...Pavia Washington September 28, 2010 English 102 “anyone lived in a pretty how town” The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a narrative about a town where the people only care about themselves. It’s about the passage of time and the normal things that happens as time goes on. E. E. Cummings portrays the people to be careless as implied in stanza 7. He contrast the people being selfish, line 2, stanza 2 “cared for anyone not at all” with the people being loving, line 2, stanza 4, “she laughed his joy she cried his grief”. There are many different ways to approach this poem. You can figure out the themes and meaning or talk about how Cummings ties nature to the main idea, like how he uses the seasons to make the point that the feelings of the people of the town never change and the passing of time. Lewis Turco found two themes of this poem. His first theme is “how can anyone live in a pretty town” where nothing much goes on, where people worry only about themselves although they are involved with everyone else. His next theme is that people do in fact live in towns like this one where as Turco says, “they are anyone and noone, of no particular significance except to one another on an individual basis; anyone does mean something to noone and mostpeople-both care and do not care; both love and do not love; are important to one another and are not important at all.” These themes contrast and may seem to cancel each other but they do not. They both are true. I tied...
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...“anyone lived in a little how town” ee cummings • non-conformity • form = function o Poe’s unity of effect o poem = unique, does not conform to any poetic standards, grammatical rules, expectations • songs: o Justice & Independence, Jack & Diane (JC Mellencamp) o The Dance, The River (Garth Brooks) E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" tells the story of anyone. The name has a double meaning; anyone could be anyone in the dictionary definition sense, and could be seen as a singular entity, reinforcing the theme of isolation the independent individual has from the rest of society. The events all occur in a "pretty how town". "Pretty" connotes a mere façade, describing the superficiality of the town's inhabitants. "How", an adverb, is used as an adjective here. It could be describing the extent of the town's prettiness, but a better reason is that it describes the routine humdrum of the town's activities, since "how" also means "in a method or manner". The juxtapositions continue into the next line, "(with up so floating many bells down)". The rhythm of the line and the vowels emulate both the motion and the sounds of bells. This line occurs again later in the poem, and its function here is the same as it is there - to signify the passing of time. The next line is an ordered list of the seasons, also symbolizing the passing of time, describing anyone's activities as occurring continuously. The activities...
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...People rarely think about the effects of the passage of time once they become stagnant in their daily routine. E.E. Cummings comments on the passage of time in his poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town.” Hunt describes “anyone lived in a pretty how town” as a “preschool song” due to the “playful rhythm and sound” that resembles “life on a proverbial fast-paced playground” (231). Cummings illustrates the cycle of life to show the reader the passage of time. The passage of time is made evident by the repetition and syntax of “spring summer autumn winter” and illusions to other seasons throughout the poem (Cummings, line 3). The first stanza shows the seasons in order starting on the first full season of the year “spring” followed by “summer autumn winter” (Cummings, 3). The line of seasons become “an ‘incremental’ refrain, because it is slightly changed each time it appears” (Turco). The refrain appears in lines 3,11, and 32; each occurrence brings about the passage of time due to the order in which the seasons appear. The poem...
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...The Uglies is a novel which is one of the parts of book series by Scott Westerfled. It is manily intended for age group of the young adults. Uglies depicts a fictional world, where everyone is ugly. But the sixteenth birthday is an important and decisive point in everyone’s life. Sixteenth birthday brings you an operation which will transform you from ‘an ugly one’ into an amazingly beautiful person. This novel is about Tally Youngblood, who is an ugly one. she is eagerly waiting for her sixteenth birthday when she will have her operation and will be transformed into an attractive girl. But one of the Tally’s friend Shay does not want to become pretty and she elopes without telling anyone. Tally is then offered a choice by authorities that,...
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...Myself ETH 125 June 29, 2014 Anna Geletka In Northwest Ohio sits, a small town in Anycounty County called Anytown. With approximately 492, people within a half a mile space Anytown is just a small part of the nineteen miles of Hancock County. Within our little town, we are lucky enough to have many city amenities like a family owned market with full service butchers, a salon, a couple restaurants, a bar and a gas station. Along with an outstanding park with a hill for sledding down in the winter, a pool for swimming during the summer and ball fields for baseball/softball season. However, our small town is very short on racial diversity. Our town has 492 people in our town and our racial make-up is 98.2% white and 1.6% African American and 2.6% Hispanic. (http://factfinder2.census.gov/) Of the 183 homes in our town, 73.2% are homes with homeowner living in them and 26.8% are occupied rental units bringing transits into our area on a regular basis-leaving door open for expansion of diversifying the opportunities in our community. Diversity is short in our little town as you can see by the numbers. I believe this is true because the majority of citizens from our town have lived here for generations upon generations. I can attest to this particular statement because my significant other was born and raised around here and his parents were also born and raised around here. His parents lived in the same house 56 years before they were moved to a nursing home. Most people...
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...The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter are two books that are similar, but also different. Both books are set in early America and the main religion is Puritan. They also have characters who are “rebels” and do something against society’s standards. There are also differences in the books such as, the characters who rebel against society changing their ways and becoming better people vs. characters who don’t change their ways. There is also a difference in how the towns treat the people who sin. The two books have similarities and differences, which I will discuss in this paper. The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter are both set in a Puritan community in early America. “...the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combine of state and religious power whose function was to keep the community together…” (Miller). “...at a later period in the history of New england, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people...” (Hawthorne). The Puritan standards are very rigid. They believe that if you commit any sin you should be put in jail or killed. Both books contain characters who are accused of a sin that wouldn’t be as big of a deal now - and punishments that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment now - such as public shame and hanging. Abigail in The Crucible and Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter both commit similar sins. Abigail is intimate with a married man and Hester is intimate with someone who isn’t her husband. “I look for John Proctor...
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...time, I did not see the good in having to carry the burdens of a mother and homemaker, but those lessons I learned, how to wash clothes, clean a house, get a child ready for school, make dinner, will forever be with me. Not just the lesson itself, but how they affected what I thought about and how they made me feel is a part of who I am as a person forever....
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...am originally from Ardmore OK. I lived there till I was about four years old. My mother moved us to Vermont to take care of my grandmother and grandfather. My mother then married a man who adopted me when I was seven years old. In second grade I had a teacher who saw me asking for help on a spelling test and said it was cheating and told my parents he was going to hold me back a grade. He said I was slow and needed special help. My parent thought it would be a good idea to put me in Justin Morgan Christian School. They did not have the best learning program in that school. We sat in a cubby all day long looking at the wall. When we had a question we had to put an American flag on the top of the cubby. For the bathroom we put up the Christian flag. We worked in what they called “paces” You worked in them all day long they had a book for math, science, English, and so on. Each year you went up in a “pace book” the higher you got in school. That kind of learning did not work for me. So at the end of my sixth grade year I asked my parents if I could go to a Public School. So in 7th grade I went to a high school in my home town. I was so far behind when I got in class I didn’t know how to really do anything in my classes my first year, so when I went to 8th grade they put me in all special classes. I was really hard for me to have to go to a one on one class room when my friends and class mates went to regular classes. I graduated in 2004 with pretty good grades. After high school I...
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...am originally from Ardmore OK. I lived there till I was about four years old. My mother moved us to Vermont to take care of my grandmother and grandfather. My mother then married a man who adopted me when I was seven years old. In second grade I had a teacher who saw me asking for help on a spelling test and said it was cheating and told my parents he was going to hold me back a grade. He said I was slow and needed special help. My parent thought it would be a good idea to put me in Justin Morgan Christian School. They did not have the best learning program in that school. We sat in a cubby all day long looking at the wall. When we had a question we had to put an American flag on the top of the cubby. For the bathroom we put up the Christian flag. We worked in what they called “paces” You worked in them all day long they had a book for math, science, English, and so on. Each year you went up in a “pace book” the higher you got in school. That kind of learning did not work for me. So at the end of my sixth grade year I asked my parents if I could go to a Public School. So in 7th grade I went to a high school in my home town. I was so far behind when I got in class I didn’t know how to really do anything in my classes my first year, so when I went to 8th grade they put me in all special classes. I was really hard for me to have to go to a one on one class room when my friends and class mates went to regular classes. I graduated in 2004 with pretty good grades. After high school I...
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... My name is T and I deliver pizzas is a small rural town in northern Canada. I'm writing this immediately after getting off shift and i'm scared shitless just recollecting it so bear with my garbage writing. The rural town that I deliver in consists of about 25,000 people spread out along the foothills of a large mountain range. Many people that live here are farmers, loggers, and shit like that. We have a small college here too so there are a few students from out of town living her as well. Unlike most delivery companies, the one that I work for allows people outside of the city limits to order pizza up to about 50km away from our location. Our company is like this because many of the towns residents actually live out of city limits in the foothills where their farms are. Obviously, this causes me and other drivers to be gone for long periods of time on deliveries. during the long deliveries we aren't expected back for a minimum of an hour before my boss starts calling. To top it off, we are open until 5 am every night. This combination of variables has caused me to witness and be a part of some really fucked up and creepy shit during my several years working here. I haven't told anyone much of it; but after tonight I need to get this off of my chest. I'm positive that I was almost murdered tonight. Tonight started out like most other tuesday nights: I was making shit tips and getting increasingly depressed about how my life as a driver was panning out. I had already taken...
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...Cummings. I read it with my English class in ninth grade, and since then, it has influenced the way I write and think about poetry. In this poem, E.E. Cummings speaks about a great love amidst a dreary, emotionless, and repetitive town. It was the first poem I read that played with language to such a great extent. Looking back at my annotations from ninth grade, I covered every blank space on the page in writing. Cummins plays with form extensively in this poem. It is written in nine quatrains, but the quatrain is the only component of form that stays consistent. The lines don’t have any particular syllable count, but most of them are around 8-9 syllables, except for three lines. Those three lines are, “sun moon stars rain...stars rain sun moon…sun moon stars rain.” Variations of that line, along with three variations of the line, “spring summer autumn winter,” are scattered throughout the poem to signify the passing of time and the way the world around the two main characters doesn’t seem to change. One phrase is repeated twice, “with up so floating many bells down,” also used to signify the passing of time and occurrence of no change, because the bells represent how bells were rung for any birth in town and any death in town. For the first four stanzas, he rhymes the first two lines of the stanza. Cummings breaks this pattern after the fourth stanza (through...
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...Race and My Community Ethnic and racial issues continue to exist in many communities today. Before I took this class, I thought that race and ethnicity meant the same thing. After reading chapter one of the required text book for this course, I found out that they have very different meanings. I believe that, as a minority, no matter where you move to or what town you decide to make your home, whether it is temporary or permanent, you will encounter some form of ethnic and racial issues. The meaning of ethnicity is a group set apart from others because of its national origin or distinctive cultural patterns. On the other hand, race is described as a group that is socially set apart because of obvious physical differences. As an African American, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, in an all-Black neighborhood, and lived there until around my mid 40’s. I moved to the South Suburbs of Chicago, first to Harvey, and lived there for about four years before moving to where I now currently reside in South Holland. I lived in Harvey, Illinois, for about three years. It is a town dominated mainly by African Americans. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, Harvey, Illinois, is home to 75.8% African Americans and 19.0% Hispanics. The White population of Harvey is only 10.0% (State and County Quick Facts, 2010). There is a lot of crime that goes on in Harvey within the African-American neighbordhoods, and I believe that it is partly due to the environment...
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...Verna Doe, this is a fictional name, is a 26 year old female. She is a Caucasian female, who is 5’4” tall and appears to be average build, with brown hair to her shoulders, with blue/green eyes. She was observed over a cup of coffee at Starbucks for a getaway from the kids for a little while. We had a cup of coffee and a small snack and sat on the patio portion. It was a nice day out side, so we decided to take advantage of the sun in February while we could. She was born in Temple Texas in 1989, and lives in Florence Texas were she has been raised all her life. She lived with her single mother until the age of five when she remarried and her sister was born when she was six. Her mother had been dating her step father for few years prior to their marriage but she does not remember any other man. She does not remember her biological father because he left when she was a little over a year old. Her mother told her this, she has never had the desire to find him or more about him. Form what her mother as told Verna about her biological father, he an alcoholic. When he was drinking he would abuse her mother, once to the point that she was admitted to the hospital and Verna was left at the house by herself and was taken into CPS custody. Her grandmother was able to come pick her up but her mother vowed at that time that she would never let him hurt her or her daughter again. Verna does not remember any of this as she was too young but her mother and grandmother have told...
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...James Truslow Adams once wrote that the American Dream is “…a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” The notion of striving for dreams – the American Dream to be precise – is vocal a point to In Cold Blood. Characters flounder with how to achieve their dreams. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote uses characterization to convey the message that the pursuit and thrive to achieve the dream leads to ruin. Characters such as Perry and Dick are prime example of why the American Dream can be fragile and why the dream is an idea not to be tormented...
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...It's a common refrain that the ocean depths are the last great frontier of the Earth. Yet there's a place that's even more inhospitable to humans than the crushing depths of the sea: our planet's interior. It's made of iron, in some places it's 10,000 degrees F, and plenty of scientists devote their life's work to understanding it. But how exactly do you conduct research on an impenetrable, hostile environment like the Earth's core? Back in the day, scientists and creative types alike used to believe that a whole different world lived below us. Jules Verne imagined a place ripe for adventure with dinosaurs and giant birds, while Edmond Halley thought the Earth was hollow with a couple concentric rings floating around in the middle. As cool...
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