Analyzing The Theme Of Nature In Literary Devices English Literature Essay

Analyzing The Theme Of Nature In Literary Devices English literature EssayThe fore of nature is very important to each of the texts to be discussed in this essay The fertile morose Womans Poems by dramatize Nichols termination of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Wide Sargasso ocean by Jean Rhys. In a sense, the fact that each work is created inwardly a different literary genre to some extent dictates the indispensable differences amongst them. However, this essay sets out to examine how, in addition to comparing literary devices, nature is utilize as a different imperative in each of the selected texts.Throughout the play, Willy escapes back into his memories and it is deeply signifi push asidet, t here(predicate)fore, that the countryside is allied to this I was brainish a yen, you understand? And I was fine. I was even observing the scenery. You tail imagine, me feeling at scenery, on the road every week of my life. still its so exquisite up there, Linda, the tree di agrams argon so thick, and the sun is warm3Loman twain belongs in the country and out of it because he has simply used it, as he has used both things and people, to get ahead. The fact that he has been thwarted is and so a betrayal of his own and a generic reverie that is never fulfilled nor justified, just as the story he begins to recite Linda, his wife, ends not in reverie on the idyllic, as it started, save on loss of control all of a sudden Im going score the road4Miller uses nature, therefore, as an emblem of Willys displacement Many of Willys activities can be seen as highly symbolic. He plants seeds just as he plants false hopes both will die and never come to fruition, mostly because the can has turn over too hemmed in by the city.5In addition, a further lose dream of Willys has been connected with nature, that of his brother, Bens, offer to join him and get up his fortune beyond the suburban life Willy has lived William, when I walked into the jungle, I was sev enteen. When I walked out I was twenty- one and only(a). And, by God, I was rich6For Willy, therefore, nature has become a place of lost hope where the grass dont grow any more(prenominal)7 it does not belong and nor does he A victim of both a heartless capitalist society and his own misguided dreams, Willys eventual suicide is presented with tragic dimensions. His beliefs may be misguided, but he stays sure to them to the end. Although he has neither social nor intellectual stature, Willy has dignity, and he strives to maintain this as his life falls apart around him.8Displacement is as well as a major feature of Jean Rhyss novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. First make in 1966, it is a prequel to Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre, first published in 1847. The novel uses nature as a means of bettering the narrative of Rochesters first wife, Bertha Mason, here known as Antoinette Cosway, a young adult char cleaning charrish who feels herself-importance displaced following the unloose of the slaves who had worked on her familys plantation. The very word place occurs galore(postnominal) eras in the novel9and Antoinette seeks solace in what she sees as an heaven garden, her former home, from which she is regulate out A very important early set office is Antoinettes description of the garden at Coulibri, where she was a child, a garden which was likely based on Rhyss memories of her mothers family estate at Geneva. It marks childhood as taking place in a damaged Eden.10The description of the garden is hence very important to an understanding of Antoinette and of the way Rhys uses her connection with nature to aid her type and thematic developmentOur garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the newly living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for so me reason not to be touched. One was serpentine looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. twice a year the octopus orchid flowered then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The weave was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.11The possessive pronoun with which this carve up opens immediately establishes the dichotomy of Antoinettes situation. This is her home, it should feel like hers but it does not. The knockout she infers has a duplicitous degradedness because it has gone wild, emblematic of a land which has lost control, albeit for a positive reason. The living and the dead mix and encroach upon one another, and there is a serpent in the garden in the snaky orchids. Moreover, the twisted root implies a distortion of what was meant to be, metaphorically echoing Antoinettes displacement. In addition, this is not the only example of pl aces appearing resonant of dis set up and/or situation Places are extremely alive in this novel the menacing, lush garden at Coulibri, the mysterious batheing pool at Coulibri, sunset(a) by the huts of the plantation workers, the road from the village of Massacre up to Granbois, the ocean and sky at sunset from the ajoupa or thatched shelter at Granbois, the bathing pools at Granbois (the champagne pool and the nutmeg pool) the forest where Antoinettes husband wanders until he is lost, the road to Christophines home, the trees and bamboos around the house at Granbois.12Here, Antoinette appears simultaneously intoxicated and repelled by the sweet and strong of the garden, which perhaps says something about her similarly ambivalent status towards those around her and they to her The picture we now have of Rhys and her heroines is that of a passive, impotent, self-victimized schizoid who, well-provided with failure, wields her helplessness like a weapon all as pictorial as orga nism female.13The presentation of nature at the honeymoon house is similarly difficult to place, seeming to be one thing but actually existence another, but her former home is a blessed space where Antoinette hugs to herself the secret hidden in Coulibri.14It is, indeed, these secrets in isolation, echoed in the descriptions of Antoinettes homeland that make the representation of nature in Wide Sargasso Sea so clearly an imperative of the textAs long as Antoinette can remember and order the events of her memories into a temporal or causal sequence, create even an illusion of sequence and maintain a mensurable sense of space and time, then she can hold her life and self together. Her act of narration becomes an act of affirmation and cohesion, a nod to the human beings and its conventions, an attempt to prevent herself from dissolving. When, in Part Three, Antoinette lies encaged in Thornfield Halls dark, cold attic, the meander that hold her to the reality that the world percei ves as sanity netly break. These move are the elements of conventional narrative linear chronology, sequence, narratorial lucidity, distance. She herself admits at this point that time has no meaning sequence disintegrates into a confusion of present and ult and ultimately into a dream which narrates her future.15This has been quoted at length because it addresses many of the literary devices that the novelist, as opposed to the playwright or poet, can use to develop a theme. With regard to nature, it is used by Rhys, as suggested above, to create a temporal space for Antoinette that is emblematic of the identity she has lost. The wildness which is encroaching upon the Eden of the garden, later to be completely destroyed, is an example of the way in which the novelist can use one strong image to lead into another, both being resonant of the past. Indeed, again as stated above, the act of telling the rehearsal creates the character in the mind of the reader and the locations in w hich she is placed are connected to that, as is the temporal dislocation which memory produces and which is often, as with Antoinette, declarative imagination of her state of mind. The evocation of nature as a turbulent and emotional presence adds to this, with the sea as the ultimate semiotic of challenge, chaos and dislocation.Grace Nichols second collection of verse, The Fat Black Womans Poems, published in 1984, also uses nature to evoke a particular image. However, as this is poetry, the linguistic and literary devices used are very different from either those of the playwright and/or novelist. Nichols grew up in Guyana16but has made her life and career in England, she has lived and worked in Britain since 197717, and this cross-cultural imperative is very much evident in her work her poems frequently acknowledge the alien climate, geography, and culture of Englands cities18Within The Fat Black Womans Poems, Nichols seeks to evoke a different perception of beauty from that w hich is shown in white Western culture Nichols also deploys the plank juicyal woman as a powerful challenge to the tyranny of Western notions of female beauty19and thus engender a new heroine, a woman who revises the aesthetic of female beauty.20One of the techniques Nichols employs to do this is combining nature with an perspective of the physical self, as here in Thoughts drifting through the change foul womans head objet dart having a full bubble bathSteatopygous skySteatopygous seaSteatopygous wavesSteatopygous me21The unfamiliar word, steatopygous (meaning having fully rounded buttocks) is repeated for focus and juxtaposed with images of nature so as to produce an emblem of the faint woman as close to nature, her body shaped like the sky, waves and sea. Nichols is empowering mordant women in image by doing this as she does by giving the black woman her own unique voice In making the fat black woman the speaking subject of many of these poems, Nichols signals her refus al to occupy the subject(ed) position designated for the black woman by history and to insist on more complex subjectivities.22Nichols is also concerned that the voice should seem naturalistic and therefore the natural images perform yet another function Like many Afro-Caribbean writers, Nichols infuses her poetry with the spiritual energy of the customs of women before her, a tradition that has little written record.23In another poem from the collection, Beauty, this reproduction of a different image of physical appeal can also be seen to be connected with natureBeautyis a fat black womanwalking the fieldspressing a breezedhibiscusto her cheekwhile the sun lights up her feetBeautyis a fat black womanriding the wavesdrifting in happy acquittalwhile the sea turns backto hug her shape24Again, the woman is juxtaposed with nature, providing a champion between the persona and her surroundings which is both literal and metaphorical. Repetition is used once more by the poet to emphasise the connection between the theme of the collection and beauty in abstract. Indeed, the word Beauty, the only capitalised word in the poem, is set alone on a line, as is hibiscus, as if to mental strain its importance as an emblem or iconic of what Nichols says is an imperative i.e. that this is what beauty unequivocally is. There is a mutual embrace between the woman and nature, she pressing the hibiscus/to her cheek and the sea turning back/to hug her shape. It is as if Nichols is suggesting that the fat black woman who is riding the waves/drifting in happy oblivion is in unison with nature and recognised by it as being so. All of nature, indeed, like the sun that lights up her feet is glorifying her and she it. There is no punctuation mark in the verses, emphasising the smooth, natural flow of the descriptions and the way in which they are mean to imply all that is inherently natural. As Nichols writes in The Assertion, This is my birthright25and thus the investigation of beaut y within the poems becomes a socio-political imperative, too.In conclusion, all one-third texts Millers Death of a Salesman, Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea and Nichols The Fat Black Womans Poems all use nature as a way of enlarging upon and more effectively demonstrating their central concerns. An important element of this is the way in which goofy fallacy is used by the authors, i.e. nature reflecting and/or suggesting a mood or theme. As the three texts discussed here are from different genres, they of get over use nature in different ways, employing different literary devices, as has been shown. However, for each of the authors nature is singularly important and enriches the individual texts immeasurably. In the final analysis, therefore, it might be suggested, indeed, that nature itself becomes almost a communicative character within each of the very different works discussed within this essay, as its importance to the creation and communication of each cannot be overestimated.