Look on a Poem 'Once Upon A Time '

Once Upon A Time …

Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian writer. His poems show great sensitivity, perceptive judgments and a tremendous energy. Okara also shows a concern regarding what happens when the ancient culture of Africa is faced with modern western culture, for example in his poem, 'Once Upon a Time'.

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts

and laugh with their eyes:

but now they only laugh with their teeth,

while their ice-block-cold eyes

search behind my shadow.

A Poetic Person who asking to his  son .  The entire poem has the man talking to his son. There are no other voices in the poem, and the son remains mute throughout the entire poem.  The past, according to the poet, is better than the present.

Learn  -   Acquire knowledge of a subject or a skill through studying

Unlearn -  Something that you have learned, forget it or ignore it

  Relearn -  Learn again 

Change - how people change over the years and become false and untrustworthy

Influence - the influence of the white western world on African nations; countries like Nigeria were more honest before being developed by the west.

Dishonesty/hiding true intentions

Innocence/childhood.

How these process apply in poem:

So I have learned many things, son.

I have learned to wear many faces

like dresses – homeface,

officeface, streetface, hostface,

cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles

like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

to laugh with only my teeth

and shake hands without my heart.

I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,

when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:

to say ‘Glad to meet you’,

without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been

nice talking to you’, after being bored.

In this material and artificial world, the poet has learnt many things – especially wearing many faces . Poet learned how to ‘laugh with teeth’ he also learned even when shaking hands with others, they are very artificial and hence mechanical. Learned all formal things. Persona unlearn the things which he learned. He expresses a desire to unlearn whatever he has forced himself to learn, in order for him to gain his sense of self back. And then he want to relearn  as before.

So show me, son,

how to laugh;

show me how I used to laugh and smile

 once upon a time when I was like you.

Effect

We sympathise with him because he recognises how he’s changed, and because he wants to return to how he was. We relate to him because we can all  understand the feeling of not wanting to be dishonest with ourselves and two faced.

Apart from above things poem also deals with these idea , like as Mannerism , Behaviorism, Change in  Human Nature, Factor of Time , Living in  the world of Illusion, effect of Urbanization and Globalization.

Short Story I WANT TO KNOW WHY by Sherwood Anderson

Short Story I WANT TO KNOW WHY by  Sherwood Anderson

Adolescent stage is a very significant in everyone's life. It is the duration after childhood before Adulthood. It is a strange stage of life where a person is generally governed by dreams, passion and ideas. Many leading writes like Dickens, Narayan, Bond, and Tagore have highlighted some aspects of this stage in their fiction.

The most obvious stylistic device in this story is Sherwood Anderson’s use of the first-person narrative voice. The naïve speaker finds it difficult to tell his story; he fumbles for the right word, the accurate description.

Sherwood Anderson 's story I WANT TO KNOW WHY also highlights the world of teenager. In the present story he depicts how a teenager boy's ideal person turns from hero to zero.

The setting of the Story is Home town of narrator, Backerswille. The narrator of the Story depicts the frustration of an adolescent who is highly shocked &disappointed to find his model person, ideal to be an ordinary human being. The Story disturb and confuses the young boy at the end as he realize that people aren't always as good as they seem. So what it means? It means that very difficult to find original face of Human being, why many of the people who have artificiality in their nature.

 Here in this story innocent boy who is in search of something that would be like ideal. There is also some symbolism in the story which may be important. To the narrator the horses represent or symbolize everything that is good in the world. 

“I Want to Know Why” can be compared to “Death in the Woods” (and numerous other Anderson stories) in its rendering of sexual awakening and confusion. here  ending of the story is also interesting as it becomes clear to the reader that despite becoming aware of the realities of life. There is also a sense that the narrator is innocent of human nature and a person’s need or desire to impress others. This is noticeable by Tillford’s bragging and attributing Sunstreak’s success to himself rather than to the horse. 

Any innocent face more governed by sentiments, passion rather than Understanding.

Concept of IMAGINATION given by I. A Richards

Concept of IMAGINATION given by IA Richards

INTRODUCTION

literary Criticism has found itself as an important and independent branch. In the modern times, Literary Criticism has established new horizon. I. A Richards and T. S. Eliot are considered as The Father of New Criticism.

                        

Simple means of IMAGINATION :  

The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

According to I. A Richards, we can define the term Imagination at least in six distinct sense. He discusses Various meaning and concepts of the same term. Since Imagination is an abstract noun, it can be defined in many different ways.

      1) The first concept of IMAGINATION is very common that is the production of vivid images, usually visual images, already sufficiently discussed. It is the commonest and the least interesting things which is referred to by Imagination.

      2)   Another concept of IMAGINATION is the use of figurative language. People who naturally employ Metaphor and simile especially when it is of an unusual kind are said to have Imagination.

   3)The Third is, a narrator Sense is that in which Sympathetic reproducing of other people 's states of mind, particularly their emotional states is Imagination.

   4)Moreover, a different concept of IMAGINATION is the inventiveness the bringing together of elements which are not ordinary connected.

   5)Fifth concept According to I. A Richards is that Imagination means a kind of relevant connection of things ordinary thought as disparate which is exemplified in scientific Imagination. The technical triumphs of The Arts are examples of this kind of Imagination.

    6)Finally, we come to the sense of Imagination with which we are here most concerned. It is closely connected with Coleridge 's great Contribution to Critical Theory.

In this words Imagination means......

"That Synthetic and magical power,

to which we have exclusively appropriated

the name of Imagination....... "

   It is a sense of novelty and freshness with Old and familiar objects, a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order.

   At the end of the article, I. A Richards refers Wordsworth 's pantheistic interpretations of the imaginative experience, in' Tintern Abbey ', which is in verifying form has been given by many poets and critics.

Imagination plays very vital role in creation of literature.

Three Years She Grew As a Lucy Poem by Wordsworth

Three Years She Grew As  a  Lucy Poem by Wordsworth

            Series of five poems Composed by Wordsworth between 1798- 1801.  Three Years she grew is made of seven , six line stanza each have AA BC CB rhyme scheme . This poem is one of a  set of usually   called “ Lucy Poems ”. The identity of Lucy never been discovered.

Imagination was intellect reason apply with the elements….

        Poetry is intense emotions

            recollected in tranquility …..

Lucy poem emphasizes the abstract ideals of nature beauty,  love, longing, death.

  Nature then expounds on what is means to be nature’s lady for several stanzas . The poem becomes the beautiful elegy written to woman who had died & who Wordsworth admired not only for  her beauty, but also for her connection to nature, which Wordsworth  felt was the highest possible achievements.

Three  Years  She  grew  in  sun and  shower,

Then  Nature said,  “  A    lovelier  flower

On earth  was  ne’er  sown;

This  child I to  myself  will take ;

She  shall be mine , and I will make

A  Lady  of my own .

Very  beginning of the poem, typically romantic in its emphasis on harmony between humans & nature . The beauty and  innocence  of children, the resemblance of children to flowers, and the sadness potentially provoked by the death of the children. The entire poem, is typical of Wordsworth’s emphasizes on beauties of physical nature, an emphasis that is one of the chief characteristic of romantic poets.

A girl grew up among the basic nature’s elements of “sun and  shower” phrasing that already prepare us for comparison . Apparently girl was appealing that personified nature, in a sense, to adopt the girl as her own. Wordsworth believes in general, that human beings profit from  their contacts with the beauties  of nature, & in this poem the girl is an unusual specific instance of nature’s beneficial influence.

Nature will motivate the girl to grow in the right ways  by  encouraging  or kind proper impulse .In  several  stanza  it is  described  that  she will be  everywhere, playing with the  beautiful animals, in valleys, in mountains, being a part of the rocks , the earth , the heaven , cloud, the trees and storms Lucy will be living  with  Nature enjoying  it and Lucy will be in Constant communication.

Thus  Nature spake - the  work was  done

How  soon  my Lucy ‘s race was run !

She died , and left  to me

This heath, this calm , and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been ,

And never more will be .

It is only in the end that the reader  finally learns that- what  happened to Lucy (she died as soon as she reached maturity ) and  why the speaker  is writing the poem out of grief.

Nature declare that her work is done. Lucy  is  no more  there…!

Analysis of Break,Break,Break

Break, Break, Break - Alfred Tennyson.

Break, break, break
On thy Cold grey stone, O Sea!
And i would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

'Break, Break, Break ' provide almost a perfect example of masterly lyric. The real poetic beauty of the lyric could be seen and felt in the lines that are loaded with poignant suggestion, especially those that hint at the death of Poet' s friend, Arthur Hallam.

Poem can be left open to Interpretation to its true meaning. Some Say that poem reflects the dying of religious and theory of evolution being introduced to society. Another Interpretation of this poem could be his possible love for his best friend "Hallam". His death resulted in a lifelong depression for Tennyson.

The speaker addresses the ocean directly, telling the waves to "break, break, break" onto the stony shore. After telling the sea to keep doing its thing, the speaker regrets that he can't express his thoughts.

The speaker thinks it's all well and good that the fisherman's kid is shouting and playing with his sister. Repeating the same sentence structure, the speaker says it's great for the sailor who is singing in his boat.

The waves have changed slightly, and we see that time is passing, despite the tragedy that the speaker has suffered. Mournfully he says that the happy old days when his friend was alive will never return.

He doesn't come out and describe the dead friend, though – he just lists a series of missing things: the "hand" and the "voice." The lost friend is described as a series of absent parts.

It Focusing on themes likes Sadness, Death , Time, etc. A feeling of pathos runs through this brief lyric. The mood one is deep sorrow. The poem arouses a corresponding feeling of grief in the heart of reader. Here reader feels the pain of Poet which he expressed through words. The poem has a slow, sad pace, although it is written in a meter and rhythm which express the movement and noise of the Sea - waves.