An Explication of Emily Dickinsons Loaded Gun Essay -- Dickinson Load

An Explication of Emily Dickinson's "Loaded Gun" Emily Dickinson's poem "My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-" is a powerful statement of the speaker's choice to forego the accepted roles of her time and embrace a taboo existence, a life open only to men. The speaker does so wholeheartedly and without reservation, with any and all necessary force, exulting in her decision. She speaks with great power and passion, tolerating no interference, and wills herself to maintain this choice for her entire life. The structure of the poem is a common one for Dickinson, alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter. These six quatrains are evocative of the verses from the Protestant religious services that Dickinson attended as a child but from which she chose to abstain as an adult. This meter gives the poem power and dignity, evoking the solemnity and unquestioned truth of a religious hymn. The mix of masculine and feminine images, their juxtaposition, and their occasional transformation across the gender line mirrors and mimics the message of the poem. The opening stanza begins with a series of masculine images: "a Loaded gun" (1), "The Owner" (3-later identified as "He"-17, 21). The fourth line gives an image of the speaker being carried away, something usually perpetrated on a female by (usually) a male. This too is an ambiguous image: is she carried away by her own love- enraptured-or is she carried away against her will, to be defiled, and used against her will? The second stanza resolves this question. Suddenly the speaker is "We," "roam[ing] in Sovreign [our] woods" (5), indicating an acceptance of the relationship. As an admirer of George Eliot, a woman who adopted a masculine identity in order to faci... ...ability to destroy, she is "Without-the power to die-" (24). Again we see the passivity of the "Loaded gun-" (1), unable to act without some animating masculine force. Does she mean she has the power to destroy the poet within, but cannot then escape from the role of reclusive outsider she has sacrificed so much to attain? Or does she mean she can destroy anyone who wishes to take this "Master" from her, but cannot kill him herself, or end her own life-options she may have wished existed for her, considering the difficulties produced by her inability to fit in to society? Although there is an irreconcilable ambiguity to this last stanza, the uncertainty somehow does not detract from the power of the work, but rather adds to it. With "Loaded Gun" Dickinson proclaims herself a warrior, ready to kill or die in defense of her self-definition, that of Poet.

Imagining the Hansen Family and Birmingham Bomb Kills Four

Alyssa Prior 2/7/13 English 3rd period Mr. Haydon ?â€Å"There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go† (Unknown Author). As a nation, the people will be faced with adversity but with every step we accept, learn, cherish and let go. Anna Quiden, writer for Newsweek magazine, describes the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. She writes this for the friends and family of te victims and all the concerned Americans across the country. Her article is filled with hope, so that the people can stand together and unite as one.Another hardship that has shaped America was written in the New York Times in 1963, by Claude Sittton called â€Å"Birmingham Bomb kills 4. † This article was written about the riots and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement in thedeep south. He writes to inform the people of the events happening and to describe that there was no such thing as â€Å"separate but equal† in the radically divided town of Birmingham. In the articles â€Å"Imagining the Hansen Family† and â€Å"Birmingham Bomb Kills 4,† both authors use tragic imagery to passionately portray the devastation, destruction and death caused by hate. The article by Anna Quiden, â€Å"Imagining the Hansen Family,† she uses dramatic imagery to portray the feeling ofdevastation and destruction of the horrific event that changed America. In this article by Quiden, she relies back to the hard past. â€Å"They left behind not so much monumental mass of rubble, but tricycles, sweater drawers, love letters, flower beds, books, video cameras, unpaid bills, untidy kitchens, mothers, fathers,uncles, brothers, sons, daughters, friends from Maine to California. 9/11 didn’t just affect the people who died, it affected a whole nation, whether you knew people that wereinvolved or not. So much was left behind, houses, families, a life. The author uses this form of polysyndeton to show that they didn’t take down buildings when they crashed those two planes, but they took people’s lives. â€Å"But what they were doing was blowing families to bits. † It really sets a somber tone, seeing all was lost in this one day, in these few hours. It makes it feel more real, having all the factors of, the daily routine of life.This uses logos, pathos, and ethos in just this one quote. The emotion pours out of the article, the logic in all that was lost, and the reputation of Americans. Hardships happen every day, all throughout American history, there will be some in the future, some in the present, and some in the past that have shaped us a nation. ?We often look back to our past to see where we have come. In the â€Å"Birmingham Bomb Kills 4† by Claude Sitton, he uses vivid imagery to describe the scenes of the tragic bombing on the dangerous s treets of Birmingham.In the article, Sitton reports, â€Å"The blast blew gaping holes through the walls†¦ Floors of offices in the rear of the sanctuary appeared near collapse†¦ splintered window frames, glass and timbers. † Four little girls were subject t the bomb in the church. Sitton explains that three of children’s parents are teachers. He shows the true tragedy of death of innocent children in the church, a holy place of God. The article sets a sympathetic and knowledgeable tone. It has all the facts from the incident, how they found the girls â€Å"huddled under debris. † This quote paints a picture for the reader, bringing the scene to the eyes.The imagery is clear and realistic. Sitton probably entered these type of details through imagery to appeal to your emotional senses of pathos. This tragic imagery puts a feeling of sadness into the article, not only touching the reader’s heart but putting the author’s emotion into the ar ticle too. America has experienced tragedies every day, but these events are what make this nation, The UNITED States of America. In conclusion, both Quindlen and Sitton show both sides of tragic events. The imagery used in the articles sets a realistic tone, emphasizing the great emotion that came with both of these tragedies.Innocent lives were taken, four little girls and other countless blacks in the civil rights era and innocent lives in the collapse of the twin towers of 2011. Both changing a nation, shaping it and bringing the people together. Unbelievable events of sorrow still impact America to this day, as the nation honor the lives to the people that sacrificed for all we have, for America. In the articles, both authors use vivid imagery of American disasters and the loss of innocent lives to emphasize its effect on the people that rise as nation through the debris of hate. ?

Lolita Through a Marxist-Feminist Lens Lolita by...

Lolita Through a Marxist-Feminist Lens After looking past its controversial sexual nature, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita can be read as a criticism of the capitalist system. Nabokov uses the relationship between the novels narrator, Humbert Humbert, and the novels namesake, Lolita, as an extended metaphor to showcase the systems inherent exploitive nature in a way that shocks the reader out of their false consciousness, by making the former a man in the position of power - a repulsive, manipulative pedophile — and the latter a young female victim — as well as a spoiled, vapid, unruly child. Each is to the other nothing more than a commodity — Lolita being the perfect consumer and Humbert Humbert being a man of privilege who views others†¦show more content†¦However, Humbert Humbert’s arrogance causes him to hold himself above all others, except when hes trying to charm the reader with his false modesty — but it is transparent. By making his narrator so vulgarly arrogant, Nabokov is revealing the capitalist persona he’s created, leaving the reader disenchanted with Humbert Humbert and his charm. Humbert Humbert arrives in Ramsdale with a small amount of money from his deceased rich American uncle and Lolita is instantly taken with his Hollywood good-looks. She was raised in a middle class house, where putting on airs of being wealthier and more sophisticated than one truly is — traits which Humbert Humbert actually possesses — was taught to her by a single, uninterested mother. Lolita is by nature at the bottom of the hierarchy because of her sex and her age, as well as the fact that the reader only sees her through the narrators gaze, but her consumerism makes her restraint all the more difficult to overcome. She is a modern child, an avid reader of movie magazines, an expert in dream-slow close-ups, (49) which gave her unrealistic expectations of love’s value and places her squarely in the object position. Lolita finds solace in material things, objects with no true use or value: movies, movie magazines, stylish clothes, etc., Kinsey 3 and throws tantrums on a regular basis. She had thrown one