Monday, June 29, 2009
IT Home Learning Lesson 1- Figurative Language @ 8:44 AM
This is the poem that I have chosen.
A Life by Sylvia Plath
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy
As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
Dissection of the poem:
1. How is figurative language used in the poem? Give the specific word(s), explain what type of figurative language it is, and why the poet chose to use this figurative language.
"shrink like an eyeball" - Hyperbole is used as the author wants to emphasis that it could be touched, without any fear.
"This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear" - Simile is used as the author wants to compare and emphasis its clearness.
"ping like a Chinese chime" - Simile is used to compare the sound produced to a Chinese chime,letting us get a rough idea of the sound.
"inhabitants are light as cork" - Simile/Hyperbole is used to imply that the inhabitants are light as cork,but at the same time, is realistically flawed.
"the sea waves bow in single file" - Personification is used to let us imagine how the waves look.
"Stalling in midair" - Hyperbole is used as the author probably wants to make the waves look intimidating.
"pawing like paradeground horses" - Simile is used to describe the waves more vividly for us to conjure up how it looks like.
"like good china" - Simile is used to compare it with good china.
"like a foetus in a bottle" - Simile is used here to compare it like the foetus.
"too many dimensions to enter" - Hyperbole is used to exaggerate how confused she is.
"Crawls up out of the sea." - Hyperbole is used here as the author wants to emphasis how the man complains.
2. Tell us why you like this poem in no less than 100 words.
I like this poem as it relates to us about our daily life activities and our frustrations. Also, is illustrates to us about one’s anger and confusion which is commonly seen in today’s world. We normally succumb to unforeseen circumstances without us noticing it and only till others notice is that we will try to change. This poem also states the aging of a person and how that age will change up on us quickly. This means that we should treasure our own life as by the time we start, it may be too late. Another point is that we should try to make full use of each day and not regret after it is over and when a new day awaits.