Wrap Up

This class has taught me a lot about reading, writing, and analyzing different types of literature. I especially enjoyed analyzing film such as Rear Window and all those film scenes that we watched. My favorite piece of literature that we read in this class was Death of a Salesman because looking at the slow demise of Willy Loman was both sad and interesting. I also really liked the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "We Real Cool" because it was short but also contained lots of meaning in only a few lines. My least favorite piece of literature that we read this semester was "The Red Wheelbarrow" because I did not understand the significance of it. Overall I enjoyed this class and it has helped me to expand my knowledge and understanding of literature.

Death in Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death"

Emily Dickinson's poem, "Because I could not stop for Death" portrays a very interesting image of death because it's as if death is a person. The narrator of the poem starts with the line, "Because I could not stop for death/ He kindly stopped for me," which suggests that the narrator welcomes death and is not afraid of it. Death even drives a carriage where the narrator gets into and rides around in. The driving of the carriage might signify the passage of time and how they passed the school with children playing at recess and then the setting sun. The narrator notes, "We passed the setting sun/ Or rather- he passed us," which is interesting because the setting sun is seen as the opposite of death where death stopped for the narrator but the setting sun did not. This further implies the passage of time as the sun sets but the narrator continues to travel with death. By the end of the poem the narrator knows that it has been centuries since death stopped but it feels as if it has been shorter than a day and that an eternity of death would further await her arrival.

The Meaning of Philip Larkin's "Church Going"

"Church Going" by Philip Larkin is an intriguing poem about a narrator who explores the church and spirituality in an increasingly secularized world. The poem is broken up into seven stanzas and the first two stanzas are drastically different than the last five stanzas. In the first two stanzas the narrator makes fun of the church and describes it as ordinary he observes, "Another church: matting, seats, and stone..." which signifies that the church has no meaning to the narrator it's just a building like any other. The narrator also makes fun of the church by removing his cycle-clips as a sign of respect instead of a hat and donating an Irish sixpence which would be worthless in England. The last line of the second stanza the narrator, "Reflect the place was not worth stopping for," which means that at this point he still does not recognize the meaning of spirituality within the church. However, in the first line of the third stanza the narrator flips his opinion by saying, "Yet stop I did: in fact I often do," meaning that the narrator is fascinated by spirituality and churches in general and he admits he often dwells on the subject of religion. After the third stanza the entire tone of the poem changes as it goes from being satirical to serious. In the last five stanzas the narrator questions the meaning of the church as he questions belief, then superstition, and then disbelief. He moves through the stanzas by imagining what the church would be like without any believers and who the last person to seek the church for what it was, a place of spirituality, would be. By the end of the poem the narrator concludes that spirituality will never die out because someone will always seek it out and that the church will always be a place for church seekers, like himself, to go to.