Family Symbolism In Literature - 1134 Words

Symbolism Conveyed Through Works About Family In literature, authors often utilize symbolism, using something tangible or even a person to represent an idea. Whether interpreting a poem, short story, or novel, it is possible to identify symbolism if it exists, and most times allows a more entertaining experience for the reader. Through the unit entitled Family, many of the works that are studied contain literary symbols that can be interpreted. Specifically, this essay will discuss symbols in My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, and Daddy by Sylvia Plath. The first work studied in the family unit that contains obvious use of symbolism is My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke. In a poem with a name of a†¦show more content†¦Lastly, in lines fifteen and sixteen, this is the final dance of the night, as it s the child s bedtime, but he doesn t want to let go of his father s shirt just yet. This image, father whisking the kid aw ay to bed, shows that, no matter how tough the waltz was, this kid still loves his papa. Behind the joy of the dance and the father-son love in this poem, there s a hint of violence. While there is no indication of overt abuse, there are hints of violent tension throughout the poem. For example, lines one and two clearly establish that Papa is drunk, which is a situation that can-and likely will- lead to violence in any situation. This is expanded upon in line three, when the speaker has slipped in the inevitable end to violence – death. The child hung on like death. He s holding on to his father so hard that he s as inescapable as death. In what could be a happy poem about this father and son s relationship, we see death creep in to frighten us right from the start. In lines nine and ten, the father holds the son s hand to lead him in the dance but, because his knuckle is battered, this posture seems, if not violent, at least rough. Battered is an intense word to use for a k nuckle, and could imply some lurking violence. In line eleven, Papa doesn t seem like he s being violent intentionally here, but he s accidentally hurting his child. Perhaps the child is too scared to speak up and say ow when his ear scrapes his dad s belt buckle. TheShow MoreRelatedThe Great Gatsby And Harlem By Langston Hughes1089 Words   |  5 Pagesof literature to show their readers what it would be like to experience this time frame. Some examples of these works include The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and â€Å"Harlem† by Langston Hughes. Both of these pieces of literature include literary elements to appeal to the reader’s senses and imagination. A prevalent theme that has been found in works of the roaring 20’s is the wealth that someone may or may not achieve. Literary elements such as figurative language, irony, and symbolism areRead MoreAnalysis Of The Ultimate Safari By Nadine Gordimer818 Words   |  4 PagesEats The Land at Home† by Kofi Awoonor, a public figure in Ghana. Ghana had a military government ( Awoonor 35). African Literature is expressed through tournaments of mankind, such as war, through atmosphere, tone, and symbolism. The atmosphere of the poems and the short story is a dark and depressing showing how life was during the war. In â€Å" The Ultimate Safari† is about a family who were fleeing from Mozambique to South Africa due to the disaster of the civil war and bandits (Gordimer 2). GordimerRead MoreThe Cherry Orchard Essay751 Words   |  4 PagesModernist Literature In the world of literature, modernism is represented by the moving away from traditional rules and practices, looking at man’s place in the world with a realistic view, and experimenting with form and style. Modernism focuses on the use of language and the function of the actual writing. Modernist literature moves away from Romanticism by exploring subject matter that in the past was viewed as boring and often pessimistic. Instead of using language that is poetic, the languageRead MoreGood vs. Evil in â€Å"a Good Man Is Hard to Find† Essay1052 Words   |  5 PagesO’Connor shows her readers a realistic look at their own mortality in â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find.† The story is about a family of five, a father, mother, grandmother, and two children, starting out on a vacation to Florida from Georgia. The family, on their way to a routine vacation, takes a detour that will change their lives forever. Through the use of literary elements like symbol ism and characterization, O’Connor creates a theme of good vs. evil, which can be felt throughout the story by tappingRead MoreSymbolism in A Good Man is Hard to Find Essay1027 Words   |  5 PagesThe short story â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† by Flannery O’Connor, is bombarded with symbolism. In short stories symbolism is the literary element that helps the reader depict the picture and actions in their own minds. Whether it be from characters’ names or the designs on the characters’ shirts, every detail in this story has a purpose. Flannery O’Connor was known for her strong religious background, Catholicism, and used her faith as the underlying message in her works. In the story, â€Å"ARead MoreBarn Burning by William Faulkner1028 Words   |  5 Pagesworks, but â€Å"Barn Burning† was one of his well-known stories because of the many different of elements of literature in which Faulkner chose to include. Faulkner was known as a writer who could properly convey many different elements of literature, such as symbolism, conflict, tone, and many other elements of plot within his stories. In â€Å"Barn Burning†, William Faulkner most commonly uses symbolism and conflict to emphasize the obstacles that Sarty has to face in his youth years. Writers often use theRead MoreEssay On Color Symbolism In The Book Thief1020 Words   |  5 PagesColors are used in literature to describe the different emotions of a character. Colorism is a type of symbolism used in literature. Death uses color symbolism in The Book Thief to describe a characters emotion because he is the narrator. Color symbolism in literature is when the author uses a color to symbolize the characters emotion; it occurs throughout The Book Thief. Red, white, and gray or silver are the colors that are used the most frequently and have the biggest meanings throughout theRead MoreEveryday Use by Alice Walker: A Look at Symbolism and Family Values879 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"Everyday Use†, is a story about a family of African Americans that are faced with moral issues involving what true inheritance is and who deserves it. Two sisters and two hand stitched quilts become the center of focus for this short story. Walker paints for us the most vivid represe ntation through a third person perspective of family values and how people from the same environment and upbringing can become different types of people. Like most peoples families there is a dynamic of people involvedRead MoreEudora Welty s A Worn Path854 Words   |  4 Pagesdifficulty aroused by nature and disapproving townspeople but triumphs and succeeds her goal. The use of characterization and symbolism creates A Worn Path by representing a strong and significant protagonist, as well as offering a symbolic meaning of life and courage when faced with love. The short story contains many elements of literature, but characterization and symbolism are two that make the story relatable and enjoyable and give off a sense of comfort and empowerment through Phoenix. The elementRead MoreThe Symbolism of Water1381 Words   |  6 PagesThe Symbolism of Water Many works of literature use symbols to represent abstract ideas. One symbol that is commonly used is water. Water is a viable symbol because it is versatile. It can be used to represent many different ideals because water in itself is ever changing. Water is used in many works to represent such ideals as death, life, love, betrayal, purity, holiness, and so on. Giglamesh, the Old Testament, Egyptian Poetry, and The Odyssey all have symbolized water to represent an idea

Bite Me A Love Story Chapter 22 Free Essays

22. Meeting at the Palace RIVERA They traded in the Ford at the city motor pool for one that had a Plexiglas divider between the front and rear seats. Cavuto’s knees were pressed against the glove compartment, since the seat didn’t adjust, but it was worth the trade-off. We will write a custom essay sample on Bite Me: A Love Story Chapter 22 or any similar topic only for you Order Now It turned out the organic dog biscuits that Rivera had bought gave Marvin gas. He now had his own little glass partition in which to exhaust, and the inspectors drank their coffee relatively free of doggy stench. â€Å"I don’t sleep well during the day,† Cavuto said. â€Å"Roger that,† said Rivera. â€Å"I feel like I’ve been up for a week.† He dialed his messages, then looked at his partner. â€Å"Fifteen unplayed messages? Are we out of the service area or something?† â€Å"You turned it off when we were zeroing in on that litter of dangerous kittens.† Rivera tried to drink his coffee while handling the phone and ended up pulling the car over to the curb. â€Å"They’re all from the Emperor. Something about a ship down at Pier Nine being full of old vampires.† â€Å"No,† said Cavuto. â€Å"There are no more vampires until I’ve had two full cups of coffee and a healthy piss. That’s my personal rule.† Cavuto keyed the radio and checked into dispatch. They did most of their communications by cell phone these days, but there were still rules. If you were a rolling unit, dispatch needed to know where you were. â€Å"Rivera and Cavuto,† said the dispatcher. â€Å"I have you guys tagged to call if there are any cases of cats attacking humans, is that right?† â€Å"Roger, dispatch.† â€Å"Well, live the dream, Inspector, we have report of a giant cat attacking a man at Baker and Beach. We have a unit on the scene reporting nothing.† Cavuto looked at Rivera. â€Å"That’s the Palace of Fine Arts. The Marina is new territory.† â€Å"There might not be anything now. The uniforms don’t know to look for clothes with dust and I don’t want them to. Tell them we’re on the way.† â€Å"Dispatch, we are responding. Tell unit on scene that we’ll take care of it. Part of an ongoing investigation of a 5150 making false reports.† Cavuto grinned and looked at his partner. â€Å"Nice improvisation.† â€Å"Yeah, but I think this cat might be out of the bag, Rivera.† â€Å"I hope not.† They rolled up to the great faux stone classical dome, the only building left from the World Exposition of 1911, when San Francisco was trying to show the world that it had recovered from the earthquake of ’06. The uniform unit was on the far side of the reflection pool, standing by their squad car. Cavuto waved them on. â€Å"We got this, guys. Thanks.† What there wasn’t, was a huge shaved vampire cat attacking a guy. â€Å"You think it’s a hoax?† asked Cavuto. â€Å"Pretty outrageous coincidence if it is.† Cavuto got out of the car and let Marvin out, who waited for his leash to be attached, then dragged Cavuto over to a tree by the pond to have a wee. Swans who had settled under the trees for the night stirred and gave Marvin dirty looks. â€Å"Nothing here,† said Cavuto. â€Å"Marvin’s not doing his signal thing.† Rivera’s phone chirped and he looked at the screen. â€Å"It’s Allison Green, the creepy little Goth girl.† â€Å"If she called this in I will put her in Juvi overnight.† â€Å"Rivera,† Rivera said into the phone. â€Å"Turn your sun jackets on right now,† she said. â€Å"Right fucking now, both of you.† Rivera looked at Cavuto. â€Å"Turn on the LEDs on your coat, Nick.† â€Å"What?† â€Å"Do it. She’s not fucking with us.† Rivera hit the switch on the cuff of his sun jacket and the LEDs came on blindingly bright. A few blocks away they heard a man scream. Marvin barked. â€Å"Oh, trs bon, cop. Byez,† Abby said. The line went dead. â€Å"The fuck was that about?† said Cavuto. ROLF Rolf was actually looking forward to shooting someone. After hundreds of years, you get bored with killing, with hunting. The three of them had gone through cycles of stealthy killing of the unwanted, to outright slaughter of whole villages, to long periods where there was no killing at all. But it had been fifty years since he’d actually had to shoot someone. The change of pace was nice. Of course, it was messy, bodies, waste of good blood, but better that than having policemen running around telling people about them. No matter what kind of debaucheries they had indulged in over the years, and there had been many kinds-these too went in cycles-the one rule they held fast to was â€Å"stay hidden.† And to stay hidden, you couldn’t permit yourself to get so bored that you didn’t care about living. Well, surviving. Maybe it was just the two cops from last night. Elijah, in a rare moment of lucidity finally admitted that there were only two policemen that he knew of, and because they had taken money from the sale of the old vampire’s art collection, they did not want the secret known. Clearly though, they were beyond their depth with the cats. He and Bella had made short work of the smaller cats. They used rapid-fire pellet guns, nearly silent, that fired pellets containing a liquid that destroyed vampire flesh on contact-a heinous, herbal mixture that someone in China had discovered hundreds of years ago. A weak UV light on the front of the weapons held the animals in solid form long enough for the pellets to impact. The pellets would injure a human vampire, but they were devastating to a feline. The Chinese had somehow tuned it to the cats. They had used the mixture to contain every outbreak since its discovery. Rolf remembered firing it from crossbows. Rolf keyed his cell phone, then called the emergency number and reported a man being attacked by a giant cat. Then he set up the bipod on his rifle, zeroed the twenty-power scope in on one of the swans under a eucalyptus tree, and lay down to wait. Seven minutes later the police cruiser arrived. They were both fresh-faced young men with bright pink life auras. From his rooftop, four blocks away, Rolf could just make out the squawking of their radios. They knew nothing. They panned their flashlights under the bushes surrounding the pond, and he watched them shake their heads to one another. Seventeen minutes after the call, the brown unmarked car pulled up and Rolf relaxed into his shooting posture. These were the two from the night before. The big red dog. The dog looked his way, briefly, then dragged the big cop down to a tree by the pond. He put the crosshairs on the thinner cop’s face. But no, a headshot was arrogant. He had to make two shots, very quickly, so he would go for the center of their bodies. Shoot the thin cop first, then pan to the big one. A bigger target. Even if his first shot didn’t kill him, it would drop him. He waited, waited for them to get clear of the car and the cover. The thin cop was walking toward the other one, then stopped to take a phone call. Rolf put the crosshairs over his heart and began to squeeze the trigger. Then the entire side of his head seemed to explode with pain and he screamed and grabbed at the flames that were shooting out of his empty eye socket. TOMMY â€Å"Are we doing this right?† Tommy asked. They were several blocks behind Rolf, who was moving so smoothly and easily through the Marina district that Tommy would have thought he lived there and was out for his evening jog. Except that no one in the Marina would be wearing a black duster. It would either be cashmere or Gore-Tex, business or fitness. The Marina was a rich, fit neighborhood. â€Å"We’re following him,† said Abby. â€Å"How many ways can you do that?† Jody was leading them. She held up a hand for them to stop. The blond vampire had stopped at the corner of a four-story apartment building and was scaling it using just the space between the bricks as handholds. Tommy looked around and spotted a flat-roofed building down the alley. â€Å"That one has a fire escape. We’ll be above him, we can watch him.† â€Å"I don’t think watching is going to be enough,† Jody said. â€Å"He looks badass,† said Abby. â€Å"He’s watching those cops over at the Palace.† â€Å"He won’t just shoot a cop,† said Tommy. â€Å"Why would he shoot a cop?† â€Å"Plain clothes unit pulling in,† Jody said. â€Å"It’s Rivera and Cavuto.† â€Å"And Marvin,† Abby said. â€Å"He knows they know,† said Tommy. â€Å"We need to go,† Jody said. â€Å"Abby, you have Rivera’s number?† â€Å"Yeah.† â€Å"Call him. Give me that laser thing.† â€Å"The light from their jackets magnified through the scope will work,† Tommy said. â€Å"Let’s go.† Jody ran to the edge of the roof and stopped. Abby hopped on her toes. â€Å"Spider-Man it, Countess.† â€Å"No fucking way,† Jody said, looking down just as Tommy ran by her and jumped across the alley to the next building. They were coming across the roof of a building a block away when they saw the side of the vampire’s head ignite and heard him scream. He rolled away from the gun, clawing at his face. â€Å"Too far,† Jody said. The final gap between roofs was over a full street, not an alley, and they were a floor lower than the blond vampire. â€Å"Down.† Without thinking, Tommy jumped, then said, â€Å"What the fuck did I just do?† He landed on the balls of his feet and went down to crouch, catching himself just as he was about to drive his knee into the concrete. He looked up. Jody was still on the roof. â€Å"C’mon, Red, I’m not going up there alone.† â€Å"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,† she said, and then landed beside him and rolled. When he saw she wasn’t hurt, he said, â€Å"Graceful.† â€Å"He’s getting up,† she said, and she pointed at the next building. Tommy knew if he thought about it, he’d never do it, so he just started climbing up the corner of the building as fast as he could. He’d done this before. He didn’t remember it, but his body did. Climbing the wall like a cat. Jody was right behind him. As he reached the top of the wall he stopped and looked back. â€Å"Sunglasses,† he whispered so faintly that only someone with vampire hearing would hear. He wedged his right hand between the bricks, then reached into his shirt pocket, flung open the sunglasses, and put them on. He couldn’t climb with the laser in his hand. He’d have to clear the top, then grab the weapon out of his pants pocket. Jody had her glasses on, too. She nodded for him to go. He coiled, and sprang to catapult himself over the edge of the wall, but in midair a bright light went off in his head and he felt himself spinning, then a bone-crushing impact on the ground. Something had hit him, probably the rifle butt. He rolled over and looked up the wall. Jody was still clinging there, six feet below the edge, too far to be hit with the rifle. The blond vampire, his face charred, was turning the rifle, working the bolt. He was going to shoot her in the face. â€Å"Jody!† He saw her let go with one hand, reach for the small of her back, then there was another blinding light. He’d lost his sunglasses during the fall. Something splatted beside him on the pavement. He could smell burned flesh, and blood. â€Å"You okay?† she said. He felt a hand on his face. â€Å"I’m kinda blind. And I think I have a couple of broken ribs.† He blinked the blood tears out of his eyes, then saw something dark, circular on the pavement. â€Å"What’s that?† â€Å"That’s the top of his skull,† Jody said. Footsteps, then Abby was there. â€Å"That was awesome. Gruesome, but awesome. You were amazing, Countess.† â€Å"Not feeling all that amazing.† â€Å"You probably should drink some blood, Tommy. You’re kind of fucked up.† He took the plastic blood pack from her and bit into it, draining almost the whole pint in seconds, feeling his bones and skin knitting together. Then Abby snatched it away from him and started drinking herself. â€Å"I feel like death on toast. I probably shouldn’t have eaten that pigeon.† MARVIN Marvin ruffed three times fast, â€Å"Biscuit, biscuit, biscuit.† Then, as he pulled Cavuto around the corner and smelled the fourth dead one he ruffed again. â€Å"Another biscuit.† Then, mission accomplished. He sat. â€Å"Marvin!† Abby said. She dropped the empty blood bag and scratched between his ears, then fed him a Gummi bear. Rivera came around the corner with his Glock drawn. Jody stood, reached past the gun, and snagged the battery out of the cop’s inside pocket. Abby did the same to Cavuto, who leveled a long orange Super Soaker at her. â€Å"Really, Ass Bear?† she said. â€Å"Really?† She snatched the squirt gun out of his hand and backhanded it a full block down the street where it shattered. â€Å"I have a gun on you, Missy,† said Rivera. â€Å"Biscuit,† Marvin ruffed. Clearly there are three dead people here and part of a fourth, and biscuits are in order. Jody snatched Rivera’s Glock out of his hand so quickly he was still in aiming position when she popped the clip out of it. Cavuto started to draw the big Desert Eagle and Abby caught his arm and leaned in close. â€Å"Ninja, please, unless you’re going to use that to take your own life out of humiliation for the squirt gun, just let it go.† She turned and looked at Tommy, who was sitting splayed-legged on the sidewalk, holding his ribs. â€Å"This fucking vampy power rocks my deepest dark.† Then back to Cavuto. â€Å"I’d slap you around a little, but I’m feeling kinda nauseous.† â€Å"Yeah,† said Cavuto. â€Å"I get that. That’s how I know you’re around.† â€Å"So you three are, all, uh, them,† said Rivera. â€Å"Not exactly them,† Tommy said. â€Å"Jody just took the top off the head of one of them.† He pointed at the charred brainpan. â€Å"He was about to take you out with a sniper rifle,† Abby said. â€Å"That’s why I called. Thanks for just doing what I said and not being an assbag, by the way.† â€Å"You’ll find the rest of him along with the rifle on the roof,† Jody said. â€Å"That’s who called in the vampire cat attack?† Cavuto said. Tommy nodded. â€Å"There are at least three of them. Maybe two, now. Very old. They came in that black yacht that’s down at Pier Nine. They are cleaning up the mess Elijah left. They must know you guys are hunting Chet and the vampire cats.† â€Å"He must have seen us last night, with the Animals. We thought the cats got Barry.† Tommy climbed to his feet. â€Å"Barry’s dead?† â€Å"Sorry,† Rivera said. â€Å"So they know about the Animals, too?† Tommy said, â€Å"The Animals were the ones who took Elijah’s art collection and blew up his yacht. Of course, they know about the Animals.† â€Å"We’ve got to get over there,† Rivera said. â€Å"They’ll be hunting the Emperor, too. He’s been calling all day about a black ship. I thought it was just more craziness. I don’t even know where to start looking for him.† Jody handed Rivera back his gun and the battery to his jacket. â€Å"Wire those back up as soon as you get back in your car. They work.† Marvin let go with a barrage of barking, which translated, â€Å"I have found some dead people and I am going to make a fuss if I don’t get a biscuit and the ear-scratch girl is dead and sick.† â€Å"Easy, Marvin,† Abby said. She steadied herself against the big dog and Cavuto caught her by the arm to keep her from falling. â€Å"I really don’t feel good.† She crumpled to the sidewalk. Tommy caught her in time to keep her head from hitting the concrete. â€Å"My tail kind of hurts.† Jody snatched Rivera’s gun out of his hand again. â€Å"Give Tommy your car keys.† â€Å"What! No!† Jody smacked Rivera’s jacket, heard a jingle, then reached in his pocket and took the keys. Rivera stood there like he was five, being dressed by his mother. Jody threw the keys to Tommy. â€Å"Take her to the loft. Foo will still be there. Maybe he can change her back in time.† â€Å"Where are you going?† Tommy said. â€Å"I’m going to the ship. Maybe I can stop one of them there. They’re going to come to the loft, so be ready.† â€Å"Not so fast, Red,† said Cavuto. â€Å"You will shut the fuck up!† Jody said. â€Å"You guys are six blocks from the Marina Safeway. The Animals should be at work, or will be there in a few minutes. That’s where I went when I wanted to find them, that’s where these vampires will go. So shag ass over there and warn them. Wire the batteries back into your jackets on the way there or they’ll have you for lunch. Call for another car if you need to, but we just saved your lives and your car is ours.† Rivera smiled. â€Å"I’m okay with that.† Cavuto said, â€Å"You are?† Tommy picked Abby up and held her with one arm while he reached into her messenger bag, took out her phone, and handed it to Jody. â€Å"Call Foo, tell him we’re coming.† â€Å"I will. Be careful.† She kissed him. â€Å"Save our minion.† â€Å"Got it,† Tommy said. Marvin whimpered at them as they went away, which translated to, â€Å"I’m worried about the ear-scratching dead girl with the Gummi bears.† How to cite Bite Me: A Love Story Chapter 22, Essay examples

Eriksons Stages of Development free essay sample

There are eight stages of development that Erikson suggests as psychosocial development, these stages are as follows; Stage 1 – this stage is the Trust vs. Mistrust stage, also known as the Infancy stage, which occurs between birth and one year of age. Erikson considers this stage the most fundamental. In this stage the child develops a since of security. Without this stage of development the child would fail to trust and live in fear. Stage 2 Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt also referred to as the Early Childhood stage, ages two to three years of age. This stage is second on the list and generates a greater sense of control within the child. Some examples of the child developing control is; gaining control of body functions, being able to choice their toys, and clothes and even food choices. Developing this stage helps the child feel confident, without it they will develop self-doubt. Stage 3 – next there is the preschool stage (ages 3 – 5), which is also referred to the Initiative vs. Guilt stage of development. This is when children begin to express their power through social interaction. This stage, developed successfully, helps children be able to lead and those how fail develop a sense of guilt. Stage 4 – Industry vs. Inferiority stage of development occurs between ages 5 to 11. This stage of development is best developed during early school years through social interactions. This is when they begin to develop a sense of pride and belief in their self. Those who don’t develop during this stage develop doubt or believe that they won’t be successful. Stage 5 – during the adolescence stage, children develop their independence. Children that receive proper encouragement will develop a strong sense of independence and control. Those who grow up not developing this stage are confused about themselves. Stage 6 Intimacy vs. Isolation stage occurs at the age of 19 to 40 years age. Young Adulthood develops personality that is vital to exploring personal relationships. Developing this personality leads to holding a committed relationship, while not developing it could mean loneliness and depression. Stage 7 Generativity vs. Stagnation also known as Middle Adulthood (40 to 65 years). During these adult years, we tend to focus on building a family and career. Success during this stage creates a active person within the community and at home. Those who fail to develop this stage feel uninvolved in the world. Stage 8 Integrity vs. Despair is the final stage of life. People in the Maturity (65 to death) stage tend to look back on their life. This is a time when those that develop this stage get a since of accomplishment, integrity and satisfaction. Those that didn’t obtain development at this stage, feels like they have wasted their time and is filled with despair. Muhammad Ali is a great character example of Stage 7- Generativity vs. Stagnation and Stage 8 Integrity vs. Despair development. Muhammad Ali was one of the best athletes of my time. According to Erikson’s theory of development, Muhammad Ali at Stage 6 had proven Erikson’s theory by having a strong sense of himself and becoming successful. The sixth stage was basically the prerequisite for Stage 7. In Stage 7, Muhammad Ali had become successful as a mature adult and was able to feel that he could pass some of his skills to the next generation. At Stage 8, Muhammad Ali in his final stage of life, is able to look back at his life and at his achievements and get a since of accomplishment, integrity and satisfaction. At all Muhammad Ali accomplished his is able to feel proud and have no regrets. Even when confronting death, he knows he will attain wisdom. Dr. Martin Luther King is another great example of Erickson’s theory of development of Stage 6 and Stage 7. Stage 6 is defined as the Intimacy and Isolation years or Young Adulthood Stage. This development stage is normally developed somewhere between ages 20 – 40 years, but for Dr. King, this stage of development was most likely developed at the early part of his life. Erikson believes that at this stage in life people are struggling trying to find their identity through intimacy and isolation. Erikson stated, â€Å"Once people have established their identities, they are ready to make long-term commitments†. At stage 7, Middle Adulthood, Dr. King may have asked the question,† What can I do to make my life count? † During this stage of generativity has broad application to family, relationships, work, and society. Generativity, then is primarily the concern in establishing and guiding the next generation the concept is meant to include†¦productivity and creativity. †(Slater, 2003) Dr. King, in my opinion is the perfect example for validating Erikson’s theory of Stage 7. The task of developing his personality at this stage in order to contribute something to society and helping to guide future generations was accomplished. Dr. Martin Luther King was a perfect character for Erikson’s Theory Psychosocial Development. Eriksons Theory of Psychosocial Development is very interesting. I find it fascinating to be able to break down a person’s life in a way to see how they develop. I agree with Erikson’s theories totally. I can look at people I know and see the stages they missed in their life and if they are on track. Even looking at myself I realize where I need to be, so I can prepare for the Final stage (Stage 8) of my life. References: Cherry, K. , Eriksons Theory of Psychosocial Development Retrieved from http://psychology. about. com/od/psychosocialtheories/a/psychosocial. htm Allen, L. , (2008). What the Stages of Life are and What They Mean.

Periods of English Literature Essay Example

Periods of English Literature Essay For convenience of discussion, historians divide the continuity of English literature into segments of time that are called periods. The exact number, dates, and names of these periods vary,but the list below conforms to widespread practice. The list is followed by a brief comment on each period, in chronological order. 450-1066 Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period 1066-1500 Middle English Period 1500-1660 The Renaissance (or Early Modern) 1558-1603 Elizabethan Age 603-1625 Jacobean Age 1625-1649 Caroline Age 1649-1660 Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum) 1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period 1660-1700 The Restoration 1700-1745 The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope) 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson) 1785-1830 The Romantic Period 1832-1901 The Victorian Period 1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites 1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence 1901-1914 The Edwardian Period 1910-1936 The Georgian Period 1914- The Modern Period 1945- PostmodernismThe Old English Period, or the Anglo-Sa xon Period, extended from the invasion of Celtic England by Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) in the first half of the fifth century to the conquest of England in 1066 by the Norman French under the leadership of William the Conqueror. Only after they had been converted to Christianity in the seventh century did the Anglo-Saxons, whose earlier literature had been oral, begin to develop a written literature. (See oral formulaic poetry. A high level of culture and learning was soon achieved in various monasteries; the eighth-century churchmen Bede and Alcuin were major scholars who wrote in Latin, the standard language of international scholarship. The poetry written in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon, known also as Old English, included Beowulf (eighth century), the greatest of Germanic epic poems, and such lyric laments as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Deor, all of which, though composed by Christian writers, reflect the conditions of life in the pagan past.Caedmon and Cy newulf were poets who wrote on biblical and religious themes, and there survive a number of Old English lives of saints, sermons, and paraphrases of books of the Bible. Alfred the Great, a West Saxon king (871-99) who for a time united all the kingdoms of southern England against a new wave of Germanic invaders, the Vikings, was no less important as a patron of literature than as a warrior. He himself translated into Old English various books of Latin prose, supervised translations by other hands, and instituted the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, a continuous record, year by year, of important events in England.See H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (1912); S. B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (1965); C. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature (1966). Middle English Period. The four and a half centuries between the Norman Conquest in 1066, which effected radical changes in the language, life, and culture of England, and about 1500, when the standard literary langu age (deriving from the dialect of the London area) had become recognizably modern English—that is, similar to the language we speak and write today.The span from 1100 to 1350 is sometimes discriminated as the Anglo- Norman Period, because the non-Latin literature of that time was written mainly in Anglo-Norman, the French dialect spoken by the invaders who had established themselves as the ruling class of England, and who shared a literary culture with French-speaking areas of mainland Europe. Among the important and influential works from this period are Marie de Frances Lais (c. 1180—which may have been written while Marie was at the royal court in England), Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meuns Roman de la Rose (12257-75? , and Chretien de Troyes Erec et Enide (the first Arthurian romance, C. 1165) and Yvain (c. 1177-81). When the native vernacular—descended from Anglo-Saxon, but with extensive lexical and syntactic elements assimilated from Anglo-Norman, and known as middle English—came into general literary use, it was at first mainly the vehicle for religious and homiletic writings. The first great age of primarily secular literature—rooted in the Anglo-Norman, French, Irish, and Welsh, as well as the native English literature—was the second half of the fourteenth century.This was the age of Chaucer and John Gower, of William Langlands great religious and satirical poem Piers Plowman, and of the anonymous master who wrote four major poems in complex alliterative meter, including Pearl, an elegy, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This last work is the most accomplished of the English chivalric romances; the most notable prose romance was Thomas Malorys Morte dArthur, written a century later. The outstanding poets of the fifteenth century were the Scottish Chaucerians, who included King James I of Scotland and Robert Henryson.The fifteenth century was more important for popular literature than for the artful lit erature addressed to the upper classes: it was the age of many excellent songs, secular and religious, and of folk ballads, as well as the flowering time of the miracle and morality plays, which were written and produced for the general public. See W. L. Renwick and H. Orton, The Beginnings of English Literature to Skelton (rev. , 1952); H. S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (1947); Edward Vasta, ed. , Middle English Survey: Critical Essays (1965). The Renaissance, 1500-1660.There is an increasing use by historians of the term early modern to denote this era: see the entry Renaissance. Elizabethan Age. Strictly speaking, the period of the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603); the term Elizabethan, however, is often used loosely to refer to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, even after the death of Elizabeth. This was a time of rapid development in English commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling—the defeat of the Spanish Armada occurred in 158 8. It was a great (in drama the greatest) age of English literature—the age of Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe,Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and many other extraordinary writers of prose and of dramatic, lyric, and narrative poetry. A number of scholars have looked back on this era as one of intellectual coherence and social order; an influential example was E. M. W. Tillyards The Elizabethan World Picture (1943). Recent historical critics, however, have emphasized its intellectual uncertainties and political and social conflicts; see new historicism. Jacobean Age. The reign of James I (in Latin, Jacobus), 1603-25, which followed that of Queen Elizabeth.This was the period in prose writings of Bacon, John Donnes sermons, Robert Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy, and the King James translation of the Bible. It was also the time of Shakespeares greatest tragedies and tragicomedies, and of major writings by other notable poets and playwrights including Donne, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Lady Mary Wroth, Sir Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Webster, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, and Elizabeth Cary, whose notable biblical drama The Tragedy of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Jewry was first long play by an Englishwoman to be published.See Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934); Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (1945); C. V. Wedgewood, Seventeenth Century English Literature (1950). Caroline Age. The reign of Charles I, 1625-49; the name is derived from Carolus, the Latin version of Charles. This was the time of the English Civil War fought between the supporters of the king (known as Cavaliers) and the supporters of Parliament (known as Roundheads/ from their custom of wearing their hair cut short).John Milton began his writing during this period; it was the age also of the religious poet George Herbert and of the prose writers Rober t Burton and Sir Thomas Browne. Associated with the court were the Cavalier poets, writers of witty and polished lyrics of courtship and gallantry. The group included Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew. Robert Herrick, although a country parson, is often classified with the Cavalier poets because, like them, he was a Son of Ben—that is, an admirer and follower of Ben Jonson—in many of his lyrics of love and gallant compliment.See Robin Skelton, Cavalier Poets (1960). The Commonwealth Period, also known as the Puritan Interregnum,extends from the end of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy under Charles II in 1660. In this period England was ruled by Parliament under the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell; his death in 1658 marked the dissolution of the Commonwealth. Drama almost disappeared for eighteen years after the Puritans closed the public theaters in September 1642, not only on moral and re ligious grounds, but also to prevent public assemblies that might foment civil disorder.It was the age of Miltons political pamphlets, of Hobbes political treatise Leviathan (1651), of the prose writers Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, and Izaak Walton, and of the poets Henry Vaughan, Edmund Waller, Abraham Cowley, Sir William Davenant, and Andrew Marvell. The Neoclassical Period, 1660-1785; see the entry neoclassic and romantic. Restoration. This period takes its name from the restoration of the Stuart line (Charles II) to the English throne in 1660, at the end of the Commonwealth; it is specified as lasting until 1700.The urbanity, wit, and licentiousness of the life centering on the court, in sharp contrast to the seriousness and sobriety of the earlier Puritan regime, is reflected in much of the literature of this age. The theaters came back to vigorous life after the revocation of the ban placed on them by the Puritans in 1642, although they became more exlusive ly oriented toward the aristocratic classes than they had been earlier.Sir George Etherege, William Wycherley, William Congreve, and John Dryden developed the distinctive comedy of manners called Restoration comedy, and Dryden, Thomas Otway, and other playwrights developed the even more distinctive form of tragedy called heroic drama. Dryden was the major poet and critic, as well as one of the major dramatists. Other poets were the satirists Samuel Butler and the Earl of Rochester; notable writers in prose, in addition to the masterly Dryden, were Samuel Pepys, Sir William Temple, the religious writer in vernacular English John Bunyan, and the philosopher John Locke.Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her living by her pen and one of the most inventive and versatile authors of the age, wrote poems, highly successful plays, and Oroonoko, the tragic story of a noble African slave, an important precursor of the novel. See Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934); L. I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (1932). Augustan Age. The original Augustan Age was the brilliant literary period of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid under the Roman emperor Augustus (27 B. . -A. D. 14). In the eighteenth century and later, however, the term was frequently applied also to the literary period in England from approximately 1700 to 1745. The leading writers of the time (such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Joseph Addison) themselves drew the parallel to the Roman Augustans, and deliberately imitated their literary forms and subjects, their emphasis on social concerns, and their ideals of moderation, decorum, and urbanity. (See neoclassicism. A major representative of popular, rather than classical, writing in this period was the novelist, journalist, and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a brilliant letterwriter in a great era of letter-writing; she also wrote poems of wit and candor that violated the conventional moral and i ntellectual roles assigned to women in the Augustan era. Age of Sensibility. The period between the death of Alexander Pope in 1744, and 1785, which was one year after the death of Samuel Johnson and one year before Robert Burns Poems, Chiefly in Scottish Dialect. Alternative dates frequently proposed for the end of this period are 1789 and 1798; see Romantic Period. ) An older name for this half-century, the Age of Johnson, stresses the dominant position of Samuel Johnson (1709-84) and his literary and intellectual circle, which included Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon, and Hester Lynch Thrale. These authors on the whole represented a culmination of the literary and critical modes of neoclassicism and the worldview of the Enlightenment.The more recent name, Age of Sensibility, puts its stress on the emergence, in other writers of the 1740s and later, of new cultural attitudes, theories of literature, and types of poetry; we find in this period, for exam ple, a growing sympathy for the Middle Ages, a vogue of cultural primitivism, an awakening interest in ballads and other folk literature, a turn from neoclassic correctness and its emphasis on judgment and restraint to an emphasis on instinct and feeling, the development of a literature of sensibility, and above all the exaltation by some critics of original genius and a bardic poetry of the sublime and visionary imagination. Thomas Gray expressed this anti-neoclassic sensibility and set of values in his Stanzas to Mr. Bentley (1752): But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration given, That burns in Shakespeares or in Miltons page, The pomp and prodigality of Heaven. Other poets who showed similar shifts in thought and taste were William Collins and Joseph and Thomas Warton (poets who, together with Gray, began in the 1740s the vogue for what Samuel Johnson slightingly referred to as ode, and elegy, and sonnet), Christopher Smart, and William Cowper.Thomas Percy published his influential Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), which included many folk ballads and a few medieval metrical romances, and James Macpherson in the same decade published his greatly doctored (and in considerable part fabricated) versions of the poems of the Gaelic bard Ossian (Oisin) which were enormously popular throughout Europe. This was also the period of the great novelists, some realistic and satiric and some sentimental: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne. See W. J. Bate, From Classic to Romantic (1946); Northrop Frye, Toward Defining an Age of Sensibility, in Fables of Identity (1963), and ed. Romanticism Reconsidered (1965); F. W. Hilles and Harold Bloom, eds. , From Sensibility to Romanticism (1965). Romantic Period. The Romantic Period in English literature is dated as eginning in 1785 (see Age of Sensibility)—or alternatively in 1789 (the outbreak of the French Revolution), or in 1798 (the publication of Wil liam Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridges Lyrical Ballads)—and as ending either in 1830 or else in 1832, the year in which Sir Walter Scott died and the passage of the Reform Bill signaled the political preoccupations of the Victorian era. For some characteristics of the thought and writings of this remarkable and diverse literary period, as well as for a list of suggested readings, see neoclassic and romantic. The term is often applied also to literary movements in European countries and America; see periods of American literature. Romantic characteristics are usually said to have been manifested first in Germany and England in the 1790s, and not to have become prominent in France and America until two or three decades after that time.Major English writers of the period, in addition to Wordsworth and Coleridge, were the poets Robert Burns, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Walter Savage Landor; the prose writers Charles Lamb, William Hazlit t, Thomas De Quincey, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt; and the novelists Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley. The span between 1786 and the close of the eighteenth century was that of the Gothic romances by William Beckford, Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Godwin, and, above all, Anne Radcliffe. Victorian Period. The beginning of the Victorian Period is frequently dated 1830, or alternatively 1832 (the passage of the first Reform Bill), and sometimes 1837 (the accession of Queen Victoria); it extends to the death of Victoria in 1901.Historians often subdivide the long period into three phases: Early Victorian (to 1848), Mid-Victorian (1848-70), and Late Victorian (1870-1901). Much writing of the period, whether imaginative or didactic, in verse or in prose, dealt with or reflected the pressing social, economic, religious, and intellectual issues and problems of that era. (For a summary of these issues, and also for the derogatory use of the term Victorian, see Victori an and Victorianism. ) Among the notable poets were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manley Hopkins (whose remarkably innovative poems, however, did not become known until they were published, long after his death, in 1918).The most prominent essayists were Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Arnold, and Walter Pater; the most distinguished of many excellent novelists (this was a great age of English prose fiction) were Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, George Meredith, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and Samuel Butler. For prominent literary movements during the Victorian era, see the entries on Pre-Raphaelites, Aestheticism, and Decadence. Edwardian Period. The span between the death of Victoria (1901) and the beginning of World War I (1914) is named for King Edward VII, who reigned from 1901 to 1910.Poets writing at the time included Thomas Hardy (who gave up novels for poetry at the beginning of the century), Alfred Noyes, William Butler Yeats, and Rudyard Kipling; dramatists included Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, James Barrie, John Galsworthy, George Bernard Shaw, and the playwrights of the Celtic Revival such as Lady Gregory, Yeats, and John M. Synge. Many of the major achievements were in prose fiction— works by Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Henry James, who published his major final novels, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl, between 1902 and 1904.Georgian Period is a term applied both to the reigns in England of the four successive Georges (1714-1830) and (more frequently) to the reign of George V (1910-36). Georgian poets usually designates a group of writers in the latter era who loomed large in four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry, which were published by Edward Marsh between 1912 and 1922. Marsh favored writers we now tend to regard as relatively minor poets such as Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, Ralph Hodgson, W. H. Davies, and John Masefield. The term Georgian poetry has come to connote verse which is mainly rural in subject matter, deft and delicate rather than bold and passionate in manner, and traditional rather than experimental in technique and form.Modern Period. The application of the term modern, of course, varies with the passage of time, but it is frequently applied specifically to the literature written since the beginning of World War I in 1914; see modernism and postmodernism. This period has been marked by persistent and multidimensioned experiments in subject matter, form, and style, and has produced major achievements in all the literary genres. Among the notable writers are the poets W. B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, and Seamus Heaney; the novelists Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Doroth y Richardson, Virginia Woolf, ?. ?.Forster, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer; the dramatists G. ?. Shaw, Sean OCasey, Noel Coward, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Brendan Behan, Frank McGuinness, and Tom Stoppard. The modern age was also an important era for literary criticism; among the innovative English critics were T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, Virginia Woolf, E R. Leavis, and William Empson. (See New Criticism. ) This entry has followed what has been the widespread practice of including under English literature writers in the English language from all the British Isles. A number of the authors listed above, were in fact natives of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.Of the Modern Period especially it can be said that much of the greatest English literature was written by the Irish writers Yeats, PERSONA, TONE, AND VOICE 21 7 Shaw, Joyce, OCasey, Beckett, Iris Murdoch, and Seamus Heaney. And in recent decades, some of the most notable lite rary achievements in the English language have been written by natives of recently liberated English colonies (who are often referred to as postcolonial authors)/ including the South Africans Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and Athol Fugard; the West Indians V. S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott; the Nigerians Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka; and the Indian novelists R. K. Narayan and Salman Rushdie. See postcolonial studies. The Postmodern Period is a name sometimes applied to the era after World War