Comparison of 2 Poems

I wrote my thesis on the comparison of "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" by Raymond Carver and "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. I will show how each child will explore the complex child parent relationship from the adult child's point of view. How each one sees and feels about their father. Carver sees his father as a flawed individual, while Thomas sees his father as a heroic individual, but yet they both idolize their fathers.

Poetry Essay

I am writing my essay on how the speaker has an impact on the poetry. I am also going to compare the poems "The Man He Killed," by Thomas Hardy, and "Dulce et Decorum," by Wilfred Owen. Each of these poems has a different tone and style that the speaker uses. The similarities is that the poems are about the same thing, war. They are also written in the similar time scheme. These two poems will be exciting to dig into and find out truly what the authors are trying to convey. These two poems both have their unique styles, by all in all they are describing a similar concept; war, death, and soldiers.

"Poetry Topic Proposal"

For my poetry essay and am going to will be writing about two of Robert Brownings poems. I will be comparing My Last Duchess to Porphyrias Lover. Both of these poems are written in dramatic monologue. Porphyria and the duchess are very differently looked upon throughout the poem. I will be contrasting the use of irony and the difference between the women who are very different yet both end up dead by their lover.

Topic Proposal for Poetry Essay

I will be writing my poetry essay on the comparison between the tones of the two poems, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and "Those Winter Sundays." I will be going through each poem line by line and determining whether that line has a positive or negative tone.

War

I will compare and contrast the poems "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "The Man He Killed". The theme of these poems is war, however, they use very different methods in portraying it. Wilfred Owen, the author of the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est", utilizes similies and metephores coupled with descriptive words as well as personification to plant visions in the readers minds. Thomas Hardy's poem "The Man He Killed" uses understatement to create a somber, "matter of fact" tone in explaining the strangeness of war. Both authors effectively convey their thoughts and emotions about such a terrible subject with their own unique style.

Topic Proposal

I am going to compare the poems, "you fit into me" and "Jump Cabling", and each poem's theme of love. Both poems use physical, everyday objects to describe people in a relationship with one another. "you fit into me", however, has a much graver tone, than the joyful newfound love expressed in "Jump Cabling". As I stated, both poems use rather odd objects in describing a "love" relationship, which makes them very distinct and memorable. Both poems talk about fitting together, as in "you fit into me" and touching and coming together, as found in "Jump Cabling". In contrast, "Jump Cabling gives many more details, while "you fit into me" is very short and simple.

Poetry Essay

For this essay I am comparing the experiences that the speakers of "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "The Man He Killed" had and how it impacted them after the war. Both of the speakers were tramatized well after they had left the war. They did not feel that what they had to go through was really worth fighting for their country. Their experiences changed who they are. The tone and images of the poems were different from eachother. The speaker of "The Man He Killed" had a lot of regret for his decision to kill another man and tried to justify his actions by saying he had to because he was his enemy. The tone of this poem was very sad and showed his obvious regret for what he had done. "You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a crown." (lines 18-20) In "Dulce et Decorum Est" the speaker gives you a graffic view into what he saw. He felt that if the people who started a war really knew what it was like they would know that the old saying was a lie. The tone of this poem was disgust toward the war and the helplessness the soldiers felt being forced to trudge along.

Poetry Comparison Paper

In my poetry comparison paper, I plan to compare and contrast the relative effectiveness of the figurative language in the poems "Porphyria's Lover" and "To His Coy Mistress." Romantic love is a subject of both of these poems, but each poem's use of figurative language is quite different from the other's.

In "Porphyria's Lover," personification is used to establish the setting of the dramatic monologue. Lines 2-4 state that "The sullen wind was soon awake,/It tore the elm-tops down for spite,/And did its worst to vex the lake." Giving the wind human emotions and abilities allows the audience to sense the intensity of the weather that evening. However, the poem "To His Coy Mistress" utilizes personification to emphasize the hasty passing of time. The speaker urges his beloved to devour their time together, rather than suffer in "his [time's] slow-chapped power" (line 40). He concludes his argument with the statement, "though we cannot make our sun/ Stand still, yet we will make him run" (lines 45-46). He implies that his lover can choose to either suffer slowly through the passing of time or take full advantage of their time together.

A simile is used in "Porphyria's Lover" to describe the way in which Porphyria's lifeless body seemed to forbid her lover to touch her. The speaker states, "As a shut bud that holds a bee,/I warily oped her lids," as though he were scared of what he might find behind her eyelids (lines 43-44). Yet the similes in "To His Coy Mistress" have two purposes. They describe the inviting, fresh beauty of the speaker's lover, as in "the youthful hue/ Sits on thy skin like morning glew" (lines 33-34). They also expose the way in which the speaker desires to spend his time with his lover. He states, "Now let us [...] like amorous birds of prey,/Rather at once our time devour" (lines 38-39).

In my paper, I may also explore the use of metaphors, allusions, and understatement, and their effects on the development of the poems, but I think that discussing the similes and personification will be a logical way to start.

Comparison Paper Brainstorming

As far as what I will write about, I believe that I will go with the first suggested comparison. The comparison of "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "The Man He Killed" in their depiction of war, is what I will write about. In Dulce et Decorum Est the speaker's attitude towards war is one of horror, as the speaker uses graphic depiction with great purpose. The soldier in this poem sees himself as a victim of war and despises it. The Man He Killed, could also be seen as this type of poem, except for the fact that the speaker has a detached point of view. The speaker finds himself an objective angle of sorts in this manner and sees himself and the fellow he kills as both being victims of war, just as any other circumstance, but far more curious. The moral alternative to "kill or be killed," (Kirszner & Mandell, 710) might be kill to kill; the first implying little choice, the latter holding intent. Because of the implication that there is little or no alternative to the killing, and both speakers convey some sense of disdain for such acts, it could be said that both are victims of war. Both speakers are focusing on the war in general. In "The Man He Killed" the speaker is comparing the man that he killed to himself and figures that he too joined the war for reasons other than believing in the cause, which the speaker certainly doesn't find important enough to mention. In line 18, the speaker of "The Man He Killed" shifts to an objective standpoint saying, "you shoot a fellow down" (Hardy, 18) as though his moral reasoning is the same as everyone else and find morality in questioning the group mentality /morality that he sees himself subject or victim to. It is interesting that the speaker of "The Man He Killed" seems to want to find similarities between him and the man that he killed, even in the battlefield, this individual must feel some connection, some human interaction. At this point, the feeling of brotherhood may be his only source of human intimacy, even though the brotherhood is perceived; the speaker is reaching out. It almost seems a desperate act. "The Man He Killed" is devoid of any morality or personal belief, or selflessness. There is no belief in cause, this is an individual who may or may not believe in anything but himself. This begs the question, is there anything that this individual finds worth fighting for? "Dulce et Decorum Est" seems to hold to the ideal that oneself is more important than anything else. The poem is devoid of the idea that there is anything greater than oneself, anything worth sacrificing one's life for. Both poems compare the men to beggars in a sense, in that they must fight to feed themselves, as if they are being taken advantage of. "Dulce et Decorum Est" is an attack on the value of war, and the propagation of the idea of war. The argument is based solely on the fact that it is horribly unpleasant. The speaker in "The Man He Killed" is wishing a meeting somewhere pleasant, as if a pleasant meeting space would settle all issues. The naïve idea is that the soldier believes that the other individual doesn't believe in the war either and that none of their actions come from personal conviction, but rather, a paycheck. In reality, killing without any personal conviction, or reason for doing so is scarier than someone who believes in something and kills for it. "The Man He Killed" seems to be written by a man trying to find morality and reason in war, while "Dulce et Decorum Est" seems to be a protest against the pro-war propaganda of the day from a person that feels some conviction about its horror. These are the random thoughts I have right now and I'm trying to put them together.