British Literature Assignment on Yeats
Illustrate how Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" and "The Second Coming" both express great foreboding about the future.
William Butler Yeats possessed the power of brilliant diction. In his poems “Leda and The Swan” and “The Second Coming” dark images would conjure in the mind of the reader. Foreboding as they can get, the future was as though foreseen by Yeats as a bleak and violent one and he portrayed these images in the two mentioned poems. First “Leda and The Swan”, which was told in poetic form about the rape of Greek mythology figure Leda perpetuated by Zeus. Yeats portrayed Leda as a rape victim who transformed into a swan who despite its beautiful appearance, great despair and shame were masked. Similar to cases in the modern age, rape victims are constantly shamed into thinking it was their fault that caused the assault. It results to the victims resorting to covering up their embarrassing mishap but deep down like Leda rape victims are suffering within.
As for the “The Second Coming”, the future was once again as horrid as Yeats had written it. “Anarchy, things fall apart, blood-dimmed tide” – they all spark images of riot. “The Second Coming!” Could Yeats be referring to apocalypse that has plagued the minds of people these days? It is most likely about the stark raving truth that people are similar to half beasts, as in the image of the “lion body and a head of a man”. The animalistic side of people that makes the world a living nightmare. In the last line it says …”Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born”? Yeats suggested the idea of a false God or a fake Jesus who dwells among people in the future. We have to consider that Yeats had written “Leda and The Swan” in 1923 and “The Second Coming” in 1919. These poems were written a long time before year 2017, and yet Yeats was on point when he wrote these poems with foreboding themes, for they are the very predicament the present faces today.
In D. H Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," does he portray love as emotional, intellectual, or instinctive? Explain how you know.
After reading the story, it could easily be discerned that D.H. Lawrence portrayed love as
purely emotional. Mabel Pervin a young woman of twenty-seven, orphaned by her mother at age fourteen, left by her father recently, kept the their house for years, constantly living in poverty, debt-stricken and bullied by her irksome brothers, Mabel, the silent lady with a mere disposition of solitude and stiffness was bereft of romance. Deep down, she yearned for love, and she found it in a simple act of courage when Dr. Jack Fergusson rescued her from the pond. One can only imagine how Mabel wanted to reunite with her deceased mother so desperately that she chose to end her life, only to be saved by a man who was not altogether willing to love her but succumbed to her in the end.
Mabel’s …
