:
“A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch”, “A pail lifted, still and brimming” and “The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work pointing back at him amazed.” A very distinct image is projected to the reader in the description of the spider web and the moon gazing amazed.

The image of the spider web, “tense for the dews touch” demonstrates the intense stillness around them, and gives the reader the idea that the entire environment is shrunken and tensed in anticipation for something great. The pail of water which is ‘still and brimming’ reinforces the feeling of expectation, visualizing the tense climate.

Analysis on ‘Full Moon And Little Frieda’

Analysis on ‘Full Moon And Little Frieda’

The change of atmosphere in the poem Full Moon and Little Frieda is controlled by Ted Hughes to create a dramatic atmosphere. With carefully chosen words, Hughes builds up tension and brings it up to climax.

Tension is built up as a foundation for the astonishing ambience later in the poem. By closely describing stationary, unnoticeable things, the poet is able to create the suspense which helps to amplify the climax. A spider’s web is “tense for the dew’s touch” which presents the stillness of life and gives an idea that the environment is very shrunken up as if in anticipation for a shock. The imagery of a pail full of water adds to the idea of anticipation that it is “still and brimming” which portrays the expectation of an event about to happen. A pail is used well as imagery because when the water is full up to the brim, the water toppling perfectly visualizes the tense climate of the poem. Also the “mirror” suggests stillness. A “tremor” is all a pail needs to tip out its content and thus foreshadows some action. Moreover, the help of the repetition of “A” in the beginning of the sentences, the listing tone embellishes tension. In the first two stanzas of the poem the build-up of tension is clearly noticeable.

While the previous stanzas were devoted to creating a strained mood, the third stanza reveals a completely different scene and yet perfects the building of the most intensified atmosphere. “Cows going home” insinuates a normal routine, a shot of an everyday life and that everything is normal despite all the tension that has been built up. The “lane” suggests an un-spoilt “pail” because lanes connote evenness and uniformity which contrasts to the spilling of water. The uniformity is emphasized by “balancing un-spilled milk”, careful not to spill and break order. Moreover, the sameness is exemplified by a metaphor of “warm wreaths of breath” in which the wreaths connote evenness and arrangement. Also the alliteration of “warm wreaths” holds some significance as it is a soft pronunciation and does not have any accents. This reinforces the idea of tranquility which is an anticlimax to amplify the actual climax of the poem. While the climax is magnificent, grand and stunning, the anticlimax holds values for its antonymic behaviour. A “dark” atmosphere is adopted to hide what is coming shortly, the climax, and is given a sinister tone to add to that effect. The “dark river of blood” insinuates hardship and ominousness which is supported by “many boulders” to add to the idea of hardship. However, these boulders can be seen differently as stepping stones to help cross the “dark river of blood”. This ambiguity is used nicely to create a confusing, chaotic atmosphere which will be broken heroically. Furthermore, the whole stanza is a case of enjambment; reading the lines separately will give different meanings aforementioned, and reading it as a whole gives a contrasting idea. On seeing the stanza as one sentence, it is deducible that this stanza denotes Hughes’ rough past. Although Hughes went through various hardships and suffering, he managed to balance the “milk” and be with his daughter. Therefore, figuratively the “milk” could be his daughter which is an example of metonymy. Would he have spilt it on his course, he wouldn’t have his daughter with him at the point of writing. Hughes creates the most intense anticlimax before the pinnacle of the poem.

In contrast to the third stanza, the fourth stanza is the site of climax. This shock which the poet has to present is helped with the use of several punctuations and words. “Moon” is repeated three times to emphasize the presence and each is followed by exclamation marks to supplement the unexpected action. The word “suddenly” adds to the shocking effect. Simile is used to create a pertinent imagery to describe the shock “like an artist gazing amazed at a work” which depicts the surprise. This surprise is because of the fact that the little Frieda is so innocent and pure such that she cries out “moon” as if it was a scientific breakthrough. It is almost as if the moon is jealous of her purity, because moon itself connotes purity and is quite taken back to find a more innocent person which is suggested by the repetition of “amazed” which shows the extreme consternation of the moon. The last stanza finishes off the poem without proper ending to the climax by which creates a reverberation of the climax and also leaves an ambiguous notion. With the uses of exclamations, repetitions and simile, the climax is successfully managed to finish the poem without dissatisfaction.

Hughes creates the astonishing climax by focusing on the anticlimax which is built up from the beginning, which in the end builds up the climax itself. By closely describing objects linked with movement and intensifying the moment just before the climax, the poet built up tension and used it effectively to hit the climax with full power.

TED HUGHES PAST PAPERS CONTEXT N PAST PAPER

TED HUGHES PAST PAPERS CONTEXT

You went on and on. Here were reasons
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
We were rapt. And the cows were enthralled. (2004) CHAUCER

We came where the salmon were so many,
So steady, so spaced, so far aimed
On their inner map, England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancstars
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.(2005) THAT MORNING

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of bucket
And you listening
A spider's web tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.(2006) FULL MOON AND LITTLE FRIEDA

Till with a sudden sharp bot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.(2007) THOUGHT FOX

....................There the body
Separated, golden and imperishable,
From its doubting thought a spirit beacon
Lit by the power of salmon(2008) THAT MORNING

And how did you stop? I can't remember
You stopping, I Imagine they reeled away -
Rolling eyes, as if driven from their fodder.
I imagine I shooed them away.(2009) CHAUCER

I imagine this midnight moment's forest
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.(2010) THOUGHT FOX

..... England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancaster
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.(2010) THAT MORNING

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness: (2010) THOUGHT FOX

I imagine I shooed them away. But
Your sostenuto rendering of Chaucer
Was already perpetual, what followed
Found my attention too full
And had to go back into oblivion.(2010-supp) CHAUCER

..... You went on ---
And twenty cows stayed with you hypnotized.
You stopping.(2011) CHAUCER

Solemn to stand there in the pollen light
Waist-deep in wild salmon swaying massed
As from the hand of God.(2011-supp) THAT MORNING

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges
with their warm wreathes of breath
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.(2012) FULL MOON AND LITTLE FRIEDA

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head
The windows is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.(2012-SUPP) THOUGHT FOX

And you could not stop. What would happen
If you were to stop? Would they attack you,
Scared by the shock of silence, or wanting more?(2013) CHAUCER

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the
hedges with their warm wreatches of breath.(2014) FULL MOON AND LITTLE FRIEDA

Your voice went over the fields towards Grantchester,
It must have sounded lost. But the cows
Watched, then approached: they appreciated Chaucer.(2015) CHAUCER

The windows is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.(2016) THOUGHT FOX

PAST PAPER QUESTIONS

1. Write a critical note on the use of animal imagery for symbolic purpose in the poetry of Ted Hughes.(2004)

2. "He is famous for violence in style and subject -- matter"? Discuss in the light of Ted Hughes's poems in the syllabus?(2005)

3. 'Ted Hughes interests in dreams and his recourse to occult symbolism are lined with the practice of many other modern poets'. Discuss.(2006)

4. The 'Though -- Fox' has often been acknowledged as one of the most completely realized and artistically satisfying of the poems. Discuss.(2007)

5. Discuss the poet's relationship with his subject in Chaucer and Full Moon and Little Freida.(2008)

6. The "Thought Fox" is a poem about metaphor. Discuss.(2009)

7. The salmon function as poetic inspiration in "That Morning". Discuss. (Hughes)(2009-SUPP)

8. 'That Morning' and 'Thought Fox' exemplify the importance of energy and single minded concentration in Hughes. Explain.(2010)

9. Compare and contrast 'Chaucer' and 'Full Moon' and 'Little Frieda'. (Hughes)(2010-SUPP)

10. Compare the power of salmon in 'That Morning' with the power of the fox in 'Though Fox'.(2011)

11. Explore the poet's relationship with the object of his observation in 'Thought Fox' and 'Chaucer'.(2011-SUPP)

12. Artist's observation is a common theme between Hughes' poems 'Chaucer' and 'Full Moon' and 'Little Frieda'. Explain. (Ted Hughes)(2012)

13. Focus and sustained observation is a running concern in the poetry of Ted Hughes. Comment. (Ted Hughes)(2012-supp)

14. Discuss "Thought Fox" and "That Morning" as journeys to fulfillment.(2013)

15. 'The Though Fox' is a poem about metaphor. Discuss.(2014)

16. Discuss the relationship between 'the artist' and 'the work of art' in the poetry of Ted Hughes.(2015)

17. How does Hughes use animals in his verse? Answer with detailed textual reference.(2016)