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Example research essay topic: Rest Of His Life Bad Luck - 1,768 words

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English Romantic Verse John Clare's poem "I Am" emphasized suffers of a cruel world and reflects on ones singularity within this world. In his poem Clare presents the speaker who is in the state of brokenness. The speaker recollects his past misfortunes, unhappy love and sadly remarks on his present: he is abandoned by friends; no kindred spirit would speak to him and listen to his woes. What was dearest to him became alienated and strange, even stranger than the rest of the world. Harsh memories of the speakers life are emphasized by his silent loneliness and the feeling of despair. The speaker escapes from the world that is filled with nothingness, scorn and cruelty.

The speaker dreams about another world where he could abide with God, in other words - live like a child cared, loved and untroubled. To my mind, the dramatic situation of the speaker bears much from the life experience of the poet himself. Christopher Caldwell in Man Out of Time noted that John Clare was the poorest and even the craziest among all English poets. To read him is to face the English class system from its most tragic facet. (Caldwell, Washingtonpost. Newsweek Friday, Oct. 17, 2003) The fact is that Clare had to do real work for all his life, for example he had to earn his money as a fiddler, gardener, bird-share, lime-burner, haymaker, and "bum-tool." He had to support his wife and seven children, the literary set in London did not accept his peasant origins and soon he alienated from it and fall into depression. Further, John Clare was admitted to insanity asylum where he passed the rest of his life.

Moreover, the literary talent of Clare was underestimated by his contemporaries. He used dialect in his poems that was disapproved and corrected by his editors. Clare complained that such censoring would change his poems and ultimately spoil them: "Why, they have cut off my head and picked out all the letters in the alphabet. " (Caldwell, Washingtonpost. Newsweek Friday, Oct. 17, 2003) Nowadays, the poetry of John Clare is revalued in literary world. Caldwell in his article remarked that after Clare's death literary critics viewed his poems in a different way: since Clare's death, critics have tended to view Clare as a combination of two minor poets: He squeaks into anthologies on the strength of a few minutely observed early pastoral poems, full of Northamptonshire dialect and weird bird names and sounds ("the sailing paddock's shrill peeled"); and of the vatic meditations he wrote while institutionalized, particularly the lines beginning "I Am. " (Caldwell, Washingtonpost.

Newsweek Friday, Oct. 17, 2003) Thus, the poem I am is important not only for its autobiographic colouring, but also for accentuating the endowment of John Clare as a poet. The poem I am begins with the statement I am: yet what I am none cares or knows (1 line). This statement sounds rather self-affirming. It suggests some strength of mind of the speaker, who is determined of what he says. Speakers firmness is demonstrated through the repetition of diphthongs [ai] and [ea]. The first strophe contains six lines which follow arabic rhyme scheme.

Iambic pentameter is the dominant meter. Generally, iambic pattern approximates a poem to the natural rhythm of speech. This implies calmness of the speaker, who mainly uses regular word order. A repetition of I am is observed in the first, the third and the sixth lines, where the speaker wants to stress the idea that he can resist all failures and misfortunes and keep his inner world immune to them: And yet I am! And live with shadows lost (6 line). For the same purpose - to stress and emphasize his firmness, self-confidence and strength, the speaker uses mainly verbs and nouns in his speech: cares, knows, friends, forsake, memory, lost, self-consumer, woes, rise, vanish etc.

Such number of verbs and nouns fills the strophe with a bright and intense imagery and symbolism: a man slipped the memory of his friends; the woes of a desperate man, which constantly rise but later, vanish in oblivion host; the symbol of shadows comprises all bad luck and suffers of the speaker. Notwithstanding the fact that the first strophe conveys the state of calmness and strength of the speaker, still there are some signs of his unrest and nervousness. This may be seen through the opposition of words: I- none, rise vanish, shade love, love death, live (in spite the fact that he has) shadows. All these pairs represent the confrontation of evil and good, of hope and hopelessness, and life and death, of positive and negative. Thus, in general, the first strophe portrays an image of a man who survives through lots of troubles and misfortune, but still, he is self-confident and firm in his views. The second strophe refers to the sad memories of the speaker.

That is why it has more negative and pessimistic colouring, shown with the help of such nouns as: nothingness, scorn, noise, neither sense of life nor joys (positive words are negated), shipwreck (as a strong negation of lifes esteems), strange and stranger (as a negation of the dearest, and loved the best). The only symbol that resists all this gloomy mood is shown in the eighth line: it is the symbol of an endless, eternal hope the living sea of waking dreams. The speaker starts using more nouns and adjectives: nothingness of scorn and noise, the sea of dreams, sense of life, joys, vast shipwreck, lifes esteems, dearest, strange, stranger, - that altogether creates a picture of abstract images, conveying the idea of the speakers deep thinking, meditating about the past, reflecting on his experience. The mediation and analysis of the speaker are suggested by the usage of such words as: nothingness, sense of life, lifes esteems. The speaker makes a sad conclusion: And een the dearest that I loved the best -/Are strange nay, rather stranger than the rest. (Lines 11 and 12) This statement is the culmination of the entire poem; it is the verdict of the speaker, the core and the essence of his pessimism and gloomy mood. The word nay is archaic and adds some peculiarity to the emotional state of the speaker.

Lines 11 and 12 are the borders of the reality of the speaker. They offer an idea that the betrayal of people whom the speaker loved became the last straw that the speaker could endure. In the first strophe the speaker mentioned that he was abandoned by his friends, and, as a result, he became the self-consumer of his own emotions and thoughts. This event cast shadows on his life that were rising and vanishing, but still, he managed to overcome them. The betrayal of love, which is depicted in the second strophe, relies to more sever consequences: fist came- nothingness of scorn and noise (despair and the state of being aloof), then neither sense in life nor joy, and finally the vast shipwreck of my life esteems, a very bright metaphor that implies a deadlock, an ultimate end of life.

Love was the last thing that connected the speaker with the reality and helped him to resist his bad luck. When the love was destroyed, the speaker found himself untied and free from the cruel world he lived in. The speaker transformed to another reality, to the world of his dream, to his paradise. The poem ends with the description of the refuge, where the speaker wanted to escape leaving his suffers and grief back in the real world. This refuge is for the speaker alone: I long for scenes where man has never trod/ A place where woman never said or wept; (lines 13 and 14).

It seems that the speaker decided to avoid relationships with the society and spend the rest of his life being far from it. Maybe, he made up his mind that it was the society who was blame for his unhappy life. This inference maybe biographic and closely relates to the life experience of the author himself. Because John Clare was pronounced to be insane and confined to the asylum. Maybe, this is the meaning implied in his statement: I am: yet what I am none cares or knows. Maybe in this way Clare addressed the society and responded to its bad deeds and evils he was the victim of.

The society scorned him and underestimated, the society abandoned and betrayed him, - and finally he decided to go away from it. The speaker of John Clare chose his inner world as the refuge where he can abide with my creator, God/ (15 line) and remain un troubling and untroubled where I lie (line 17). Describing his fairy paradise, the speaker uses the rhymes: trod God, wept slept, lie-sky. These rhymes have somewhat opposite meaning, for example, trod- denotes the action of a man, who is highly undesired to see by the speaker, at the same time God, is chosen to abide with. Wept (weep) identifies suffering of a woman, a negative emotion, and slept the action, that is sweet and associated with careless and happy childhood.

Lie and sky show the opposition in distance. However, this opposition is different from the one observed in the 1 strophe. There, at the beginning of the poem, the speaker tries to stay calm in spite of his numerous troubles, he asserts that he lives, but the final words are shadows to. Thus, the first strophe anticipates that the battle with the reality is lost. The opposition in the third strophe has a positive colouring.

The sequence of rhymes tends to go up: trod, wept, God, slept, lie, sky. Maybe, it symbolizes the eternal life of the speakers spirit, the valued thing the society failed to ruin and corrupt. The very last sentence of the poem suggests a nice and peaceful picture of a natural landscape, where the grass below above the vaulted sky. This picture implies the spiritual salvation and happiness of the speaker. He reaches the paradise he was longing so much; it is the place he created himself where there are no suffering, cruelty, and evil. Bibliography: Chilcott, Tim.

A Real World & Doubting Mind, : A Critical Study of the Poetry of John Clare. England: Hull University Press, 1985. Christopher Caldwell. Man Out of Time. Washingtonpost. Newsweek Friday, Oct. 17, 2003, 29 Apr. 2005
msn. com / id / 2089950 John Clare. I am. The World Poetry Database. 2005, 29 Apr. 2005 < web > Storey, Mark. The Poetry of John Clare. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. , 1974.


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Research essay sample on Rest Of His Life Bad Luck

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