Phillip Larkin explains in his 1964 poem “Here” that a man is traveling south trying to get away from something in the northeast. Larkin’s tone during this poem is dark, depressed, and lonelybecause he is leaving a once populated city for a small deserted town. The poem is a pastoral and narrative poem because it tells a story about life in the country.
The diction and denotation of Larkin’s writing allows the readers to understand more and it changes the tone of the poem. He is trying to make the poem seem isolating and deep.
Throughout this poem Larkin uses different types of imagery. “piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud” (line 8) shows the reader type of surroundings that the town is in. In lines 15-16 Larkin writes about “cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers--” he is still explaining the surroundings of the town, including the shops a few lines later.
Larkin doesn’t use as many similes as imagery, but he does explain the wheat fields “as high as hedges.” This could mean that they are isolating themselves in the town from the other people that are around them.
Larkin writes about how the man travels south which seems to be written about going to the Mississippi River. This is showing the ambiguity of the poem because it could seem as though he is describing his town or another town that he passes through.

Writing Prompt - The Metamorphosis

In Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" Kafka introduces the character Gregor Samsa to us. In the beginning of the book he is transformed into a bug. Gregor is the main provider in his family, even though everyone else in his family is allowed to have a job. Then we meet Gregor’s sister, Grete. Gregor’s transformation was a physical change and is obvious to anyone who looked at him and Grete’s change was more of an internal change.

Gregor is overly obsessed with his job as a traveling salesmen. He doesn’t do anything except work, he lives at home and there is no chance that he has a life outside of his parent’s house. He has no friends or any type of relationship with anyone.

We figure out that Grete is around the ago of 17. Grete ends up getting a job and doesn’t seem to care about Gregor anymore and she doesn’t take care of him. She is too consumed with a job that she has just gotten and now Gregor is just a bother to her. The whole Samsa family now has jobs because Gregor couldn’t support the family anymore, and they cannot take care of the bug Gregor.

Gregor always loved Grete's playing the violin and now she plays it more and she doesn’t listen or talk to him anymore because she seems to be embarrassed by him. Gregor thinks she is amazing at the violin and she should go to a conservative to play and become even better.

Metamorphosis Chapter 3 questions

1. The family didn’t help him when they needed him the most because he was different. He was a bug and they were scared of him.

3. I don’t think they moved the furniture to kill him faster, I think that they were trying to get him to open up and not hide so that he would turn back into a human sooner. They didn’t know what would happen because of moving it. I don’t think they wanted anything to happen to him.

4. Gregor’s family doesn’t know the reasoning behind him turning into a bug and they just blame him because that’s all they can think of to do.

10. I think that Grete calls Gregor a monster because he isn’t himself anymore and she was scared of him.

11. I think the family is more quiet during meals now then when Gregor is with them because they don’t want to talk about Gregor and they don’t want to have it look like they are blaming anyone even though it isn’t anyone’s fault.

13. You can argue that the chapter symbolizes that American families today don’t respect each other and don’t support each other. People would shun a family member if they were a bug, or just different. The fact that they are living off one person also shows families today. People are too lazy to find jobs and they just let someone else do their work for them.

19. I think Kafka chose the violin to play because it is a somber instrument. Grete loves her brother but when she sees him as a bug she is scared and he dies causing her to be somber.

21. The family doesn’t want anything to do with Gregor now that he is a bug. And the maid is working for the family and that is why she finds him, it seems like the family stopped caring about him enough to check on him and actually accept Gregor.

Writing Prompt 2 - 9/19/08

Power/control is one of the main themes in George Orwell's 1984. Big brother is in power and everyone seems to be fine with it. He controls one's activities, thoughts, and actions. Yet Winston tries to free himself from the power struggle, he still loses.

Winston Smith, a seeming to be normal, middle-aged man, finds himself unhappy with the total control of Big Brother. Everywhere someone goes they are being looked over and watched in some way. But one cannot be an individual in this society because one is only allowed so much, and beign different from everyone else and not accepting society is out of the question.

While under Big Brother's reign Winston breaks the law countless times. The hidden relationship between Winston and Julia estabolished that they were willign to get hurt for love. They didn't know what they were getting themselves into once they became intimate. The people reading ones thoughts or people seeing ones relationship could turn one into the ministry and who really knows what would happen.

In America today the government gives one more rights. The society's punishment for wrong doing is jail time, Big Brother's punishment for wrong doing is torture. Winston believes Julia should be tortured instead of himself, as if it wasn't his fault for going against Big Brother.