The Inheritors by William Golding Essay Example for Free

The Inheritors by William Golding Essay Abstract This analytical essay presents an in-depth analysis of the book The Inheritors, which was written by William Golding. The bibliography appends one source in APA format. Outline Introduction Primary ideas of the reading Reflection of the time in which the reading was produced Personal response to the reading Conclusion Introduction â€Å"Golding favored this work above all his others. Many have agreed that his account of the final defeat of the last Neanderthal individuals at the hands of the emergent human race is powerfully and above all consistently imagined. The triumphs and disasters of the future are tragically implicit in this evocation of the conquest of an earlier, gentler group by those who are for good and ill our ancestors†. Anonymous   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   William Golding was one of the most significant novelists of the 1950s and the 1960s. Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year 1983 and he also won the Booker Prize in the year 1980. â€Å"The Inheritors† is a well-known book written by William Golding, who is the author of the famous novel Lord of the Flies. Written in the year 1955, the book is based on Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and basically shows the inherent violent nature of the Homo sapiens. The novel is about the last of the Neanderthals and how the Homo sapiens gained success over them by the use of brutality and pretense with their natural superiority. The Neanderthals have been shown as very simple people, whose most prominent characteristic is that they think in images. In their world, understanding someone meant being able to see their picture. Also, in their highly amusing world, fire and water have the ability to be awake or fall asleep and even a log decides where and how to place itself in the water. As the author says, â€Å"He had thought that he must make sure the log was still in position because if the water had taken the log or if the log had crawled of on business of its own then the people would have to trek a day’s journey round the swamp and that meant danger or even more discomfort than usual† (Golding, p.12).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The books written by William Golding are all based on the depravity of the human mind and nature. The Inheritors is one of those books. In the novel the author has brilliantly through his imagination recreated the world of the Neanderthals and of the successors of the Neanderthals, that is, the first of the human species. As mentioned above The Inheritors was the personal favorite of William Golding out of all his books and novels, and is related to the disappearance of the last of the Neanderthals by the hands of the much more refined and newly advanced species known as the Homo sapiens. Primary Ideas of the Reading â€Å"His novels†¦with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world today† Sweidsh Academy Nobel Prize Citation   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Inheritors is a novel written by William Golding as an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a group og Neanderthals. William Golding in this novel takes the readers for a journey through the world of the primitive men and the world is such that is seen by the eyes, visions, and up-and-coming language expressions of the first of the humans. The characters have been drawn by the author rather very sensitively, covering each and every characteristic of theirs. In the novel, the language of the Neanderthals is limited to images or pictures, which they form in their mind. For example, in the words of the author, â€Å"He shut his eyes and frowned at the picture of the log† (Golding, p.12). The Neanderthals were highly dependant on their senses. They used them to detect intruders and to assure safety, As the author writes, â€Å"Then he searched the forest with ear and nose for intruders and only when he was sure of safety did he put down his thorn bush and kneel by the water† (Golding, p.12). The mental images of theirs are used by the Neanderthals to show them the way to food, their seasonal homes and to save them from possible dangers. The descriptions that have been given by the author are very precise. Marvelously defined are the surroundings and feelings of all the characters. Cold, drenched, starving, reliance on a sense of smell, stones for armaments, hyenas indicating a kill for the group of our most primitive ancestors to steal, and a blossoming plant intertwined forest of the early spring abounding with a mystical ice woman to be worshipped. This block of ice known as Oa is worshipped and awed by the whole of the tribe of Neanderthals. The book has been written by the author in such a way that at times one begins to consider the Neanderthals as the Homo sapiens. The Neanderthals are portrayed as characters, which do not talk but only gesture to each other, form images in their mind and carry out the burial of their dead with heartfelt, solemn rituals.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   There are only eight of the remaining Neanderthals in the story, out of which there are six adults and a small girl and an infant. The tribal clan is led by a Neanderthal namely Lok. The story begins with a pair of Neanderthals who witness the death of a number of people of their group, which later proceeds on to the the kidnap of the infant neandethral. The parents of the infant neandethral begin observing the human species that live on a river island (and are scared of Neandethrals as they consider them demons of the forest). The neandethrals have their own religious rituals and while observing the humans through the tress they find out that the humans have completely different rituals. The religious activities of the Neandethrals are centered around Oa, the block of ice, while the activites of the Homo sapiens were centered around a female matriarch-priestess. The humans live across the river and the Neandethrals are extremely scared of crossing the water due to the fact that they cannot swim hence they are very scared to walk through the water to save their daughter. The homo sapiens have captured the daughter of the Neandethrals because their priestess wishes to keep her as her pet as she fancies the red her and the childish features of the infant. The new people, that is the homo sapiens are extremely different. The new people have already built boats, have weapons such as bows and arrows, have a very complex way of life and live rather sophisticated lives, know how to ferment honey into had used the bow-and-arrow as a formidable weapon, developed a more complex social structure, knew how to ferment honey into liquor, and also know of ways to protect themselves from h armful elements. These two groups of people have no single thing common between each other and do not gain anything common by the end of the novel. The new people, that is the homo sapiens have brought along with them art, war, lust, intoxication etc and eventually a battle takes place between them in order to see who the superior power is or that who has the ability to survive in the long run and who has the dominating power. A number of kidnaps as well as murders take place, but after all, humans with their treachery and sharp minds take over the Neanderthals and wipe them off the surface of earth. The Neanderthals had long before accepted the fact that the new species that is the Homo sapiens have such knowledge, wisdom, and weapons, control over the elements etc that the simpler species that is the Neanderthals would face nothing but doom at their hand. Reflection of the time in which the reading was produced   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Inheritors was written in the year 1955. By then, the general perception related to the first humans was that the Neanderthals had become distinct and they disappeared because of the fact that they fell in love with their beautiful human neighbors, that is the Homo sapiens. However, The Inheritors shows us a completely different picture. The book was written at a time when nearly nothing was known of the days when Neanderthals walked on earth. Back then, no research what so ever had been conducted regarding the period of the Neanderthals and the first humans and the way the humans had taken over the Neanderthals. It was in the 1950s that it was found that the primitive people, the first Homo Sapien had come up with a way to cross the water and not drown. This was a time when nothing was known of our ancestors, their society, their social lives, their characteristics, their features and all of this had to be brought out into the open so that we may realize just what we used to be and what we are now – sadly, there is not much of a difference.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   When one goes through the book under consideration, that is, The Inheritors, he or she gets to see his ancestors. The ancestors, who had already made weapons, were extremely ignorant, had the tendency to kill for their own good and were completely corrupt. It was believed back then (when the book was written) from what little was known about the Neanderthals that the Homo sapiens were superior to the Neanderthals. This according to Golding was untrue. The Homo sapiens were not superior in anyway what so ever. What the Homo sapiens were was more evil and clever.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   While going through the book today, we see a part of the current humans in the Homo sapiens of the first kind. There are extreme similarities between us and the Homo sapiens that have been portrayed by Golding in his book. The novel has been written about a time when the Neanderthals were disappearing and a new much cleverer and well-occupied kind of man came into being. These men were the Homo sapiens and they were none other than our ancestors. The Neanderthals were disappearing because of the Homo sapiens as they were gaining power over the land. Back then, the Homo sapiens killed the Neanderthals and today humans are killing off each other, which proves that man has not changed at all since then. Personal Response to the Reading   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the book we see a group of Neanderthals (they did not have family relations) who lived a peaceful life in their own world. Changes in the climate, the arrival of the Homo sapiens on the other side of the river along with certain bad omens from their God have upset them. The changes in the current environment is upsetting them because of the fact that they are not at all equipped to handle the changes that are taking place and all they have is the knowledge that they have inherited from their ancestors and completely lack in creative abilities and skills unlike the Homo sapiens who have equipped themselves with all it takes to counter the changing environment and are not at all afraid of the elements. These newcomers or the Homo sapiens have been portrayed as very clever, quick-witted beings that unlike the Neanderthals have a language and they also take up violence in order to get what they want. They notice that the Homo sapiens were armed with bows and arrows along with sharp tools that were made out of bone and they could cross the river without drowning by the use of rowing logs (boats). My personal response to the reading is that the book is very interesting although highly confusing as well. But no matter what, the book is very absorbing and it also presents us with an insight into the social life of the humans as to how humans can survive with only the earth as a guide for them to live. I believe that the story is somehow a bit disturbing, as it reveals the truth about our ancestors and it is rather hurtful to know that it was our ancestors, who were among the first to begin manslaughter. It is disturbing to find out that our ancestors were the ones who destroyed an entire species. This notion makes the reader feel very sympathetic towards the Neanderthals and it shows that the weak or the submissive people are not the inheritors of earth. They somehow, struggle to put up with the changing circumstances and we further see them failing badly.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This piece of writing shows us the darkness that exists in the heart of the humans since the very beginning. It shows that the history of mankind is full of violence and barbaric acts that have been carried out against the innocent. Perhaps, the author is trying to show the two sides of a human beings nature. The innocent and caring nature of the Neanderthal symbolizing the love that perhaps every human has locked up deep within himself and the violent nature of the Homo sapiens depicting the darker side of a human being. The Neanderthals were very simple and believed in even a wooden log having its own will. They talked in pictures and thoughts. They believed in water being alive and awake or asleep. As the writer says, â€Å"the water was not awake like the river or the fall but asleep, spreading there to the river and waking up, stretching on the right into wildernesses of impassable swamp and thicket and bog. So sure was he of this log the people always used that he opened his eyes again, beginning to smile as if he were waking out of a dream; but the log was gone† (Golding, p.12). The only idea that I personally disagree with is that of telepathy between the Neanderthals. The story tells us that they did have the ability to talk, but they did not do so. Another aspect of the book which can cause problems for a reader is the fact that it is written completely from the point of view of Lok, hence certain things about the going-on’s are somehow confusing as it lacks clarity. At times one does not even know as to what is going on. But all in all, the entire book is very interesting and it lets a person learn much about they ways of his or her ancestors. The book is very enlightening and the fact that it is disturbing can be ignored in order to learn the truth about history and primitive men. Conclusion   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the light of the above discussion we can hereby culminate that the book under consideration, that is, The Inheritors was written by William Golding. The book was penned down by the author in the year 1955 after his extremely famous novel known as Lord of the Flies. The basic theme of the book is to educate the people about their ancestors that are the first of the Homo sapiens and the ways by which they took over the Neanderthals who were the last of their kind. The Neanderthals were simple, caring yet curious, while the Homo sapiens were clever, quick-witted, could cheat and commit treachery and could also get violent in order to get what they want. Eventually the Homo sapiens finished off the last generation of Neanderthals and took over the earth, or in other words, became the inheritors of earth. The book is at times very disturbing but all in all it is a good read as it tells us of the ways of our ancestors, which still prevail in our society and makes one think as to why we have not changed at all in all these years.                                           Bibliography Golding, W. (1955). The Inheritors. United Kingdom. Harvest Books. ISBN: 0156443791. Page 12

Tennessee WIlliams :: essays research papers fc

IT is "OUT OF REGRET FOR A SOUTH that no longer exists that I write of the forces that have destroyed it," Tennessee Williams explained. This also seems to be the case for Kenneth Holditch and Richard Freeman Leavitt, the authors of the beautiful biographical album Tennessee Williams and the South'2 Holditch and Leavitt's book is alive with nostalgia for a South that no longer exists: a culture of grace and ease, of cavalier behavior and stoic endurance, a place where the romantic imagination is alive and in perpetual struggle with the crude realism of modernity. According to the authors, this paradise lost was crucial to the dramatic imagination of Williams, but above all it seems to have inspired their own. Besides establishing Williams's intimate ties with the South and revealing the biographical material beyond the writer's fiction, the book relishes the perpetuation of Southern mythologies. The childhood of Thomas Lanier Williams III, who was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and raised in various other Southern locations, is described as nothing less than "a southern idyll," regardless of the father's evident alcoholism, frequent family quarrels, and the older sister's fragile health. However, these fundamental problems erupted suddenly and violently, so the authors insist, only with the family's move north to St. Louis. Notably, it is not the innate family situation that clouds Tom's otherwise sunny childhood, but his displacement to the North. And since "southerners . . . have deep roots in their own native soil and do not tend to forget the land that gave them birth," the young Tom could never feel at home in "the cold North." Rehearsing such cliches of a long-standing North-South dichotomy, the authors establish the South as a warm and comfortable haven, in which Williams apparently felt sheltered from personal and social conflicts. The alienation and conflicts of the North, in turn, trigger the transformation of the Southern past into a comforting myth: "His experiences, good and bad, served as a sort of magical catalyst to convert the past into a precious stone of memory, enriching it with a luster and magnificence it may never have possessed in reality." That this myth had little to do with the concrete reality of the South stands beyond question. But one wonders for whom the magical conversion of the past took place. After all, even in his dramatic imagination the South was never simply just a place of enduring gentility and romanticism to Williams, but it was also the site of very concrete and often cruel social, ethnic, and sexual conflicts.

Modernism in Two Poems by Marianne Moore

Introductionâ€Å"The most serious poetry today is still modernist. Modernism in literature is not easily  summarized, but the key elements are experimentation, anti-realism, individualism, and a stress on the cerebral rather than emotive aspects† (Wills 24). To some extent, Marianne Moore's poems The Fish and A Grave really follow the discussed modernist principles, but it is difficult to agree that Moore completely denies emotiveness and replaces it with modernist cerebral attributes. As a result, it is possible to assume that The Fish and A Grave are the two examples of non-traditional modernist writing, in which experimentation, realism, and individualism are combined with unusual writing techniques, complicated poem structure, and extreme emotiveness.To start with, The Fish and A Grave display vivid similarities in the tone of writing, and the use of similar images. â€Å"The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave† in The Fish are evidently similar and are almost parallel to â€Å"the blades of the oars / moving together like the feet of water-spiders† in A Grave: the unpleasant and almost tragic character of water in both poems is critical to understanding the modernist implications of both poetic works. However, in order to completely realize the scope and meaning of Moore's modernist verses, we should analyze each poem separately.â€Å"Repeated / evidence has proved that it can live / on what cannot revive / its youth. The sea grows old in it† (Moore 32). This is where we face the complicatedness and incomprehension of modernist poetry. What did Moore want to say with this passage? Is it that she imagined nature in its full purposefulness which was not characteristic of traditional classical poetry? It is more probable that a thirty-year-old poet was striving to express her sympathies with the nature, which she persistently viewed as deeply abused.The description of nature's violence, its wholeness, the sea as the sou rce of physical injury and actually a threat to a human life – these are the signs of modernism in Moore's writing. Having depicted nature as the threat of violence, Moore risked causing misinterpretation of the literary and sensual implications in The Fish. For many of those who have read The Fish, violence in poetry may initially seem inappropriate and confusing. Yet this is not a reader's mistake: Moore was really trying to show the nature in its power which bordered on violence against human beings. â€Å"The water drives a wedge / of iron through the iron edge / of the cliff†, and the â€Å"external marks of abuse† (Moore 32) is the combination of nature's violence and the violence against nature; it is the combination of the two incompatible elements, which is the distinguishing feature of poetic modernism.The modernism of The Fish is in that Moore was actually trying to combine the incompatible images, allusions, implications, and ideas. The initially inc ompatible conjunction of accidental and purposeful is another distinguishing feature of modernism in Moore's poem. Criticizing Moore's works, Heuving writes that â€Å"it should not be surprising that ‘the chasm side is dead', but if the chasm side is dead, ravaged as it clearly has been by the force of water it contains, how does it live on the barnacles that adhere to its surface? Why does the sea, clearly the most active and powerful force in this scene, grow old within this teeming shelter?† (29)Moore neither answers these questions, nor provides the reader with a single opportunity to find these answers anywhere else within the poem. The reader finds himself in the slow motion of the undersea world, with which he is hardly familiar, and which seems even more threatening and complicated through Moore's descriptions: â€Å"All / external / marks of abuse are present on this / defiant edifice† (Moore 32).Moore writes her poem in a way to create an image of sini ster beauty of the sea she describes. The rhythm of her poetic lines does not break the smooth and threatening movement of the undersea. The eight stanzas of the poem display the evident and easily noticeable repetition of the consonants, as if waves create a cyclic sound pattern. â€Å"Whereupon the stars, /   pink, / rice-grains, ink-/ bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green / lilies and submarine /   toadstools, slide each on the other† (Moore 32).While the sea is the central image in The Fish, A Grave is the expression of Moore's impossibility to see this sea. Some â€Å"man looking into the sea† seems to close â€Å"the view from those who have as much right to it as / you have it to yourself† (Moore 49). A Grave is frequently interpreted as the expression of Moore's feminism: â€Å"Moore calls attention to two difficulties here: the problem of seeking through a man, including a man's viewpoint, and the related problem of establishing herself as a cen tered speaker when she cannot stand ‘in the middle of this' (Wills 110). However, modernism of A Grave is not in its feminist expressions, but rather in the opacity of its meanings and the confusion of various symbolic implications similar to those in The Fish.Modernism in poetry is invariably linked to difficulties of interpretation, and these interpretation difficulties and ambiguities are evident in both The Fish and A Grave. Moore has been extremely individual in her modernist expressions, and the poetic structure of A Grave again suggests that poetic modernism may and probably should exist in the area of extreme emotions. The sense of crisis makes both poems similarly modernist: the description of nature and its scenes are central to both poems, and it is very probable that Moore seeks resolution of her crisis in those natural sceneries.â€Å"The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx – beautiful / under networks of foam, / and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the / seaweed† (Moore 49). The two poems seem to create a single line of nature's threat and power. This â€Å"violent† line of nature is developed in The Fish, where Moore emphasizes the threat of nature towards a man; this line of nature's abuse reaches its climax in A Grave, where Moore asserts that â€Å"the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave† (Moore 49).The rhythm of Moore's A Grave is another display of modernism in her poetry. Moore seems to treat her rhythms and stanzas with almost painful desire to keep the rhyme. The reader is frequently obsessed by an impression that the rhythm of the poem prevails over its meaning. Yet, modernist writings are traditionally characterized by unusual and often difficult rhymes. The combination of complex stanzas with complicated meanings and literary implications makes certain works of modernist writing completely incomprehensible.This is not the case with Marianne Moore. Each l ine makes the rhymes enervated, and creates an unusual combination of the sea's threat and immobility: â€Å"the birds swim through the air at top sped, emitting cat-calls [†¦] and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of / bell-buoys, / advances as usual, looking as if it wee not that ocean in which / dropped things are bound to sink† (Moore 49). The heavy contrast in this passage creates the impression of a deceptive revelation: one might think that the sea and its threats were unreal and were produced by an ill mind.However, it is a surface feeling: a Man and the sea are real. The word â€Å"consciousness† with which Moore concludes her poem, is the ultimate expression of her position against the described Man and against the sea as the grave for humanity. â€Å"Moore reserves her climactic position for the quality of attentiveness to self and to ‘other' which is her highest aesthetic and moral value, while giving her sea the last word, the last hiss† (Martin 63).ConclusionPoetic modernism was traditionally viewed as the combination of several critical attributes: poetic individualism, self-expression, complicatedness of writing, and emotional indifference. Moore has completely denied these approaches: poetic modernism cannot live without emotions. On the contrary, Moore's modernism in itself stems from the climactic emotions the poet wanted to express and to deliver to her reader. Poetic modernism of Marianne Moore is something more than the self-expression and the description of individualistic regressions. In Moore's hands modernism becomes global, challenging, and almost revolutionary. For many of us the sea and its threats will look as the end of everything, A Grave for humanity; yet, in Moore's vision it is only the beginning of everything that is meaningful to a person.Works CitedHeuving, J. Omissions Are Not Accidents: Gender in the Art of Marianne Moore. Detroit,Wayne State, 1992.Martin, T. Marianne Moore: Subversive Modernist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.Moore, M. â€Å"A Grave†. In M. Moore, Complete Poems, Penguin Classics, 1994, p. 49.Moore. M. â€Å"The Fish†. In M. Moore, Complete Poems, Penguin Classics, 1994, pp. 32.Wills, P. Marianne Moore: Woman and Poet. National Poetry Foundation, Inc., 1990. Modernism In Two Poems By Marianne Moore Marianne Moore was one of the eminent poetesses of the Modern times. An integral contributor to the modern American literature, Moore’s poetry is considered as a linkage between nature and the human world. She alludes to scientific and historical knowledge and tries to evade literary allusions to prevent her from being casted as a stereo-type. Her poems are full of keen observations and generally hold up the images of birds, butterflies, animals, landscapes of England and New York. She is a â€Å"literalist of the imagination† who can â€Å"present for inspection†¦imaginary gardens with real toads in them.†In A Grave, Moore begins with a meditation on the impossibility of seeing the sea, when a â€Å"Man looking into the sea† takes â€Å"the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to it yourself.† Moore calls attention to two difficulties here: the problem of seeing â€Å"through† a man, including a man's viewpoint, and the related problem of establishing herself as a centered speaker when she cannot stand â€Å"in the middle of this.† Moore's depiction of the sea correspondingly emphasizes its opacity over its translucency and its surface activities over its symbolic meanings.While Moore may well have written this poem out of a personal crisis that involved thoughts of suicide, the speaker reminds herself that to seek relief in the sea is not to be mirrored in any improved way or to be freed of her. The speaker works her way out of her crisis by establishing and confronting the actuality or literality of the sea and of death, and her difference from them. The sea interestingly, in Moore's poem is not a reflective object but a grave. Also, it is man’s careful acts, that is, his surface activities that save him and not his self- projections. Men â€Å"lowering nets† unconsciously â€Å"desecrate this grave,† â€Å"as if there were no such thing as death,† the speak er of this poem, conscious of the ultimate meaning of penetrating the depths of the sea, trains her vision to the surface:â€Å"The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx—beautiful under networks of foam  the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, inmotion beneath them;†The end of the poem marks its intensity. Unlike the exposition, the last lines of the lyric compel us to view the surroundings and not just concentrate on the opacity of the sea surface. A forced consciousness of the meditation on the outer scene is emphasized by the poetess. The sound of birds and bell-buoys make â€Å"noises† which break the ambience of a visual representation of the situation. The poem resolves with its initial perspective of assuming something as what it is not and an intrigue picture of the ocean’s opacity in the concluding lines:â€Å"and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouse and noise of  bell buoys,  advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in  which dropped things are bound to sink—  in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor  consciousness.†For Moore, in A Grave, meditation on the sea becomes meditation on the limits of human power and human language, and immersion, literal or figurative, threatens dissolution. â€Å"Death† is the central theme of the poem with an under cutting allusion to Moore's own brother’s death. Many critics have tried to see the poem in the light of Moore’s feminist voice. In the poem, as many critics believe, Moore defines the male dominium and tries to break it with her strong and persuasive words. A grave is a place where dead things are put to rest, but Moore's A Grave is a locus of vital and challenging re-vision.The poems of Marianne Moore have arguments, often difficult to follow but always worth the effort. Distrustful of overt emotion, her poems rely on understatement and reserve to create it, a s in the simple What are Years? or the penetrating A Grave. What Are Years? is a stellar lyric which ends by paradoxically equating a bird's joyful song with both mortality and eternity? Both the poems have a dominating â€Å"sea imagery†. The tone of morality in both the poems is unsurpassable. The genesis of these poems can be owed to the World War II. These two poems are typical of Moore’s. These are not meant for the pleasure of reflection.They refuse to be simpler than the world is and make more sense when read again and again until one understands the perspective for which they are written. Moore exploits imagery and visuals from the nature and embeds them in her poems. The linking of morality with a bird in What are Years? is quite similar to the theme of death and survival in A Grave. The poems deal with the strong imagery of the sea-how in one poem it is â€Å"continuing† and in the other, â€Å"the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look. † The imagery of bird or flying is also present in both the poems.This imagery is evident to prove the aspiration of the speaker to be free and boundless. In both the poems, Moore indicates the sea’s power to erode and destroy; strongly alluded in A Grave and subtly done in What are Years. A deep penetration of this concept might find it’s parallel to the society and humanity- the dominium of man over everything and his struggle to free himself. This idea or concept might be traced to the World War aftermath. The vulnerability of the society and the deterioration was enough to evoke the modernist flame inside Moore to conceptualize the social, political and economical conditions into a poetic expression.Many American poets see Moore as one of the monuments of modernism, up there with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens. Vision and viewpoint, an integral quality of modernist poets is present in the poems of Moore as well. She once wrote that poems were â€Å"imagina ry gardens with real toads in them.† Her poems are conversational, yet elaborate and subtle in their syllabic versification, drawing upon extremely precise description and historical and scientific fact. A â€Å"poet's poet,† she influenced such later poets as her young friend Elizabeth Bishop. A Grave â€Å"offered Bishop, as it offers us, an example of how a woman well-versed in the literary tradition, rather than capitulating to the convention of female silence, can wield that tradition and write her own eloquent verses.†To conclude, in the words of eminent literary critic, Jeredith Merrin, â€Å"Her ocean/grave represents death, humanity's common enemy, and yet her sea as re-former of inherited poetic patterns acts too as Nature's and Woman's ally. The heavy sibilance throughout Moore's poem (in all versions) reminds us of Satan, of the serpentine and treacherous ladies of Romantic poetry, of the actual foaming ocean that advances and retreats over the shing le of land, and of mortality which menaces and circumscribes our lives.But with her insistent sound-play–e.g., â€Å"you cannot stand in the middle of this†; â€Å"repression. . . is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea†; â€Å"their bones have not lasted†Ã¢â‚¬â€œMoore also hisses back at Man, and at the arrogant male poet in particular, who arrogates to himself dominion, who is always trying â€Å"to stand in the middle of a thing.† By choosing to conclude her poem with the word â€Å"consciousness,† Moore reserves that climactic position for the quality of attentiveness to self and to â€Å"other† which is her highest aesthetic and moral value, while giving her sea (as retributive force) the last word, the last hiss.†ReferencesMarianne Moorehttp://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/96On Marianne Moore's Life and Career http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/life.htmMarianne (Craig) Moore (1887-1972) http://www.k irjasto.sci.fi/mmoor.htmTHE POEMS OF MARIANNE MOORE  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2DE1F3FF937A35752C0A9629C8B63 The Collected Essays and Criticism -By Clement Greenberg, Johnhttp://books.google.com/books?id=N5yfxzOr4j8C&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=%22what+are+years%22&source=web&ots=8EvqzAyM3v&sig=pchzURGxqaSTHBL3I-kmOagGf-g#PPA85,M1

How To Use Past Participles in Spanish

In both Spanish and English, past participles can come in handy. Not only can they be used as verbs, and not just for speaking about the past, they can also be adjectives and even nouns. Past Participles Behave Similarly in Spanish and English The past participles in the two languages have similar origins, so they are not only similar in function, but also vaguely similar in the way they are formed. In English, the past participle for regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the end. In Spanish, the past participle for regular verbs is formed by adding -ado to the stem of -ar verbs or -ido to the stem of -er or -ir verbs. To use a few examples of words that are similar in both languages, the past participle of to select is selected, and the past participle of seleccionar is seleccionado. The past participle of to exert is exerted; the Spanish equivalents are ejercer and ejercido. And just as the past participle of to comprehend is comprehended, the past participle of comprender is comprendido. Unfortunately for the learner, both languages have irregular past participles that dont always seem logical, and these need to be learned individually. (Examples of irregular English participles are broken, said, and gone.) Among the common Spanish irregular participles are abierto (opened, from abrir, to open), dicho (said, from decir, to say), escrito (written, from escribir, to write), hecho (done or made, from hacer, to make or to do), and puesto (put, from poner, to put), Using Past Participles To Form Perfect Tenses As a verb form, the most common use of the past participle in the two languages is to form what are known as the perfect tenses (they are called perfect because they refer to actions that have been or will be completed). In English, the perfect tenses are those formed by using a form of the auxiliary verb to have and following it with the past participle; in Spanish, theyre formed by using a conjugated form of haber (haber and this usage of to have come from similar origins) and following it with the past participle. He ido. (I have gone.)Habrà ¡ salido. (He will have left.)Habà ­a estado enferma. (She had been sick.)Habrà ­a trabajado. (I would have worked.) Using Past Participles To Form Adjectives As in English, many past participles can be used as adjectives. As adjectives, they agree with the nouns they describe in both number and gender; plurals have an s added, and in the feminine form the final o is changed to a. Because of differences in which participles can be used as adjectives, the Spanish participles cant always be translated directly to English as an adjective. Hay tres personas heridas. (There are three wounded people.)La oficina tiene dos puertas abiertas. (The office has two open doors.)Estamos cansados. (Were tired.)Comprà © la casa renovada. (I bought the renovated house.)Espero que el bebà © està ¡ dormido. (I hope the baby is sleeping.)Los viajeros llegados fueron al restaurante. (The passengers who had arrived went to the restaurant. The arriving passengers went to the restaurant.)La ventana està ¡ rota. (The window is broken.) Using Past Participles as Nouns Because Spanish adjectives, especially those that are used as descriptive terms, can fairly freely be used as nouns, past participles are frequently used as nouns in Spanish. Past participles sometimes can became feminine nouns, thus ending in -a, when they become nouns. (The same thing can happen in English, but less frequently.) Usually, the meaning of the noun can be easily predicted from the meaning of the verb. For example, the past participle of desaparacer (to disappear) is desapracido (disappeared). So a desaparacido or desaparacida is someone who has disappeared or a missing person. Similarly, pintar means to paint something, so a pintada is the act of painting. Sometimes the noun has a meaning related to the verbs meaning but isnt readily predictable out of context. For example, the past participle of ver (to see) is the irregular visto (seen). A vista is a view, especially a scenic one. Similarly, vestir is the verb for getting dressed, and vestido can refer to some types or clothing or mean apparel. Using Past Participles for Passive Sentences Just as the passive voice in English can be formed by following to be with a past participle, the same can be done in Spanish by using a form of ser followed by the past participle. This construction should not be overused, as it is much less common in Spanish than in English, and it is even less common in speech than in writing. As the examples below show, the passive voice is a way of showing that a noun was acted upon without directly saying who or what performed the action. In such sentences, the past participle functions like an adjective in that it agrees with the subject in both number and gender. Fue descubierto. (It was discovered.)Fueron descubiertos. (They were discovered.)El libro serà ¡ publicado. (The book will be published.)La cancià ³n serà ¡ grabada. (The song will be recorded.)Los nià ±os serà ¡n vistos. (The children will be seen.)Las nià ±as serà ¡n vistas. (The girls will be seen.) Key Takeaways In both English and Spanish, past participles are a type of word that has characteristics of both nouns and adjectives.Regular Spanish past participles end in -ado for -ar verbs and -ido for -er and -ir verbs.When serving as adjectives, Spanish participles must match the nouns they refer to in number and gender.