...Figurative and literal language is a distinction in traditional systems for analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that convey exactly what they mean. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that hyperbolize or alter the conventional meanings of the component words. Figurative language may involve analogy to similar concepts or other contexts, and may involve aggrandizements. These alterations result in figures of speech. According to (Webster’s.com), an idiom was first utilized in 1588 and can be defined as “an expression in the use of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements”. Idioms are utilized to make language richer and more colorful. Idioms are often used to supersede a literal word or expression, as the idiom better describes the full nuance of meaning. Example: “Jumping the gun” means a person acted hastily or made a snap decision predicated on inadequate information. By reason of assumption a person can often “jump the gun” and assume the best or worst in any situation. This kind of anticipatory action can have a positive result, but most of the time someone who jump the gun eventually makes an erroneous or misinformed decision based on inaccurate early information. Analogy inference that if two or more things accede with one another in some respects they will probably accede in others. Analogies are often used to simplify or...
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...Creative Writing Assignment: Mood Piece The batter’s shoulders shrink in disbelief as the pressure is scary high as the scoreboard shows the score of 1-1. The dazzling gold numbers bounce off of the board, giving light off light to the field as the moon gives off light to the earth in darkness. The shining lime green ball rolls around the pitcher’s hand.The ball blinds everyone as all you can see is the pattern of the blood red laces. During this, day turns into night, the intensity is as high as the clouds. The clouds are fluffy cotton balls flying swiftly to another land; continuing their journey to elsewhere. The clouds move as girls are working hard. The pink and blue skies created a sense of urgency as a couple of girls...
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...When I was in high school, I took creative writing course. Because at that time, I just arrived USA, so I wanted to improve my English writing ability. However, when I began to know this course more, I was deeply attracted by this course. I remember there was a time, the teacher asked us to get outside and sit in front of the lawn, and wrote down what we felt. It is really a memorable experience to me. In China, I usually sat in the classroom and racked my brain to write, and I always failed to convey my thoughts and feeling accurately. I sat in such a peaceful place, listened to the birds, to the insects, to the wind. My pen seemed beginning to control me. I just wrote down what I thought, what I felt. I felt free and relax, like flying in...
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...Death Reflected in Three Poems Death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Everyone will experience death, whether it is of a loved one or oneself. In W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” (1003), he describes such a catastrophic event and the drastic effect that it has on his life. It is interesting how people choose to accept this permanent and expected event, death. Similarly, Emily Dickinson has written many poems about death, such as “The last Night that She lived” (843), which describes a family waiting for a woman or girl to die and the dreary and depressed mood that exists within the household. Mourning is considered a perfectly healthy reaction when someone who is deeply loved and cared about passes on, and this is illustrated in “The Memory of Elena” (1070-71) by Carolyn Forche. She writes about the events following a funeral and also flashes back to the actual moment that a wife has watched her husband die. W.H Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” Carolyn Forche’s “The Memory of Elena,” and Emily Dickinson’s “The last Night that She lived” are all poems which share death as their subject matter, but differ in the fact that they discuss death in a unique style with a variety of literary devices to make them more effective. Upon reading these poems, I could relate to each strongly on a personal level. Each poem expresses a different view of death and the different stages of acceptance and grieving. When I was younger, my grandmother passed away. I was quite fond of...
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...to be winter and the night was clear and cold, cars progressed for about forty to fifty miles per hour had notified me that there’s no turning backs before while I stood at the third arrival gate of Phoenix Sky Harbor Int’l Airport awaited for my brother to fetched us everything I’ve seen that night marked my entrée to the United States. I’ve been very blessed, because this is a lifetime opportunity that anyone searched for. No matter what might happened to me after years passed I would always be a proud Filipino. I have to embrace this country’s culture and lifestyle for me to handle things on my own. Thanks to my family who never left me empty-headed about different matters herein this land, it is like you’re like a newborn baby that needed to be looked after. The language has never been a problem to me for I’ve been in that curriculum since I entered preschool. I spoke the language, but never been an outstanding speaker or writer. I used to have an average scores in my writing skills and fair scores in my speaking skills. I’m more of a listener than a speaker, thoughts because the best way I could have expressed my feelings is through writing and I lived by the thought that writing could express deeper feelings than speaking and wouldn’t required you to imbed tons of confidence for confrontation of one’s opinion hence I’m insuperable of vulnerabilities I could have got. Do you consider reading to be an important part of the preparation for writing?- W.S.: Oh, definitely...
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...similarity in each other versus all three being compared at once although, I will be comparing and contrasting all three poems towards the end of this essay. For example, When reading “Funeral Blues” (W. H. Auden), I felt a greater sense of similarity to “Because I could not stop for death” (Emily Dickinson) versus “Death, be not proud” (John Donne) so I will begin to discuss those poems first. When comparing each poem I will list the related styles between the two and the same for contrasting each when discussing the distinctive differences. In “Funeral Blues”; a poem about the mourning of a dear loved one, Auden used a great sense of imagery when writing to assist the audience in creating a mental picture. Each line used a great amount of detail for example, when Auden wrote “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling in the sky the message he is dead.” It was easy for me to actually picture this statement mentally due to his choice of words. Also, he uses a rhyme scheme that is successful in expressing the deep mourning and sorrow that he feels. The same feelings expressed in “Funeral Blues” can also be felt in “Because I could not stop for death” (Emily Dickinson). As in Auden’s poem when speaking of his sadness about the love of his life now deceased, Emily writes about her ride with a gentleman that she meets (death). Emily too uses a similar rhyme scheme to that of Auden. Descriptive details written in the poem helped to visual the story as a reality. Just as there...
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...October 6, 2012 CRW150 - Introduction to Creative Writing - Class # 27071 Doris Patton Midterm Part 1: Creative Story The Stone Tower 1 “Can you get a clear shot Draz?” asked Tankus. “If he takes a step forward I can,” answered Draz. Daylight was disappearing in the forest as dusk began to set, but there was still enough light for the two friends to observe the movements of the tracker who had been silently tailing them for a good part of the day. “What kind of tracker is he?” said Tankus. “He looks like some kind of rat or something.” The tracker was hunched over now, trying to pick up their scent which he had lost several yards back in the brush. Skin like beaten old leather stretched over his long thin bones giving him a scare-crow like appearance, but it was the long, pointed nose set between black, beady eyes that made him look like a rat. He edged forward suddenly picking up their scent again. "Fwoooosh!" Draz’s laser arrow found its mark in the tracker’s temple. “Okay that’s cool,” said Tankus, “we know he’s been with us for several miles, so where do you suppose the rest of his entourage is? Where are the meat and the brains that sent out this dog?” “I don’t know,” said Draz, “I just hope we have enough fire power to keep them back. I don’t know how much more time Kalem needs to break into that old place.” Tankus raked his blonde goatee with his long nimble fingers, trying to add things up in his mind quickly. He was the planner of the group and...
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...The Everyday Life of Metaphors “To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called ‘pedestrian poetry.’ ” --David Brooks When having a conversation with family, friends, or a colleague, are you aware of what you are saying? Are you aware of the devices that you use to shift the conversation in your favor or even to make your point more relatable? Contrary to popular belief, metaphors are a part of our everyday life; they are ubiquitous. We use them in everyday conversations more often than we may realize. Metaphors are powerful devices; often times we use them subconsciously, but they still manage to deliver the same validity. The aim of this paper is to bring the metaphors in our everyday life to light, by showing their explicit and implicit use in different areas of our daily life. Metaphors go beyond literature and transcend to other realms such as storytelling, spoken art, government, and advertisement. Before examining the everyday life of a metaphor, it is important to present its meaning and history to best explain how it became such an important part of our speech. Aristotle was the first to provide a scholarly treatment of metaphors and gives a detailed definition of the term ‘metaphor.’ He reports that a metaphor ”consists in giving...
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...I'll never be too far away, and I promise every word I've scribbled is true, there will always be a place, in my heart reserved for you, we've said it before, this world could leave us anyday, because our love is undying, it will never fade away. Another night, my memories live on, imagine me without you, every page would be gone, what I'd give to hear you, say my name once more, I'd fight my way through hell, earth's center, the core. A puppet being guided, I feel it in my veins, fate draws me to you, whenever you call my name, sometimes I wonder myself, why this took so long to write, but it shows my dedication, worth every sleepless night. I know there are only good reasons, why I'm writing this book, but maybe I wish that one day, I'll be unhooked, free from this hold, you've always had on me, but I know that i'll still see you, everytime I fall asleep. I used to be the strength that raised you up high, now I'm the one with my head in the skies, here I stand alone with you in my heart, in my head I keep looking back, right back to the...
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...remains driven by what Brian Easlea describes as the seventeenth-century natural philosophers scientific quest: a virile penetration into a passive female nature. Men react to their inability to unlock the secrets of nature by confining a primary creative source, women. The Creature’s murder of Elizabeth can be viewed in this light; though motivated by revenge, the Creature (a semblance of a Creation) destroys the true vessel of creation (Elizabeth) depriving Victor, who is a semblance of the Creator, of his mate. However absurd this example seems, Shelley subtly calls attention to the paradox of men’s inherent quest to unlock nature’s life force and their design to contain the creative power of women. Victor’s own relationship to Nature has the same paradox. He both embraces and abhors Nature’s creative power. His need to control Nature, his jealousy of the creative process and his unending fascination with Nature even when it is a “serpent to sting you” (31) is also a fundamental paradox in the novel. Victor’s assesses himself as a man obsessed and helpless in the face of his quest, even as he acknowledges his fears of the final results. His obsession takes on the form of a ruthless addiction he cannot break. “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” (51) resulting in his collapse at the end of his experiment into a “nervous fever” that leaves him an invalid for several months. Victor recognizes the desperation of his...
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...philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.(Brooklyn College) The early Romantic period begins with the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth - co-written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I'm going to specifically refer to three poetic works by Wordsworth when referring to the imagination, nature, and emotion used as components of Romantic Literature: "The Tables Turned", "My Heart Leaps Up", and "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud." Imagination was considered to be one of the highest faculties of the mind during the Romantic era. The Romantics used their imaginations as the ultimate shaping tool for their literature. It was their creative power in that it was dynamic, active, and provided many functions for creating all art. Wordsworth suggested that it is also the faculty that helps humans to constitute reality for we not only perceive the world around us, but also in part create it. The Romantics are also extremely concerned with the healing nature of the imagination in that it can reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearance. It inextricably enables us to "read" nature as a system of symbols. (Brooklyn College) Wordsworth uses all aspects of the Romantic view of imagination in "The Tables Turned." I am specifically drawn to the healing aspect of the imagination that he is trying to push on the person whom this poem is written for in the first two...
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...Extended Essay In World Religions [pic] “An Investigation into the Sacrificial Blood Rituals of the Maya Culture.” Abstract This essay focuses on the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Mayan civilization that spanned from the borders of present day Honduras up to Mexico, but which only a certain amount is truly known. The principal reason why I chose to focus on these people was to challenge myself to try and gain a greater understanding of why they engaged in such strange rituals as bloodletting and even human sacrifice? What prompted them to commit such acts? I proposed that the performance of these actions, as they seemed to be so entwined with their culture, must have had something to do with their religious beliefs but which ones exactly, and how did they originate? It was with this in mind that I conducted an investigation into the sacrificial blood rituals of Maya culture. Thus, from conducting library based research - using books, Encyclopedias and the Internet - I found out that the Mayans had created for themselves a complex Creation Myth and pantheon of gods. It was to supposedly sustain these gods, who were constantly fighting against one another, that the Mayan conducted bloodletting and human sacrifices, believing that in return the gods would provide them the water needed to grow their maize. The gods, replenished by this blood, were able to maintain the harmony of the universe by preventing any one group of...
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...strategy to help the readers (in this case the white clergymen) position themselves into a colored person’s point of view when he shares details about his life and daily struggles in paragraph fourteen. By writing that he had been promised political independence as a God-given right, King makes it clear that he is knowledgeable of the certain areas of the world such as Asia and Africa that are rapidly progressing at “a jet-like speed.” King expands on the feeling by stating that he felt as if he has been told numerous amounts of incidents to wait because The United States are “creeping behind at horse-and-buggy pace” when it comes to granting political independence. King uses a metaphor to make the white clergymen realize how onerous life is as a colored person by saying, “We see the vast majority of our twenty million Negro brothers and sisters smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.” King continues to make the clergymen aware of his many and often daily struggles when he writes anecdotes and instances of his hardships and experiences by stating what he and others are forced to endure such as: “being humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored;” having to sleep in your uncomfortable car for multiple nights during a long trip because no motel would accept you for the color of your skin; being taken aback, having to struggle to find the right words to answer your son when he asks “Daddy, why do white people treat...
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...Lenzy Cornatzer Professor O’Neil Introduction to Philosophy Philosophy Engagement Paper December 15, 2014 For many Christians understanding the early church philosophers is not something that is done on a regular basis. Philosophy is a discipline that studies and researches different topics like justice, morality, religion and reality. There are three branches of philosophy that are accepted, natural philosophy, moral philosophy and metaphysical philosophy. Philosophy is a system of principles for guidance. So how do philosophy and the Christian life intersect? One of the ways to understand that is to look at the early church philosophers that have shaped our knowledge and understanding of the scriptures. In the following paragraphs we will examine the philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Thomas had a way of understanding God that you may or may not agree with but hopefully will learn about him in the paragraphs ahead. Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican theologian and philosopher that is believed by many to be one of the most influential thinkers of Scholasticism and is also know as the father of the Thomistic school of theology. Thomas Aquinas was born in the year 1225 in Roccasecca, in the Kingdom of Sicily also know as present day Italy. He combined the theological principles with the principles of reason and he is ranked by many as one of the most influential thinkers of medieval Scholasticism. Thomas...
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...Masterpieces of Hebrew Literature At the end of the lesson, students should be able to: 1. Enumerate some of the masterpieces of the Hebrew Literature 2. Know the characters, the plot, and the moral that is enclosed with every literary masterpiece. 3. Demystify the hidden messages of every literary masterpieces. Duties of the Heart Author: Chovot HaLevavot * Chovot HaLevavot, or Ḥobot HaLebabot (Hebrew: חובות הלבבות, English: Duties of the Heart), is the primary work of the Jewish philosopher Bahya ibn Paquda, full name Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda. Ibn Paquda was a Jewish philosopher and is believed to have lived in Saragossa, Spain, in the first half of the eleventh century. * It was written in Judeo-Arabic (but in Hebrew characters) approximately in 1040 under the title Kitab al-Hidāya ilā Fara'id al-Qulūb, Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, sometimes titled as Guide to the Duties of the Heart, and translated into Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon in the years 1161-80 under the title Chovot HaLevavot. There was another contemporary translation by Joseph Kimhi, but its complete text did not endure the test of time. * The Duties of the Heart is divided into ten sections termed (she'arim) "gates", corresponding to the ten fundamental principles which, according to Bahya's view, constitute human spiritual life. This treatise on the inner spiritual life makes numerous references to both Biblical and Talmudic texts. It draws on the contemporary Sufi Islamic influences present...
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