Soldier's Home

Reading Journal

By: Vladimir Machulskiy

Week 7

"Soldier's Home"

The whole emphasis of this story lies in the life of a young solider who had served his purpose to his country and returned home only to find the closest place to his hart change dramatically before his eyes. The war has changed him and because of that change he has never completely recovered and event felt left out by everyone in the city except for his sister and his mom. His father was the man he feared and didn't like as the story revels and when we find out that his father let him use the car for the "first time" we can see that as the attempt by the father to strengthen the bond ...but it is too late, because now the solider feels like all this is just a pathetic attempt by his mother to make his father do something for him he's own son.

Week 9

"I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud"

This paper explores the purpose and usage of flowers in poetry using William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" as an example. It focuses on Wordsworth's choice of words and also on the greater profound concept that he is trying to depict. The first part of the paper focuses on interpreting the poem. It shows how Wordsworth eloquently uses figurative language, imagery, and personification to describe a scenic display of daffodils. The second part of the paper offers an analysis of the poem. In particular, it examines the concept of the futility of the individual when compared to the collective good of society, as shown in the context of man versus nature.

"Pied Beauty"

Gerard's belief in an omnipotent Creator enabled him to see an especial beauty in the world of Nature - the unpredictable, untamed patterns of the wilderness combining to form a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, glorious and 'true'. But what sets his verse apart from the

hordes (I use the word advisedly) of Victorian nature poets was his ability to merge form and content to such a degree of utter perfection - his poetry _sounds_ right; his word-paintings leap off the printed page without traversing the intervening bridge of ordinary 'meaning'.

Consider the structure of today's poem - there's a riot of assonance and alliteration, but it's combined with a an unusually high consonant-density; there's a strong underlying rhythm in the pattern of the stresses, but it's never plodding or weighty (indeed, the variations in the unstressed syllables ensure that the verse is kept flexible and 'clean'); the rhymes, though strictly enforced, are kept from becoming monotonous by an unusual rhyme scheme... All these combine to create a wonderfully sonorous sounds cape, the rising and falling cadences like water in a mountain stream, trickling over rocks and through rapids, in swirls and eddies and falls, neither smooth nor unbroken, yet flowing, flowing like 'skies of couple-color'. And the overall effect is to sound what 'dappled' is to light. Perfect.

Week 10

"Design"

Frost is trying to make us thing about the truth behind nature. Not only is she a beauty but she is an 'executioner', 'prisoner' and a 'monster' With that poem he is trying to ask us is that really the Design that was intended? By doing that he is making the user think about the poem in general and to provide ourselves with the answer that we seek.

"The Tyger" and "The Lamb"

The lamb is as innocent and pure as he describes it to be. The tiger is as strong, the predator feeding off weakness and honed in hunting finesse. It can disguise itself and hide in unlikely places. It's like the ying and the yang. Just because the sheep is fluffy and innocent means nothing for its safety. The real world does not work like this, but again, these are the two extremes depicted. The unfair on how the world works. The strong survive the weak get killed. There's thousands of ways to parallel it so I want try to go too far in this analysis. Make your own connections.

"I heard a buzz fly -when I died--"

It just reviles the Dickenson's strait forward approach to life and death. A lot of writers wrote about Dickinson, that his poems always took a dramatic turns in the direction of sadness, tremor and despair and this poem is no exception because like many he this one also deals with the life and death tedium.

"The brain is wider than the sky"

This poem exhibits Dickinson's keen awareness of the complicated truths of human desire, in later poems on a similar theme it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases like this poem.

"Much Madness is divinest Sense"

The narrator distinguishes between madness and sanity: the beliefs of the majority constitute sanity, whereas those who dissent are considered insane. She does a good job of observing both and thus preserving the outcome of this poem way before it is over.

"We Real Cool"

This poem describes the lifestyle of young rebels. They are "cool," having "left school," and enjoy themselves being bad. Although this gang is busy living life, they also realize that they "die soon."

Week 11

"A Noiseless Patient Spider"

Bridge can symbolize a need of finding happiness, and his soul struggles with relating with people, and terries to fill the empty space. The web connects people with himself, making a 'web' of life persay..the spider web symbolizes the soul...there is hinted personification of the spider. The first