Traveling through the dark

1) while driving down a narrow road he hits a pregnant deer and he is faced with the decision of whether or not to push it over the canyon with the rest of the road kill or not. He sat in his car for a while and weighed to pros and cons but then decided to do the responsible thing and pull her off the road so there aren’t any more accidents. And although its sad that the fawn never got to live, its better then the alternative of trying to survive on its own without its mother. The man’s “only swerving” is referring to his hesitation when he realizes the deer is pregnant, he had first planned on just throwing her over into the canyon. When he says “to swerve might make more dead” he is meaning that if he deviates or swerves from his plan then other people will most likely crash and die.

2) The actual title, Traveling through the dark, brings to your mind the sense of sight, it also gives you a time of day from which you can imagine the poem taking place. The dark could also be referring to his judgment which is clouded and unsure when he realizes the deer is pregnant.

3) There is a possible rhyme between line 14 with red and 16 with listen. And on lines 11 at the beginning of line with alive and on line 12 with beside. And in the forth stanza engine and listen both end in the same sound.

Literary terms 7-8

Parody: an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect

· Example White and Nerdy vs. Ridin’ Dirty

· Function: a Parody is basically a spoof. They take the rhythm of one thing, such as the song, and change to words. They can be used in songs and literature.

Point of view: a particular attitude or way of considering a matter.

· Example: third person (omniscient)

· Function: This is a narrative mode in which the reader is presented the story by a narrator with an overarching point of view, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story, regardless of the presence of certain characters, including everything all of the characters are thinking and feeling. This is a nice point of view to have in a story with a lot of characters and a lot going on so that you can get the whole idea across by having one central bystander narrating the story who has no impact on the events happening in the book.

My Last Duchess

1) Favor - overgenerous preferential treatment. Officious - assertive authority in an annoyingly domineering way, esp. with regard to petty or trivial matter. Munificence - larger or more generous than is usual or necessary

2) He is speaking to the workers of his soon to be father in law. The people are there setting up for the wedding. The Duke shows them around the palace and tells the story about his last wife’s murder. This most likely makes the people skeptical of him, even though I’m sure they are thinking it will never happen again, which gives the friends of the future a peace of mind.

3) The Duke is obviously rich and powerful and he has a reputation of higher class to uphold, which makes him very self centered. His former wife was threatening that (by being nice to everyone) and he finally snapped and killed her.

4) As I said before his former wife was very nice to everyone, she was an outgoing person and she was the complete opposite of the Duke who was more reserved and all about himself. He thinks by being nice to people she is flirting but really that is just her being nice, however it does irritate him, which means there is most likely some sexual jealousy going on here.

5) The Duke really doesn’t think of the art all that sincerely. He tends to look at it and compare it to his own life. There is a painting of the lady, which was his former wife, as well as the statue of Neptune, who was the god of the sea who not only wants to conquer the sea but also be in full control of other people’s infatuations and lives. The Duke too is this way, he tried to get his wife to change but she didn’t so he killed her.

6) The Duke, who surprisingly isn’t afraid to tell the story of what he did, killed her. This fact here should be a hint to his next wife that he is crazy and controlling and that unless she plans on living just as he wants, she may be the next dead.

Explication on The Flea

In this poem, the "I" of the poem is lying in bed with his lover, and trying to get her to give her virginity to him. (It could, of course, quite easily be a female "I" trying to seduce a male, but I will stick with one for convenience). While lying there, he notices a flea, which has obviously bitten them both. Since the 17-century idea was of sex as a "mingling of the blood", he realizes that by mixing their bloods together in its body, the flea has done what she didn't dare to do. Then, he argues, since the flea has done it, why shouldn't they? To back up his argument, he refers to the marriage ceremony, which states "man and woman shall be one flesh". He argues that since they have mingled their bloods and are therefore "one blood", they are practically "one flesh" and are therefore married! Not only does that reinforce his seduction argument, but it also provides ammunition for him to defend himself when the female does the next logical thing and moves to kill the flea. Donne argues that by spilling his blood and hers by killing the flea, she is practically committing murder. Not only that, but by breaking the holy bond of marriage she is committing sacrilege!
However, the flea finally is killed, and the poet is forced to change tactics. There, he argues, killing the flea was easy, and as you say it hasn't harmed us - well, yielding to me will be just as easy and painless.
This poem borrows a lot of religious imagery, because it helps add an aburd authority to the poem, as Donne tries to argue that what they are about to do is not only supported by God, but to not do it would be heretical. Some literary devices used in this poem include; direct address: Marke but this flea... and repetition: And marke in this.

The Flea

1) I am assuming preceding the first line of the poem means the title so here it is. A flea, in the insect sense, is a small wingless jumping insect that feeds on the blood of mammals and birds. In relation to the poem itself, when the flea sucks the blood of both the man and the woman to combines them and makes them one, which is exactly what the man wants to do with the woman physically. Between the first and second stanza there is a switch between the man trying to show that there is nothing wrong with combining as one and then he talks about their lives together and their relationship its self. Then between the second and third stanza the wife swats and kills the flea and the man gets upset because it was a symbol of their relationship, but she reassures him and says that they don’t need a bug to symbolize anything, and that they have each other.

· First stanza: Contemplative and whimsical

· Second stanza: Becomes more absurd, pace gets faster

· Third stanza: Slowing and reversal of argument.

2) The speaker and the woman are in a relationship however she is not willing to make the ultimate commitment and sleep with him. She is constantly shutting him down about sleeping together and it is killing him. She is not intentionally doing it, I just don’t think she is ready to make that final commitment.

3) The speaker is saying that the flea sucked both their blood and combined it and it was no big deal, there was no loss of maidenhead. So he is saying that having sex would be the same thing as what the flea has done and that it would be no big deal, and that it is what god intended for man and woman to do.

4) That possibly means that the parents didn’t approve of the relationship. Jet, in the line living walls of jet is referring to a deep, glossy black stone. This is of course a reference to the color of a flea, and is especially strong imagery when one compares the lifeless stone with the "living walls". If the woman kills the flea she will be committing murder, disrespecting the flea and she is killing a belief of god, that man and woman are supposed to unite at one point.

5) She wins the argument. He doesn’t like the fact that she killed the flea because it symbolized their relationship. He argues that the flea sucked a little bit of each of their lives away, therefore she shouldn’t have killed him.

6) I think they most likely come to an agreement and eventually soon they will have sex.

7) I have not read apparition, however the Flea is most definitely a seduction poem.

Love In Brooklyn

1) The actual dialogue is taking place in a bar, while neither of the two characters are very sober. The time period that this is most likely happening in is on the side of World War II, because he makes a reference to fighting in the war. The man has been observing and getting to know the woman but she is not really attracted to him. We first get the impression in line one after it says, and blew his nose, which he probably doesn’t have much luck with the ladies. Also at the end of the poem they tell us that he is an over weight man, which doesn’t help his already shaky confidence.

2) The first speaker is a man who is completely in love with this woman that he has been observing on the typewriter for a while. He puts himself out there and tells her that he loves her and she just kind of scoffs at him and says he only likes her for her looks, which may very well be true. However later something changes and she realizes that he actually likes her for her and not her looks, and they kind of come to an understanding that she doesn’t love him but she will still have a drink with him.

3) The woman is tired of men always hitting on her and thinks that this man is just like all the others. But then half way through the poem the tone changes from reserved and defensive to understanding accepting the actual situation. She realizes that he truly likes her and wants to get to know her.

4) The men of these two poems are opposites. The man in The Telephone is very confident that the woman loves him and relentlessly tries to prove it to her until she admits it. In Love In Brooklyn however, the man is very insecure and not sure of himself at all and due to his low self-esteem he probably doesn’t believe that the woman could ever love him back.

The Man He Killed

1) Half-a-crown is a coin formerly used in Great Britain, worth two shillings and sixpence.

2) The poem was mainly written as a “what if” piece. It is about an infantry soldier who was forced to kill a man in battle and he wonders what would it have been like if they had met in a bar as regular men instead. There is broken syntax at the beginning of the third stanza, I shot him dead because—Because he was my foe. He is trying to justify why he had to kill this man because he is having a hard dealing with the aspect of war that is “kill or be killed,” and he isn’t comfortable taking another man’s life. This most likely means he is not an experienced soldier. The fact that he puts although at the end of the third stanza just reinforces the idea that even though he can justify it, it still doesn’t make it right in his eyes. In the first stanza it says, had he and I but met by some old ancient inn, this plays into he “what if” thinking of had they met in any form of traditional way, such as through friends, at a store, at a bar etc., then he wouldn’t have had to or been allowed to kill him.

3) Hardy uses words such as nipperkin, traps and half-a-crown, which are all examples of dialect. He also uses exact rhyme, such as perhaps/traps and down/crown. By using dialect and exact rhyme it helps makes it a well-written piece of poetry.

The Telephone

1) The speakers here are lovers who are in two different places. The first speaker is trying to connect and keep her distant love alive. They are connected through the telephone and the flower that they each have, it is a symbol of their love. the line, Having found the flower and driven a bee away (11), the flower here has two possible meanings. One being, its literal meaning as a flower that shows that he is protecting their love but swatting the bee away, showing that nothing and no one can steal or suck the life out of their love. The second possibility is that the flower is actually the telephone itself, which makes the most sense because they are talking into it and the bee is the phone interference they are hearing.

2) The telephone is the only thing that is connecting the two characters, other then their love of course. Unfortunately, having a phone relationship really wont suffice if they want it to work out. It is easy to talk on the phone and tell the other person what they want to hear, but it is hard to really connect with out physical contact so you can really observe one another and get inside each other’s heads.

3) The first speaker is a man who is very confident in himself and he is very confident. He knows that she loves him and he is trying to get her to admit it again, which is why he refers to her as the someone. However she is stating that she only thought it and never actually said it, but nonetheless he was right in the end and he went to her.

4) The second speaker is a woman who is not willing to admit her love for the man on the other end of the telephone. However when she says, I may have thought as much , but not aloud, she it telling him that she never said she loved him, but she really does, and she finally admits it to him.

5) Their whole relationship revolves around communication through technology. Ironically enough the man does all the talking, trying to get the woman to admit she loves him, until she finally says that she does. Frost has a very philosophical tone throughout the poem, which is what gives the poem its calm perception.

The Road Not Taken

1) He doesn’t feel as though he has taken the wrong road as much as he wishes that he could take both paths and that he doesn’t have to choose, especially since he doesn’t know what lies ahead down the road so he doesn’t know what he is missing. He will be telling it with a sigh because that is really all you can do after all is said and done. You cannot go back in time and change your decision so you just have to sigh and accept it and make the most of the life you choose. I don’t really think he regrets anything. The poem ends saying and that makes all the difference which doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing. And it sounds he is the type of person who doesn’t regret things, he just accepts his choices and moves on.

2) Every decision you make, big or small, alters and shapes your future. So although the paths are similar, the slightest difference between them could lead completely different lives.

The Road Not Taken is about making decisions throughout your life and accepting them, no matter the outcome. It is good to take risks and travel on the road less traveled, but you also have to be willing to accept the end results and embrace them. I think that is what the poem is really trying to get across, that you can make the best of what ever decision you make therefore you should take risks and don’t look back.

After Apple-Picking

1) The imagery the Frost uses in this poem really helps you convey the poem through his eyes. When he uses organic imagery it lets you know what he is feeling inside, you are able to recognize this often when poets use the word “I,” such as “I have had to much…” or,” I am overtired.” This tells you that he is mentally and emotionally tired of the life that he is living and that he is also physically tired of apple-picking. In this case his physical exhaustion could also be thought of as Kinesthetic Imagery, which focuses, obviously, on how that narrator feels externally. After climbing up and down the ladder for a long time his fee sort of mold to the shape of the ladder and constantly ache from it. The imagery I have explained evokes a lot of sadness and depression for the narrator.

2) Even though he used to be very happy and content with his job at one time, after years and years of repetition he is getting sick of it. lately he has started to get a careless, leaving a few apples on the ground. He realizes that he isn’t going to do as good of a job as he used to so he really isn’t all that dissatisfied.

3) Most likely, much like his life, this is a repetitious dream that he has every night, therefore he tells it to us what the dream will be about because knows what to expect.

4) Sleep is supposed to be a time where you can, in a sense, get away from your life. However since he is either apple-picking or dreaming about apple-picking he really has no escape, so yes he is probably afraid of sleep. Usually if you have a repetitious life sleep will always be a change for you, because of random dreams or nightmares you may have. Unfortunately his life purely revolves around apple-picking which means he probably dreads being awake and sleeping, which means he dreads his life.

5) A) the ladder is most likely symbolizing his life. He was gradually climbing up the ladder and now that he is at the top it is almost the end of his life. B) It’s harvest time which means winter is creeping closer and closer, which symbolically means death is creeping closer. During winter everything dies: grass, trees, the farmers crops and so on. Therefore usually winter symbolically means death or loss. C) Most likely when he harvests, or picks, his apple he is picking off days or parts of his life. Since he keeps growing the trees though he keeps living because there are still apples for him to pick. D) He could be watching through the pane glass and seeing what his life could have been and it could be causing him pain. Essence of winter sleep most likely means death. Winter meaning death and sleep meaning escaping from your life, this probably means he can tell he is going to die soon.

6) Woodchucks hibernate in the winter and as we know humans sleep and wake up everyday. Hibernating is sleeping for a very long time so to the apple-picker would be like dieing,

After reading this I was under the impression that it is about a man who is ultimately coming to terms with dieing and realixing that he hasn’t really lived. His way of life was good at first but then he realized falling into the same old pattern every day makes your life go by quickly and not very memorable. He sees death coming in winter and all he has to do is finish this years harvest, or taking of days off his tree of life, then he can finally escape his monotone life and be free with death.

Literary terms 5-6

Theme:

· Example: Theme of tradition and customs in Beowulf

· Function: The tradition and customs that were in place during Beowulf are much different then the traditions and customs we share today. To us, the principals from the medieval times (where Beowulf was set) sound ridiculous and silly. Such as always paying money to the family of anyone you kill to prevent a blood feud. And always having to avenge any lost family member. Normally when people boast or brag around you it’s irritating and obnoxious. However in Beowulf boasts are a common occurrence and a traditional part of their culture. Boasts are basically ways of passing out their resumes and telling people their qualifications. Other warriors judge each other based on how well they can talk themselves up.

Tone: the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.

· Example: Beowulf

· Function: The narrator of Beowulf, who ever he may be, uses many different tones through out the story while at the same time always keeping a formal tone. The whole epic is told in a calm, serious and quite often stiff manner. There are three main tones that he also shifts between throughout the story; laudatory, pious and mournful. Laudatory, or praising, is shown when a character, most often Beowulf, is acting especially heroic. Pious, or religion, is shown when the narrator reminds us that is God’s decision for what will happen to us and that he sets our fate. And of course the mournful tone is shown when Beowulf is loosing or in trouble.

Literary terms 3-4

Soliloquy: an act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, esp. by a character in a play.

· Example: To be, or not to be, that is the question…The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons, Be all my sins remembered.

· Function: To be, or not to be" is the opening line of a soliloquy from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (written about 1600), Act III, Scene 1. It is the best-known quotation from this particular play and one of the most famous in world literature. In this soliloquy Hamlet speaks it to himself, alone onstage. All others leave the room with the king, Claudius, and the queen, Gertrude. Hamlet struggles with his internal conflict of whether or not to kill himself in light of recent events which have depressed him greatly.

Sonnet: fourteen-line rhyming poem with set structure: a short poem with 14 lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines, divided into two, three, or four sections. There are many rhyming patterns for sonnets, and they are usually written in iambic pentameter.

· Example: Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

· Function: this is a prologue written as a sonnet. Sonnets were a popular form of poetry in Shakespeare's time; they were a traditional and respected poetic form that usually dealt with a theme of requited love. A sonnet has 14 lines with a set rhyme scheme and a fixed rhythm called ' iambic pentameter' (di-dum/di-dum/di-dum/di-dum/di-dum); this helps to create a sense of harmony and acts to link the ideas expressed in the sonnet.

Literary terms

Syntax: the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

Example: “To your house we are going" vs. “we are going to your house”

Function: The first quote would be an example of awkward syntax. You understand it, but it sounds odd. The reason a poet would use syntax is the same reason anyone would use it, because it makes your writing understandable. Syntax is sort of the bases of the way we speak today and the way we form sentences. This becomes important in poetry because many times poetry is hard to understand as it so making sure there is good syntax will help the writing and overall meaning of the poem. Syntax is important because the structure of a sentence gives it meaning. Two sentences can be similar in the words it uses but the way the sentence is structured can vastly change the sentence's meaning.

Tragedy: A play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, esp. one concerning the downfall of the main character. (I choose this definition because I thought it pertained more to the poems we will be reading)

Example: Romeo and Juliet

Function: William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a tragic drama about two star-crossed lovers written in the mid-1590's. The protagonists here are faced with a momentous obstacle that results in a horrible and fatal conclusion.