M Ali's English Literature Notes

Nature possesses a great place in Frost’s poetry. Most of his poems use nature imagery and devices. Taking nature as a background, he usually begins a poem with an observation of something in nature and then moves toward a connection to some human situation or concern. His treatment of nature is different from other nature poets: he is neither a transcendentalist nor a pantheist. Therefore, his use of nature is the single most misunderstood element of his poetry. Frost himself said over and over, "I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems." ( frostfriends.org) The elements and settings of Frost’s poetry are natural. Wikipedia comments on his setting, “His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century.”(wikipedia). The rural scenes and landscapes, homely farmers, and the natural world are used to illustrate a psychological struggle with everyday experience in the context of  everyday ...

The Bluest Eye is the story of a young African American girl and her family who are affected in every direction by the dominant American culture that says to them, "You're not beautiful; you're not relevant; you're invisible; you don't even count." Here, Paul C. Taylor argues, “a whitedominated culture has racialised beauty, [in] that it has defined beauty per se in terms of white beauty,” (Taylor, 1999, 17) Morrison, an Afro-American woman writer, challenges in the novel the Western standards of beauty and demonstrates that the concept of beauty is socially constructed. Morrison shows that the value of blackness is diminished and this novel works to subvert that tendency. In the novel, there is an obvious hierarchy, distinction drawn among the rich white, poor white, (and) the rich black and poor black families. Morrison shows how the novel's black characters have been affected in some way by the white media, by the white standard of beau...

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. This is the starting of "Song of Myself", a poem by Walt Whitman included in his work Leaves of Grass . In this poem Whitman seems to put himself in the center, but the "self" of the poem's speaker - the "I" of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. This is an expansive persona exploding the conventional boundaries of the self.           A clear understanding of the opening lines is very important to know the nature of self in Song of Myself. The first and second lines might give us a notion of egotism and megalomania. As John Updike (1978:33) notes that the "I" and "myself" are the "superb subjects" of the poem, the "exultant egotism which only an American could have voiced." But when we come to the third line, ...

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the story of Willy Loman. A sixty year old mediocre salesman living in Brooklyn , Willy Loman is a gregarious, mercurial man with powerful aspirations to success. However, after thirty-five years working as a traveling salesman throughout New England , Willy Loman feels defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life. Willy is no doubt a loving and caring husband and father. He repeatedly calls Linda “darling” , “sweet heart” . He says to Linda, “You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that?” Moreover, he proves his love to his sons by sacrificing his own life. However, his affair with a woman questions his love to his family. But, Willy Loman seems a poor role model.   As a father, Willy Loman offers his sons terrible advice: WILLY: Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, that's all. Don't make any promises. No promises of any kind. Because a girl, y'know, they always believe what...