Analysis of "I never saw a Moor" and "'Faith' is a fine invention"

Thesis: Whereas "I never saw a Moor" discusses the existence of God directly, "'Faith' is a fine invention" is a commentary on human views of God and science rather than on the subject itself. The two poems connect in that the opinions that Dickenson analyzes in the latter poem are presented in the former.

• "I never saw a Moor" argues directly for the existence of God.
• There is parallel structure between the first and fifth lines, "I never saw a Moor" (1) and "I never spoke with God" (5) as well as with "yet" in lines 3 and 7. 
• This structure serves to illustrate Dickenson's argument that God exists.
• Dickenson claims that she can be as sure that God exists as she can be that any place she has not seen can be, because she is taking both purely on faith, yet it would be ludicrous to deny the existence of the sea.
• "'Faith' is a fine invention", on the other hand, refers to people's viewpoints on God.
• Rather than making direct claims with "I" as she does in the former poem, Dickenson refers to "Gentlemen"; the different pronoun indicates that she is not considering her own feelings, but general human emotion.
• This poem states that people tend to consider God relevant to their day-to-day lives, but irrelevant to science and its "emergencies."
• "When Gentlemen can see" (2) is contrasted with "In an Emergency" (4) by means of the conjunction "But" (3). Thus, the things that people can see, where faith is acceptable, is different than the world people cannot directly observe, in which faith is thrown to the wayside in favor of science.
• This opinion is often how people reconcile science and religion, and Dickenson references this reconciliation in this poem, but does not refer to her own feelings on the matter.
• While Dickenson is critical of the reconciliation of God and science in "'Faith' is a fine invention", she illustrates this opinion herself in "I never saw a Moor".
• Her first poem argues for God on the basis that there are things that science takes for granted (despite a lack of personal experience).
• Thus, she believes in scientific principles, because she will take evidence of photographs as data that illustrates the existence of foreign places.
• However, she also argues for God; therefore, she is arguing both for God and for science, and is therefore expressing an opinion that God can exist in a world with scientific principles - and is therefore displaying a reconciliation of God and science, of faith and empiricism, despite so criticizing this approach in her latter poem.

Picture of Dorian Gray V: Ch. 7-8

When Dorian arrives home after leaving Sibyl, he finds his environment to be simultaneously bland and iridescent. When he looks at his surroundings, he sees "the silent Square with its blank close-shuttered windows and staring blinds" (65). Wilde not only portrays the lack of color in this scene, but also does so using strong word choice. Between the silence, the "blank close-shuttered windows" and the "blinds" (due to the other meaning of "blind"), Wilde vividly illustrates a monochromatic, gray color scheme. This contrasts with the "pure opal" of the sky, the roofs that "glistened like silver," the "violet riband" of smoke and the "nacre-coloured" air (65). These terms all describe a colorful, shiny scene, which contrasts with the utterly bland image presented immediately prior. This contrast is symbolic of the two different performances that Sibyl had presented, and the two different attitudes that Dorian held towards her. Initially, Sibyl performed beautifully, and Dorian saw her as his perfect gemstone, both of which are symbolized by the iridescence; later, Sibyl's performance was entirely bland, and Dorian's emotions towards her die completely. Strangely, the order is inverted in this passage, forming chiasmus between the plot of the story and this passage. Chiasmus can sometimes, as here, refer to something that should be self-evident; in this context, the chiasmus would indicate that it should be obvious that this is the clear and inevitable fate of their relationship.

Picture of Dorian Gray IV: Ch. 5-6

Wilde's arrogant tone is visible to the reader when he states that "women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders" (46). In context, this is either a direct interjection from Wilde himself or the thoughts of the mother of Sibyl - either from the author or from one of the women in his story; in either case, we can take this to be Wilde's direct opinion, because it is either his statement or it is certainly true in his story. Wilde claims, therefore, to understand the female psyche when he directly declares what women are thinking when they attack or retreat. His declaratory statement on a topic that he cannot definitely understand shows how he believes himself to always know the truth - illustrative of his arrogance.

Picture of Dorian Gray III: Ch. 3-4

As is typical for upper-class society during this time, Wilde was familiar with classical literature and culture. He sometimes uses allusions in order to bring to life an image otherwise presented purely through descriptive language. For instance, when discussing how mistakes make one young, Lord Henry summons the image of  "catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life" (30). The phrases "mad music of Pleasure," "wine-stained robe" and "danced [...] over the hills" combine to form an image that any educated reader of the time would obtain immediately from the word "Bacchante." The Bacchantes were a group of women who were priests of Bacchus, and they would participate in massive orgies (thus, "mad music of Pleasure") atop Mount Cithaeron ("over the hills") devoted to Bacchus (explaining the "wine-stained robe"). The entire image Lord Henry presents is encapsulated by the single word "Bacchante" for any educated reader. The word "Bacchante," in fact, holds even more power, because the Bacchantes' frenzy is beyond what a less educated reader would perceive merely from the adjective "mad." If the Bacchantes came upon a small animal such as a rabbit, they would tear it to pieces by hand, leaving a bloody mess in their wake; if they, by chance, encountered a man in their frenzy, then at best the man would be castrated - at worst, he could end with the same fate as the rabbit. The description provided by "Bacchante" goes beyond what the other words creating this image provide; in this way, Wilde uses allusions to enhance the intensity of his imagery.

Analysis of "Out, Out-"

Thesis: The allusion to Macbeth in the title of Robert Frost's "'Out, out-'" is a fitting comparison for the theme of the poem of the fickleness of life represented in Frost's use of dashes, exclamations and an anticlimactic conclusion.

• The dashes in the poem have multiple means by which they illustrate the fickleness of life.
• The quotation "Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it" (31) shows several of these purposes.
• Firstly, the dashes sound like gasping, and in the poem, the boy is dying - thus, gasping is an appropriate phonetic choice.
• Secondly, the dashes show emotion, the grief and anxiety which would surely be present in such an event as an amputation.
• Thirdly, the visual shape of the dash, a long line, is indicative of a long, slow event that consumes time as the dash consumes space, which could be illustrative of a long, slow last breath - thus, even visually, the dashes illustrate the end of the boy's life.
• Finally, although this was certainly not the original intent of the author given the time in which the author lived, the dashes lead to sounds that are similar to that of a modern-day heart monitor, where words are beeping: the short words would be heartbeat beeps, and the flow of words at the end could be the long beep after the patient's death; although this was not Frost's intention, the poem takes on additional meaning today.
• The exclamation points serve a similar intent, but to a lesser extent.
• After the boy loses his hand, the narrator makes the exclamatory interjection, "But the hand!" (17).
• This shows the emotion in the poem, as it is expressed not only by the characters, but by the narrator through exclamation.
• The exclamation points also add to the phonetic gasping, as, in the way Frost uses them, they cut short a sentence in a crescendo up to that point.
•  Finally, the poem concludes anticlimactically, relating the quickness of death to the fickleness of life indicated in the title.
• The conclusion of the poem is that the death's observers "turned to their affairs" (33); in other words, they moved on.
• This illustrates the fickleness of humans, and therefore how not only is death unexpected, but life changes quickly as well.
• Thus, the image presented in the titular allusion to Macbeth of a candle flickering is an accurate one: a candle dies easily with the smallest of winds, and when it does so, one simply obtains another candle.

Picture of Dorian Gray II: Ch. 1-2

The characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray are representations of the personified concepts they refer to. For instance, Lord Henry relates Dorian Gray to Beauty and Basil to Genius when they are first discussing him. Later, he says "Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation" (16). This is illustrative of the reason why Dorian Gray is worshipped by Basil: Basil is Genius and Gray is Beauty, so Gray is higher than Basil. Furthermore, Basil frequently needs to explain himself (for instance, when he states that he has put too much of himself into his work), whereas Lord Henry recognizes Dorian Gray's beauty as soon as they see each other; thus, Beauty, Dorian Gray, requires no explanation, whereas Genius, Basil, does. Lord Henry then mentions a third capitalized personification, Thought, that can be considered to be representative of Lord Henry himself. It is likely that as the book continues more personified capitalized Concepts will arise as more characters do.

Picture of Dorian Gray I: Preface

          In the preface of A Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde illustrates his belief that beauty arises from interpretation. For instance, he states that "those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming [and that] this is a fault" (vii). He claims that those who find ugliness in beauty are the poorer for it, in particular compared with the "cultivated," who "find beautiful meanings in beautiful things," and for whom "there is hope" (vii). He does acknowledge, however, that people may find beauty in different things; in particular,  he believes that the artist should be separated from the piece to avoid objectivity, supporting the notion of "Death of the Author," under which the author's intent is irrelevant and only the interpretation of the reader matters. He believes that different people can view different things as beautiful, but that those who find more beauty are more cultivated. he also states that some things are universally beautiful by the implication of his words "beautiful things"; he had previously stated that beautiful things are created by artists, and therefore could easily perceive everything as beautiful. Therefore, while beauty is subjective, those who find more beauty in everything are in general more "cultivated."
          His tone towards the audience in this passage is playful, but contemplative. He toys with the audience, providing direct contradictions, such as when he first states that "the nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass," and then that the dislike "is not" said rage (vii). These show how he almost appears to make a point, provide an argument that can be argued with, allowing the audience to finally grasp a concrete statement, then withdraws that statement by claiming exactly the opposite. On the other hand, many of his statements are deeply philosophical, such as that "to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim" (vii). He seems to be involved with a battle of wits with the reader, in which he speaks many deep truths while making no argument; therefore, the tone of his writing is similar to that which on would find in such a battle: simultaneously humorous and thought-provoking.

Analysis of "The Unknown Citizen"

Thesis: W. H. Auden used his poem "The Unknown Citizen" to criticize the shift of American ideals away from individualism, towards normality and standardization.

• The title of the poem, "The Unknown Citizen," is indicative of how the person's normality caused him to lose his distinction from everybody else.
• The source of all the information about this man was the "Bureau of Statistics" (1).
• This shows how people cease to be people when they are entirely typical; instead, they are simply another "statistic": if everyone is normal, no one sticks out.
• He is unknown because he is statistically normal, and so his lack of individuality, of self-expression, was ultimately, in the eyes of Auden, his downfall.
•  Auden contrasts that the person is "unknown" with how excellent he was a a citizen in order to criticize not only the viewpoint that conformism is good, but to criticize society for holding this viewpoint.
• About him, there was "no official complaint"; indeed, "he was a saint" (2, 4).
• This shows the ideals of the time: all of his viewpoints are perfect for what everyone believes is right.
• Therefore, when Auden criticizes the viewpoint of conformism, he is attacking the societal ideal of his time.
• Auden concludes his poem with a strongly ironic statement that punctuates his point.
• He ends with that "had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard" (29).
• The irony is the contrast of this with the title: if the person is "unknown" then the collective speaker would never have heard that anything was wrong because they never would have heard of him.
• Here Auden is stating that it if one is unsatisfied with conforming, one cannot complain and still be considered a conformist, because to complain would be to resist the ideal off conformism and thereby display a nonconformist viewpoint.