Great War Poems From Ancient Battles to Modern Warfare

Analysis of two poems; Prayer Before Birth and Easter Monday

Analysis of two poems; Prayer Before Birth and Easter Monday In this essay I will be analysing two poems. Both poems reflect upon the theme of war. I will be analysing them through their meanings, forms and show how the poets use language to express their ideas and feelings. I have decided to look at the poems Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice and Easter Monday by Eleanor Farjeon. Louis MacNeice was born in 1907, he died in 1963. His mother died when he was young and her death got to him deeply. He studied at Oxford and was one of a group of poets here who became famous. He was intensely affected by the political events of the 1930’s and also by the Second World War. This poem is about an unborn child praying that it†¦show more content†¦What he prays for is to be an individual human being in a world where people respect each other and show human kindness. If the world can’t be like that ‘otherwise kill me’. Prayer Before Birth is a poem of eight verses written in a very unusual form with a contrasting number of lines in each verse from two to ten which creates a varied rhythmic affect, this is a prayer and it to has ritualistic quality with the phrase ‘I am not yet born’ beginning in each verse apart from the last. He uses many language techniques to put across his feelings. Similes are one of them; â€Å"like water†, the use of this is that it creates an image. He also uses repetition this is used to make a point. Eleanor Farjeon was born in 1881, she died in 1965. She wrote for children and wrote poetry for adults. Many of her poetry for adults are sonnets. She went through the Second World War and this is what she talks about in many of her poems. She met another poet with whom she fell in love. His name was Edward Thomas and he was killed in action at war in 1917. This is whom this poem is about. She was a friend of both Thomas and his wife Helen and the wife new and accepted the relationship of Thomas and Eleanor. The poem is a poem in which she expresses great love and a great sense of loss, but she does it in a very quiet,Show MoreRelatedLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 Pagesreasonable one? Yes, because it is based on high-quality reasoning. Is it the best decision—the one an expert would have made in your place? You don’t know this, but yes, the experts do say that stream water will be safe if you boil it for a minute or two. Giardia is caused by protozoa which can’t live for long at high temperature. Other micro-organisms can survive this heating, but they usually won’t cause any human illness. The reason people use water-purification tablets instead of boiling is for

The Psychology of Dreams Free Essays

Why we dream: an analysis of contemporary research and theory on the function of dreaming Krista L. Hulm Essay Topic Why do we dream? Discuss with reference to psychological theories and research. Abstract Within classical psychoanalytic psychology, Freud’s (1900) conception of dreams is the most prominent dream theory among modern Western culture (Fosshage, 1983). We will write a custom essay sample on The Psychology of Dreams or any similar topic only for you Order Now Freud theorised that dreams serve a dual, compromise function. He suggested that unconscious, instinctual drive energy pushes for discharge, moving toward the expression of a consciously unacceptable impulse. The reduction in conscious restraints characteristic of sleep allows a symbolic, disguised dream expression of the repressed wish. The overt (manifest) content of the dream represents a compromise between the instinctual forces (latent content) striving for expression, on one hand, and the repressive forces of consciousness on the other (Freud, 1900). Freud assumed that the energy pushing for action would awaken the sleeper if not for the dream which, through symbolic discharge, allows a return to sleep. Therefore the dream is seen as serving the biological function of preserving sleep, with the psychological function of discharging an unacceptable wish that might otherwise burst destructively into waking life (Dallet, 1973). Various aspects of Freud’s dream theory have undergone review from the point of view of contemporary dream research (Breger, 1967; Foulkes, 1964). It is generally agreed that with respect to dream function in particular, the sleep preservation view is invalid and the underlying model on which the wish-fulfilment theory rests requires extensive revision. A study on REM sleep deprivation and its effects on depression found that when dream sleep was experimentally repressed in depressed patients, they were found to be more outgoing, energetic, more likely to engage with others and generally less unhappy (Cartwright, 1993). This may be due to dreams of depressed people having the characteristic of being more self-blaming. These findings contradict with Freud’s theory: if dreams are a safe expression of infantile wishes, why does this function fail to help the depressed? Despite the many problems inherent in Freud’s theoretical formulation of dream function, his far-reaching work has provided a basis for many of the contemporary theories discussed below. Contemporary research on dreams using brain-imaging studies contradict the view that content emerges from random signals (Morewedge Norton, 2009). The hippocampus, which is critical to the acquisition of some types of memories, and the amygdala, which is important for emotional memories, are both seen to be active during REM sleep in brain-imaging studies (Nielson Strenstrom, 2005). This understanding of the physiological aspects of dreams supports the idea that one of the functions of sleep itself is to draw together recent experiences with one’s goals, problems and desires (Paller Voss, 2004). Fossage’s (2007) organisational model of dreams stemmed from such understandings. The model proposes that the core process and function of dreaming is to organise data. More specifically, dream mentation, like waking mentation, develops, maintains, and restores psychological organisation and regulates affect in keeping with shifting motivational priorities. Research shows that babies spend 50% of their sleep time in REM sleep, adults 25% and older people 15% (Breger, 1977). From the idea that REM sleep quantitatively decreases throughout the lifespan, a number of theorists (Breger, 1967; Reiser, 1990) suggest that dreaming fosters structuralisation of the nervous system through the establishment of neural memory networks or maps and babies spend more time in REM in order to establish maps and corresponding categories of organisation. This suggestion supports the organisational model of dreaming. Furthermore, the organisational model of dreaming includes a revision of psychoanalytic theory to explain the content of dreams concluding, in short, that dreams more directly reveal – through affects metaphors and themes – the dreamer’s immediate concerns (Fosshage, 2007). References Bulkeley, K. (1993). Dreaming is play. Psychoanalytic Psychology 10(4), 501-514. Retrieved September 8, 2009, from PsychARTICLES database. Cartwright, R. (2000). How and why the brain makes dreams: A report card on current research on dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, pp. 914-916. Fosshage, J. L. (1983). The psychological function of dreams: A revised psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 6, 641-669. Fosshage, J. L. (2007). The organizing functions of dreaming: Pivotal issues in understanding and working with dreams. International forum of psychoanalysis, 16, 4, 213-221. Retrieved 14 August 2009, from Academic Search Premier database. Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. Revonsuo, A. (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 23, pp. 877-901. How to cite The Psychology of Dreams, Papers