Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves Essay Example for Free

Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves EssayIt seems to me that we all told look at Nature too much, and live with her too little This restate provides a philosophical insight into the main theme I will explore at bottom my chosen poems. Nature is defined as the phenomena of the physical being collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. and this simply states that nature and humans are opposites, and star opposes the other. The poems I have chosen question this definition of nature and put it to humankind to answer the question, are we one with nature, or merely manipulating it to our own advantage, giving little back to our heritage? Oscar Wildes The Ballad of Reading Gaol explores our own human race and how easily two conflicting emotions become each other whilst Charlotte Mews The Trees atomic number 18 Down examines human ignorance and through use of language she unravels t he ever changing connections with nature.However it is Lawrences The Snake that uses noniceable imagery to portray humankind in all its shapes and forms, forever changing. These three poems utilize a series of techniques that bring forth a common phrase we are what we hate, kill and deal, which lastly contri besideses to a universal relevance, the main idea I will be focusing on, each man kills the thing he loves. Oscar Wilde is considered a gifted author, playwright and poet of the ordinal century.He was intimately involved in the up rise of aestheticism, a philosophy of nature and expression of beauty Wilde expanded the narrow-mindedness of the Victorian Era, ultimately bringing a new light to society. The Picture of Dorian Gray, a semi autobiography, is considered the most seminal and serious of all Wildes works. However it is after being accused of homosexual offences, by his lovers father, and further incarcerated at Reading Gaol that Wildes writing took a to a greater exte nt melancholic approach.After serving his two days of hard labour, Wilde then moved to France, and was in penniless(prenominal) exile It was in his last remaining years that Wilde produced two extremely heart felt pieces of work De Profundis, a Latin term for from the depths, was an epistle addressed to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, and recounted his lifestyle of extravagance and love, inside the first half. In the second part the text looks into his recent experiences, during his time at Reading Gaol, as he comes to terms with his spirituality.The other, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a cardinaler cantos poem, further subdivided into six lined stanzas, describes his experiences of loneliness and death, whilst incarcerated at Reading Gaol. The initial scene of the ballad, He walked amongst the Trial Men, In a suit of shabby greyness, was inspired by the hanging of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, on Saturday 7th July 1896, a thirty year-old man convicted of cutting the throat of his wi fe. Charlotte Mew was an understated poet, whose works were less recognised, in comparison to Wilde, notwithstanding she was highly praised by the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Virginia Woolf.Mew lived a traumatic life, from beginning to end facing close family deaths and two of her siblings being diagnosed with kind illness. These early experiences affected her future and had major influences on her beginning with her and her sister Anne making a pact never to marry, in fear of passing on her familys madness. Additionally Mew had similar sexual orientations as Wilde, attracted to ones own sex, however due to the condemnation of homosexuality, in the nineteenth century, Mew was left with a strong sense of suppression.Her life was extremely stifled by such experiences of death, loneliness and disillusionment and hence reflects these themes at heart her work. The Trees are Down is a six stanza poem, that follows no structured form, merely ranging from one to nine lines, each stanz a. The poem is based around the Revelation reference, at the beginning of poem -and he cries with a loud voice hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees and relates this to our society, past, present and future.David Herbert Lawrence, D. H.Lawrence, was an extremely successful writer and artist. Publishing many plays, novels and volumes of poetry. He lived a very mild life, born in the small mining township of Eastwood, England, in 1885. Lawrence was an outcast, with few friends at school, who didnt follow in his fathers footsteps of becoming a miner. So Lawrence went on to study, gaining a scholarship at Nottingham High School and then becoming an elementary teacher. However it was after falling in love with his old professor, Earnest Weekelys, wife, Frieda von Richthofen, that his life was altered.Breaking off his engagement and ending his teaching career, Lawrence developed his writing into a career. Sons and Lovers is a semi-autobiographical account of Lawrences experi ences as a boy, under the name of Paul Morel, who loved his suffer and full of offense for his father. Lawrence wrote this novel after the death of his mother, in 1910, and explores the love of a mother As her sons grow up she selects them as loversfirst the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their motherurged on and on. All three poets lived extremely contrastive lifestyles, however the common thread between them is the literary period they lived in, the nineteenth century. Wildes work, pre-incarceration, was considered extremely lush and light, however post-incarceration it grew sad and he adapted crepuscular Romanticism into his works. Mew explored Naturalism whither the environment controls people, especially in The Trees are Down, which is similar to the works of Lawrence who combines naturalism with Pre-Raphaelitism, combining literacy with the visual arts, which is seen through his strong imagery.Comparing these three liter ary movements helps shape each poem, providing a purpose behind the theme of each text. The intent of these poems differ slightly from one another, however all three have embedded the allegory of killing our intimates at heart their texts. Wilde takes his own personal experiences of loss, and additionally the example of Wooldridges own act, to get around how within love echoes hate and vice versa. Mew, whos poem seems completely ahead of her time, exposes the ignorance of the human race.This exposure of humans prejudice towards nature is again echoed within Lawrences poem through the line my education said he must be killed. The common purpose within these texts is the exposure of humans ignorance and how inevitable it is. Lord Alfred Douglass father took Wilde to court for alleged homosexuality and this life altering moment in Wildes life is easily identify within the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. However Wilde carefully entwines Wooldridges own attempt of killing the thing he loved within his own story to expose the wider occurrence of this tragedy.It is questioned whether or not Wilde came up with this statement or whether it is a nod to Shakespeares Merchant of Venice when Bassanio asks Do all men kill the things they do not love? Wilde is well known for his stimulating epigrams, yet this phrase seems to generate a metaphor for life and although not a question, like in Merchant of Venice, Wilde questions the similarities of love and hatred. When searching the word love up on Thesaurus. com it provides a list of antonyms, including hatred, and vice-versa and yet here we see Wilde placing the two, opposing verbs, hand in hand.Wildes underlying purpose within The Ballad of Reading Gaol is not to recount his experiences at Reading, but what Wilde is really looking for is the mode of interaction in which love and hatred are one and indivisible, in which the bitterness is an expression of the admiration. Written in the nineteenth century Mews poem, The Tre es are Down, was completely ahead of its time and in todays society is seen as an empowering demonstration of humanitys destructive ignorance.Using the line from the revelation Mew makes deep connections with the past and by examining her present looks into the future of what is to come, what is now extremely relevant. The purpose of this is to reveal societys destructive nature and speak out against the destruction of our heritage as half my life it has beat with. Lawrence examines prejudices of the human race towards animals, within the poem, The Snake, and how we accept the words fed to us in an alleged education.However the irony of it all is that we are one with the Snake and this is what Lawrence was arduous to achieve. Describing the snake drinking from trough as if he is a person, the same as the narrator, then he looks up just like cattle do. Lawrences connections across the animal kingdom man, snake and cattle alike, break down the barriers of humans vs. animals, generati ng a scene of equality. However it is once the narrators voice of education convinces him otherwise, his face becomes humanity fearful and paranoid.Each text focuses on humanity and from here branches off the love-hate, ignorance and prejudices of the human race. Wilde highlights the correlations between love and hatred we express towards one another, Mew exemplifies humanity losing touch with their heritage, whilst Lawrences reveals the irony within humankinds prejudices. In all three cases the writer is attempting to stage how two effects, wildly different, grow closer together, reciprocating off one another, or how two objects, scientifically/emotionally tied together can push one another away.