"Hope" is the thing with feathers

The word hope in its own right holds no certain certitude. Everyone has their own definition of the word and what it means to them, in fact, if you ask any two people you probably won't get the same answer from both of them. This masterpiece by Emily Dickinson shows why the word hope has so many meanings and so many explanation. She shows us that hope uses more than just one sense, she uses sight and hearing which shows us that hope is all around us. She uses a lot of unclear language in a clear attempt to get the reader to make the reader make an interpretation of the poem with a base point (being hope).

She uses ambiguity in this poem to make her own meaning of it but also to allow us as readers to make our own conclusions. Her first line ""Hope" is the thing  with feathers" is the first of many lines to use ambiguity basically meaning one point, that hope can fly and take you anywhere you want, other than that as the reader we have to make our own conclusions. I feel like she uses ambiguity on purpose to basically tell us what she feels like hope means to her but only she can understand. This leaves the reader having to make their own conclusions about what hope means to them. I feel like the subject of hope is such an open-ended subject where in explaining it there is always ambiguity somewhere in your explanation so in this poem she makes us think creatively by making us use our senses to make us understand what she is saying. She says she has "heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea" which to me means that no matter what situation she was in she could always hear hope somewhere. In this last line she says "yet never in extremity, it (hope) asked a crumb of me" to me this means that she asked hope for everything yet it never asked for anything back, one might say "well, hope is not a person" well thats the thing, hope is a spirit that needn't anything in return but will be there when you need it most in the extremest of conditions and in the best of times.

In conclusion, ambiguity in this poem is not being unsure, it is being you. It is taking Dickinson's words and molding them into your own meaning, as you read you will see that almost every word she uses can be molded into a new meaning by everyone who reads it. Dickinson had her own meaning of it when she wrote it and never intended it to be understood the same way by any reader as is the deal with most poems unless they are just a story poem (a story written in stanzas using poetic language). All poems are open to interpretation and this poem is a perfect example of that point.

Review of CIDINT

The show The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime featured a charismatic cast with an amazing stage and intriguing lights and sound effects, the show was incredibly futuristic which I enjoyed. The show was based heavily off of the novel which tells the story of an autistic but very smart boy named Christopher who has two goals in the near future, to find the killer of his neighbors dog, Wellington and to get an A* on his math A-level exam. The play stayed very true to the novel in that it did not change a lot of the storyline around a lot and used charismatic acting, lighting effects and sound effects to emphasize the symptoms of Christopher's autism. They also managed to include some comedic elements and language into the play which was fun too.  I do feel like the play was a bit confusing in the beginning as to explaining who was who and what was going on but once you caught on you basically knew the story and understood everything you saw. The lights sometimes made it complicated to know where you were and who lived where but the lighting really came to life in the train scene which was quite well done. I liked the distant affection that the parents showed Christopher as well, Christopher doesn't like to be touched, but when prompted he touches his mother and father's hands as I sign to show them that he does love them which occurs repeatedly throughout the show and just adds a very touching element to the show. I feel the show ended nicely with Christopher getting an A* on his exam and his parents are both very proud of him and it is just a very touching scene and Christopher's own victory, I also like how in the last scene when he asked his mom that since he got an A* on the exam that he could do anything but right before she could respond, the screen cut to black which in my opinion was a genius way to end a brilliant show. In all, I was impressed with all aspects of the play and am happy that I took the time to go see it, it definitely exceed my expectations and I would recommend it to any avid play-goer looking for something new or a beginners first show, be it what it is, it is a great show and I enjoyed it very much.

Nature is what we see

In this poem, there is one stanza consisting of 12 lines and it is one long sentence. The meter changes quite a bit in this poem, the first two lines are 6/1 (6 syllables to 1 line) and then the next lines vary from 7/1, 8/1 and sometimes even 9/1 and then go back to 6/1 for the end.  The rhyme pattern for the first three lines is ABA and then I believe the rhyme pattern for the next five lines is BCABA and the rhyme scheme ends as there are no more rhymes to include. The tone of this poem is uplifting as it talks heavily about nature and all things nice. In this poem she connects nature to harmony which means nature is peaceful. She also connects it to heaven which in a way, I think, is that it is everlasting.

The poem says that Nature is the most peaceful ant beautiful part of our world. She talks about the most beautiful aspects of nature or her favorite parts anyway. She also says "Our wisdom is impotent to her simplicity" which is basically saying that what we know is powerless to how simple nature is because nature is just beautiful and we will never know why or how nature is how it is because it is simply just there which is the definition of her "simplicity". She talks about the senses, sight and hearing and then gives examples of what we can see (the hills, the afternoon, the bumblebee, the squirrel) and then she talks about what we can hear (The Bobolink, the sea, the thunder, the cricket). I feel this is significant because it truly does emphasize that nature is all around us and that it invokes all of our senses.

Themes in Poetry

3 themes I found were religion, family and youth.

With religion, I found in the first poem about the figs that they were related the figs back to Allah and how it seemed that the figs were his fruit. It said "I'm talking about a fig straight from the Earth - a gift of Allah"

With family, I found that in all poems he would talk about his father or in the case of the third poem his Grandmother. In each of his first two poems he says Papa or father, in the first one he says "My father, in Arabic, chanting a song" and in the second one he says "It was never too strong for us: make it blacker Papa". He seemed to relate all of these poems back to his family or include them in it so we can infer that he had a close-knit relationship with his family

For youth, it is clear that since he uses Papa and Father and mother all the time that he is talking about memories of his childhood. He even speaks to being a young age in the first poem when he says; "At age six, I ate a dried fig and shrugged".