ANALYSIS OF THE THREE SHORT STORIES AND FOUR POEMS OF DIFFERENT

LITERARY AUTHORS

SHORT STORIES

THE OVAL PORTRAIT

(Edgar Allan Poe)
Biographical Information
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. After being orphaned
at age two, he was taken into the home of a childless coupleJohn Allan, a successful
businessman in Richmond, Va., and his wife. Allan was believed to be Poes godfather. At
age six, Poe went to England with the Allans and was enrolled in schools there. After he
returned with the Allans to the U.S. in 1820, he studied at private schools, then attended
the University of Virginia and the U.S. Military Academy, but did not complete studies at
either school. After beginning his literary career as a poet and prose writer, he married his
young cousin, Virginia Clemm. He worked for several magazines and joined the staff of
the New York Mirror newspaper in 1844. All the while, he was battling a drinking
problem. After the Mirror published his poem The Raven in January 1845, Poe
achieved national and international fame. Besides pioneering the development of the
short story, Poe invented the format for the detective story as we know it today. He also
was an outstanding literary critic. Despite the acclaim he received, he was never really
happy because of his drinking and because of the deaths of several people close to him,
including his wife in 1847. He frequently had trouble paying his debts. It is believed that
heavy drinking was a contributing cause of his death in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.
(http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides7/Oval.html)

ELEMENTS OF THE STORY

Setting
The story happened in an abandoned chateau where the narrator and his valet
spent their night in one of the buildings smallest apartments. It is described by the
narrator as rich but has decaying decorations including tapestries, trophies, and
paintings. This short description of the narrator and his valets stay in the chateau
served as an introduction that lead to the main focus of the story through a book
that the narrator has found under the pillow.

Characters
Painter: studious, passionate, obsessed with his work; moody man
Wife: maiden of rarest beauty; loving, humble, and obedient wife

Plot
Wounded, the narrator takes refuge at nightfall with his valet, Pedro, in an

apartment in the turret of a grand but gloomy chateau in Italy's Apennines Mountains.
Pedro had broken into the building, which appears to have been temporarily abandoned,
so that his injured employer would have a place to rest.
The furnishings are elegant but old and run-down. On the walls are tapestries,
armorial trophies, and modern paintings in frames with intricate golden designs. In his
excited state of mind (the delirium that appears to be setting in as a result of his injury),
the narrator becomes fascinated with the paintings. So that he may contemplate them
while lying down, he directs Pedro to light a candelabrum next to the bed and draw back
the bed curtains. A small book he had found on the bed describes the paintings.

Hours pass as he reads the book intently. About midnight, he draws the
candelabrum closer for more light. When he does so, he casts light on a painting in a
niche, a painting he had not noticed until now. It portrays a young girl "just ripening into
womanhood," the narrator says. After looking upon it for a moment, he closes his eyes
while he considers whether his vision had deceived him. In a few moments, he looks
again. It is a head-and-shoulders vignette in a gilded oval frame. Though the painting is a
worthy work of art, it was not the painter's style or the extraordinary beauty of the young
lady that had startled the narrator moments before; it was the absolutely lifelike
expression on her face. It now appalls him. The narrator returns the candelabra to its
former place, casting the painting back into the shadows. He then looks up the oval
portrait in the book.
It says the lady was the wife of a painter who loved his art more than he loved her.
One day, he expressed a desire to paint her portrait. Meekly and obediently, she agreed to
sit for it in the dim light of the turret; however, she did not look forward to the prospect
of watching her husband lavish his affections on a canvas rather than on her.
He . . . took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day,
the narrator says.
So intent was he on his task that he did not notice the withered the health and the
spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. But she did not complain, for she
did not want to disturb the pleasure that her husbanda well-known artisttook in
executing the portrait. Those who saw it marveled at its remarkable likeness to his wife.
They regarded it as a testament to his love for her.

When the portrait was nearing completion, the painter was so engrossed with his
work that he refused admittance to all observers. As his work progressed, he did not
realize that the hues he was daubing onto the canvasthe color of the cheeks, for
examplecame directly from his wife. She was a living palette.
At long last, after the final stroke of his brush, the painter stood back to observe and said,
This is indeed life itself!.In triumph, he turned around to his wife. She was dead.
(http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides7/Oval.html)

Point of View
First Person Point of View
-a character or narrator who tells the story in the I voice, expressing his own
views. He is a minor or main character that tells the story in his own words.

Themes
Obsession
The painters passion of his work became his wife rival and made her
compete with his art for the time and affection. This is shown in these lines:
- hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and
brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the
-

countenance of her lover.

But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour,
and from day to day.

Submissiveness
Though the wife hates her husbands passion n painting, she agrees to be
his model in his work and did not complain every time she sits in the dark tower
where the only light comes from above. This is shown in these lines:

But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark,

Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the
painter took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task,

FIGURESOF SPEECH

Allusion: The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible
entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a
night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur
which have so long frowned among the Apennines, not less in fact than in the

fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.

Alliteration: The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible

entrance
Alliteration: was one of those piles commingled gloom and grandeur
Alliteration: bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies
Alliteration: the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought;

Consonance: temporarily and very lately abandoned

Consonance: one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments.
Consonance: Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight

came.
Repetition: Long-long I read and devoutly, devotedly I gazed.
Hyperbole: ...the painter took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task
Simile: the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of

the lamp.
Metaphor: She was a living palette.

INTERPRETATION

The Oval Portrait is a story that portrays ones passion towards work (painting)
which brought him to obsession that even his wife seems to be forgotten and treated only
just like a model of his masterpiece. However, it also portrays the love of the wife to her
husband and prefers to obey him to be his model than to complain.

THE NEW DRESS

(Virginia Woolf)
Biographical Information
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London on January 25,
1882, the third of four children of Julia Duckworth and Sir Leslie Stephen, a noted
historian and biographer. As a child, Woolf received no formal education but made use of
her fathers library and literary friendships to educate herself. After her mothers death in
1895, Woolf experienced a nervous breakdown, the first in a series of four debilitating
emotional traumas. When her father died nine years later, Woolf had her second mental
breakdown. Upon her recovery, she moved with her sister, Vanessa, and her brothers,
Thoby and Adrian, to the Bloomsbury district of London.
She, her siblings, and their friends made up the famous Bloomsbury Group, which
included such notable figures as E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and John
Maynard Keynes. As the groups reputation spread among London art and literary circles,

Woolf grew intellectually within her group of friends, which included Leonard Woolf,
whom she married on August 10, 1912.
Amidst the nurturing and intellectual atmosphere of the Bloomsbury Group,
Woolf began writing book reviews and critical essays for publication. Her early works
appeared in such periodicals as the Times Literary Supplement, the Forum, the Guardian,
and the National Review, among others. It was also during this time that Woolf completed
her first novel, The Voyage Out, and suffered another emotional breakdown.
Woolf began keeping a diary in 1915, the same year that The Voyage Out was
published. Two years later, she and Leonard started the Hogarth Press. Significantly, they
began publication with her short story The Mark on the Wall and later Kew Gardens
and An Unwritten Novel. They also published Monday or Tuesday, a volume of short
fiction which was the only collection of Woolfs stories published during her lifetime.
Woolf never prioritized this genre, although she wrote short stories throughout her career.
For her they were projects to sustain her between novels. Leonard Woolf explains that she
used at intervals to write short stories. It was her custom, whenever an idea for one
occurred to her, to sketch it out in a very rough form and then to put it away in a drawer.
Later, if an editor asked her for a short story, and she felt in the mood to write one (which
was not frequent), she would take a sketch out of her drawer and rewrite it, sometimes a
great many times. Or if she felt, as she often did, while writing a novel that she required
to rest her mind by working on something else for a time, she would either write a critical
essay or work upon one of her sketches for short stories.

Woolf wrote The New Dress in 1924 while she was revising her fourth novel,
Mrs. Dalloway. The story was not published until 1927, when it appeared in the Forum, a
monthly New York magazine read primarily by the intelligentsia. This was the first story
in a group that was collected by Stella McNichol in 1973 and published as Mrs.
Dalloways Party. Each of these stories explores the perspective a different guest at the
Dalloway party.
Woolf continued to write novels and in 1929 completed A Room of Ones Own, which
has been hailed as a feminist manifesto of the twentieth century. In 1941 Woolf published
her last novel, Between the Acts. She suffered another emotional breakdown in February
1941, but this time she did not recover. Woolf committed suicide by drowning on March
28, 1941. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2695100020/new-dress.html)
ELEMENTS OF THE STORY

Setting
The story happened at Dalloways party wherein the partygoers are members of
elevated families.

Characters
Mrs. Barnet: a maidservant in the Dalloway household
Clarisse Dalloway: the hostess of the party
Rose Shaw: dressed in lovely, clinging green with a ruffle of swandsdown
Mrs. Milan: the seamstress
Mabel Waring: has a profound dissatisfaction-the sense she had had, ever since
she was a child, of being inferior to other people
Plot

In Woolfs 1924 short story The New Dress, Mabel Waring arrives at Clarissa
Dalloways party and is instantly consumed by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.
These negative feelings are set off by concerns that her new dress in not appropriate for

the occasion. Immediately after greeting her hostess, she goes straight to a mirror at the
far of the room to look at herself and is filled with misery at the conviction that It was
not right. She imagines the other guests exclaiming to themselves over what a fright
she looks! What a hideous new dress! She begins to berate herself for trying to appear
original: since a dress in the latest fashion was out of her financial reach, she had a
yellow silk dress made from an outdated pattern. Her self-condemnation verges on selftorture, as she torments herself with obsessive thoughts of her foolishness which
deserved to be chastised. She thinks of the new dress as a horror . . . idiotically oldfashioned. When the stylishly dressed Rose Shaw tells her the dress is perfectly
charming, Mabel is sure she is being mocked.
She tries to think of some way to annul this pain, to make this agony endurable.
The extremes of language and the obvious torment Mabel is experiencing may be
intended to give the reader some indication that perhaps she is not entirely mentally or
emotionally stable. It may also, however, be intended to underscore the discomfort that
shy or socially unskilled individuals can experience in social settings.
Mabel tries to envision the partygoers as flies, trying to crawl over the edge of the
saucer, all looking alike and with the same goals. But she cannot make herself see the
others in this light. She tells another guest that she feels like some dowdy, decrepit,
horribly dingy old fly, and then is mortified to realize that he must have interpreted her
remark as a ploy for the insincere compliment that he hastily delivers.
Mabel remembers how happy and comfortable she felt at the dressmakers, as Miss
Milan pinned her hem, asked her about the length, and tended her pet canary. This image
vanishes quickly, however, as she is catapulted back to the present, suffering tortures,

woken wide awake to reality. She berates herself for caring what others think of her, but
drifts into thoughts about her own odious, weak, vacillating character.
Mabel thinks about her unremarkable family and upbringing, her dreams of romance
in far-away lands, and the reality of her marriage to a man with a safe, permanent
underlings job. She thinks about isolated moments in her lifecharacterized as
delicious and divinewhen she feels happy and fulfilled, connected with all of the
earth and everything in it, on the crest of a wave. She wonders if those moments will
come to her less and less often, and determines to pursue personal transformation through
some wonderful, helpful, astonishing book or an inspirational public speaker. She gets
up to leave the party, assuring Mrs. Dalloway that she has enjoyed herself.
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2695100020/new-dress.html)

Point of View
The New Dress uses a third- person omniscient point of view, wherein the
narrator tells the story from an all-knowing point of view. He sees the mind of all
the characters. This is already shown from the very first part of the story which is:
Mabel had her first suspicion that something was wrong as she took her
cloak off-that it was not right, not quite right, which growing stronger as she
went upstairs and springing at her, with conviction as she greeted Clarissa
Dalloway, she went straight to the far end of the room to a shaded corner where a
looking-glass hung and looked. No! It was not right.
Conflict (Person vs. Self)
Mabel, who is the main character of the story, always thought that she is
not belong to the party that she attended. She always thought that the good

complements of others towards her dress were just to mock and insult her. This is
shown in these lines:
- the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other
people
- for oh these men, oh these women, all were thinking-Whats Mabel wearing?
What a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress!
- I feel like some dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly.
- But, my dear, its perfectly charming! Rose Shaw said. Looking her up and
down with that little satirical pucker of the lips which she expected

Theme
Insecurity
Mabel compared herself to others, specifically the dress she wore in the
party. Her being too much self-conscious gave her the feeling of insecurity. This is
shown in these lines:
- the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other
-

people
It was her own appalling inadequacy; her cowardice; her mean, water-

sprinkled blood that depressed her.

She felt like a dressmakers dummy standing there, for young people to stick

pins into.
She saw herself like that-she was a fly, but the others were dragonflies,
butterflies, beautiful, insects, dancing,

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Hyperbole: water sprinkled blood that depressed her.

Repetition: fashion meant cut, meant style, meant tiny guineas at least.
Simile: She felt like a dressmakers dummy standing there, for young people

to stick pins into.

Simile: We are all like flies trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer.

Metaphor: She saw herself like that-she was a fly, but the others were
dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming while

she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer.

Simile: I feel like some dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly.
Hyperbole: and could have cried for pity that she should be crawling on the

floor with her mouth full of pins, and her face red and her eyes bulging.
Allusion: Theres Shakespeare! Theres death! Were all weevils in a

captains biscuit.
Metaphor: Rose would have looked like Boadicea
Simile: it made her furious to be treated like a house guest or a messenger

boy, to be made use of.

Simile: a great tuft of pace sand-grass standing all twisted like a shock of
spears against the sky, which was blue like a smooth china egg, so firm, so

hard
Onomatopoeia: and then the melody of the waves-hush, hush
Metaphor: She felt in the hand of the Goddess who was the world;
Personification: then in the midst of this creeping, crawling life, suddenly she
was on the crest of a wave

THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN

(William Faulkner)

Biographical Information
William Cuthbert Faulkner (family name originally Falkner) was born in New
Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He was the oldest of four sons. His family
was middle-class and descended from a man who became the model for one of

Faulkners own characters: his great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Falkner, who
commanded a Mississippi unit in the Civil War. Upon returning from the war, Colonel
Falkner founded a railroad that his son later took over. His familys colorful history and
its intersections with the history of the South provided Faulkner with models for such
families as the Compsons.
Faulkners family moved to Oxford when he was very young, and in Oxford
Faulkner developed a love for the outdoors that comes out in much of his fiction. During
World War I, Faulkner enlisted in the Canadian Air Force but never saw combat. Upon
his return he began to write in earnest. For much of the 1920s, Faulkner wandered,
moving from the University of Mississippi to New York to New Orleans to Europe and
back to New Orleans. Faulkner published his first book, The Marble Faun, a collection of
poems, in 1924. The book was named after one of Nathaniel Hawthornes books and, like
Ha(w)thorne, with its publication, Faulkner added a letter to his last name.
In 1926, Faulkner published his first novel, Soldiers Pay. Although the novel
could hardly be called a success either artistically or financially, Faulkners course was
set. In 1929 he published Sartoris, his first novel set, like That Evening Sun, in
Yoknapatawpha. Others soon followed, including his masterpieces The Sound and the
Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom.Faulkner gained a great deal of critical
recognition because of these works but never saw the financial success he craved. To that
end he wrote two books, Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun, whose sensational subject
matter was intended to make them best-sellers and, he hoped, would tempt Hollywood to
make movies from them. He also signed on with a Hollywood studio to write screenplays
in the 1930s. Two of the famous movies to which he contributed are the film version of

Hemingway s To Have and Have Not and the film version of Raymond Chandlers The
Big Sleep, both starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Faulkner attempted to get a military commission during the Second World War
but was unsuccessful. During the 1940s, Faulkner rededicated himself to the craft of
fiction and produced two other masterpieces, Go Down, Moses and The Hamlet.Also in
this decade, critical opinion of Faulkner changed drastically. The prominent critic
Malcolm Cowley edited and, in 1946, published The Portable Faulkner, an anthology that
drew from works throughout Faulkners career. With the publication of this book,
Faulkner quickly became regarded as Americas greatest living writer. He was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. In the years following the Nobel Prize, Faulkner
continued to write and, in 1957, moved to Charlottesville to become the Writer-inResidence at the University of Virginia. After completing his final work, the Huckleberry
Fmn-inspired The Reivers, Faulkner died of a heart attack in 1962.
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2695900026/evening-sun.html)

ELEMENTS OF THE STORY

Setting
In the house of the Compsons at the town of Jefferson

Characters
o Mr. Compson/Father: he has a concern for Nancy and treated her
not like a servant
o Mrs. Compson/Mother: opposite to her husband, she has no
concern for Nancy. She doesnt want Negroes to stay in their
house.

o Caddy Compson: the 7 year old child of Mr. and Mrs. Compson;
for her, the change of routine is welcome; interested in adventure
o Jason Compson: the 5 year old son and the youngest of the
Compson children; self-centered; cares only about what personally
affects him; impatient; he keeps on repeating I aint a nigger to
Nancy.
o Quentin Compson: the 9 year old and the eldest son among the
siblings of the Compsons; quiet and a thoughtful boy; the one who
narrates the story
o Dilsey: the Compsons regular house servant; most of the time she
is unable to perform her duties that is why Nancy is called to fill it.
o Aunt Rachel: an old black woman who lives in Jefferson. It is said
that she was Jesus mother but there are times that she denies it.
o Mr. Stovall: a cashier in the bank of Jefferson and a deacon of the
local Baptist church. When Nancy confronts him for not paying
her service, he knocked her down and kicked her mouth.
o Jesus/Jubah: Nancys common law husband.he is short black man
with razor scar down on his face and may also be violent. Unlike
other washerwomens husbands, he never helps Nancy to carry
clothes.
o Nancy: the main character of the story. She is tall, with a high, sad
face sunken where her teeth were missing. She is an older AfricanAmerican woman who makes a living through laundry. She was
jailed for confronting Mr. Stovall and attempted to suicide but
revived.

o
Plot

That Evening Sun opens as a reminiscence: the narrator, whose identity is

unknown at first, reports that in Jefferson,the streets are paved now, and the telephone
and electric companies are cutting down more and more of the shade trees. The time is
approximately the turn of the century. The narrator first introduces Nancy, a
washerwoman who takes in laundry from white people around Jefferson. The narrator
then mentions Jesus, suggestsbut does not saythat he is Nancys husband, and notes
that father told him to stay away from our house.
The story then shifts its focus to Nancy. The narrator tells of how he and his
siblings would throw stones at Nancys house to get her to make breakfast for them and
tells the story of how Mr. Stovall refused to pay Nancy and beat her in the street. While in
jail for this incident, Nancy attempts suicide by hanging but is cut down the by jailer and
beaten again. The story then switches back to the present, and one listens to Jesus and
Nancy snipe at each other. She is pregnant, and Jesus suggests that the baby isnt his, but
the children do not understand what they are talking about. At this point the identity of
the narrator becomes clear: Quentin Compson. As the story progresses, his father, Mr.
Compson, forbids Jesus to come in the Compson house, and Nancy tells the children how
Jesus left town, perhaps for Memphis. She is still afraid that he plans to attack her,
however, suspecting that he may be in hiding.
Mrs. Compson, by Part II of the story, is getting impatient with the time that her
family is spending with Nancy and with the extra favors that Nancy is asking. Nancy is
feeling very apprehensive, but Caddy and Jason are unaware of why she is feeling this
wayto Caddy, the change of routine is welcome, and Jason cares only about what
personally affects him. Quentins reactions to Nancys plight are unstatedit is unclear

whether or not he even understands the causes for the rift between Jesus and Nancy. In
Part III, Nancy is visibly terrified and is making sounds of fear to herself; she cannot
even swallow coffee from fear. After Mrs. Compson refuses her permission to sleep in the
Compson house, Nancy brings the children to her house, hoping that the presence of
white children will prevent Jesus from attacking her. The children go home with her, but
her attempts to entertain them with stories and popcorn fail. Caddy is interested in the
adventure, but Jason is impatient. Mr. Compson comes to the house to fetch the children.
In the final part of the story, the children leave Nancys house accompanied by their
father and leave Nancy behind, paralyzed with fear. The narration leaves Nancy entirely
as the children leave, and as Nancy prepares for death all the narrator chooses to report is
Jason insisting that Im not a nigger and Father scolding Caddy.

Point of View
Third Person Omniscient Point of View
The story is narrated by an older Quentin but the voices hear the most are
those of Jason, Caddy, and Nancy.

Themes
Racial Discrepancy/Racial Discrimination
Nancy, the main character in the story, is a typical AfricanAmerican woman who experienced the cruelty of Mr. Stovall. It is clearly
shown that white ones are superior to the black ones.
Injustice
It is seen when Nancy was put into jail because of confronting Mr.
Stovall for not paying her service instead of Mr. Stovall who knocked her
down and kicked her mouth that causes the loss of her teeth.

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Oxymoron: Fetch and deliver in automobiles

Simile: bundles of clothes tied up in sheets, almost as large as cotton

bales
Consonance: the black straw sailor hat which she wore winter and

summer.
Assonance: to watch the balanced bundle
Simile: the bundle steady as a rock or a balloon
Metaphor: What you little devils mean?
Simile: with his razor scar on his black face like a piece of dirty string.
Onomatopoeia: Hush, father said.
Simile: and we could see Nancys eyes half way up the stairs against the
wall. They looked like cats eye do, like a big cat against the wall,

watching us.
Litotes: I dont want nothing, Nancy said.
Onomatopoeia: She made the sound into the cup and the coffee splashed

out on to her hands and her dress.

Litotes: Not singing and not un-singing.
Simile: the smell of the house was like the lamp and the smell of Nancy

was like the wick, like they were waiting for one another to smell.
Litotes: Putting it off wont do no good.

POEMS

I.
IF
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, dont deal in lies,
Or being hated, dont give way to hating,
And yet dont look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dreamand not make dreams your master;

If you can thinkand not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kingsnor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,
Andwhich is moreyoull be a Man, my son!

If uses the figurative language which is Paradox in the entire poem.

The author also used Repetition in his poem where almost every line of each

stanza begins with If.

The poem is in Iambic Pentameter metric pattern wherein a line has five pairs
of unstressed and stressed syllables for a total of ten syllables.
Metric Pattern

U /| U

/ |

/ |

/| U / U

If you |can keep| your head| when all| about you|

/ U| U

| U

/ | U

/| U

/ |

Are lo| sing theirs| and bla| ming it| on you,|

U / | U

/|

/|

/ | U

/ | U

If you| can trust| yourself| when all| men doubt| you,

U

/ | U /| U

U|

/|

U U|

But make| allo| wance for| their doub| ting too;

INTERPRETATION
If contains numerous characteristics that an ideal man must have. In particular,
man must be patient, positive, rational, open minded, dedicated, determined, fair,
and truthful. He must not lose his faith and trust to himself despite being blamed by
others. He must be aware that those who heard his words may possibly be changed by
them in an evil way. He must be prepared of different hardships that he might
encounter all the while and he must be able to deal with others having different status
in life and must be able to win against the lies and hatreds of his fellowmen. For
Rudyard, the true measure of man is his humility and his stoicism.

II.
LIFE IN A LOVE
By Emily Dickinson
Escape me?
NeverBeloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,

Me the loving and you the loth

While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry ones eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again,So the Chase takes up ones life thats all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape meEver
Removed!

The author uses the figurative language Oxymoron as stated in:

o While the one eludes, must the other pursue
o Me the loving, you the loth
Alliteration
o At me so deep in the dust and dark
o Than a new one, straight top the self-same mark
Metaphor
o My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Assonance
o So long as the world contains us both
Repetition of Words
o While I am I, and you are you
The type of rhyme it has is Terminal Rhyme where the rhyming words are

found at the end of the line.

The poem is in Iambic Tetrameter metric pattern wherein a line has three

pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables.

Metric Pattern
U /| U

/|

/|

While I| am I,| and you| are you,

U

/|

U U

/|

U /|

So long| as the world| contains| us both,

/

U| / U | U

/ | U

Me the| loving| and you| the loth

/

U|

U /

U| / U | U U /

While the| one eludes,| must the| other| pursue.

INTERPRETATION
The speaker addressed the poem to a girl who might leave him, but he wouldnt
let it to happen. No matter how difficult is to win the heart of his girl, and no matter how
little hope he has, he will continue to fight for her. He will never stop in his pursuit even
though his effort is paid off. When he falls, he will rise and start again to succeed.

III.
IF I CAN STOP

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

The type of rhyme it has is Terminal Rhyme where the rhyming words are found

at the end of the line.

The poem has an Iambic Hexameter metric pattern.
Metric Pattern
U /| U

/ | U

/ | U

/ |U

If I| can stop| one heart| from brea|king,

U / | U

/ |U

I shall| not live| in vain;

INTERPRETATION
The speaker of the poem is probably talking about losing a love one. She might
also think of the ways that she must do on how to prevent someone from being sad, so
that she will not be in vain. The author herself is trying to help those who are also in pain.
Therefore, when we are able to help someone to ease the pain, then, we shall not live in
vain.
IV.
SONNET XIV
IF THOU MUST LOVE ME
By Elizabeth Barett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for loves sake only. Do not say,
I love her for her smileher lookher way
Of speaking gently,for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day
For these things in themselves, Belovd, may
Be changed, or change for theeand love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pitys wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for loves sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through loves eternity.

Figures of Speech present in the poem:

o Consonance: If thou must love me, let it be for nought
o Alliteration: Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby

o Pun: A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
o Metaphor: I love her for her smile-her look-her way
Of speaking gently,-for a trick of thought that falls in well with mine..
o Hyperbole: But love me for loves sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through loves eternity.
Sonnet XIV has a rhyme scheme of abba abba cdcdcd also known as Petrarchan

Sonnet. It consists of two quatrains and two tercets.

The poem has an Iambic Pentameter metric pattern.

Metric Pattern
U

/ | U

/ |U

/| U / | U

If thou| must love| me, let| it be| for nought

INTERPRETATION
Sonnet XIV discusses about Robert Brownings love for her. This is because
Elizabeth finds it difficult to believe that a man with Roberts personality and social
stature really loves her.