Analysis of The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The poem is very easy to understand literally. It is written in plain English with not a lot of big words or phrases. Basically, the poem is talking about a very old man. He passes by the door of the narrator twice while hobbling with his cane. When he was younger it is said that he used to be the best man in town. But now he just wanders the streets alone and seems to mourn about all of the people he used to know who are gone. The people that he loved have long since been buried. The narrator’s grandmother, who is dead, told him that long ago the man had a Roman nose and bright red cheeks. However, now he has a thin nose and a crack in his back and his voice cracks when he laughs. And the narrator knows that it is wrong to laugh at him but he can’t help himself because the way the old man dresses is so strange. The narrator ends by saying if he lives to be the last leaf upon the tree he will be fine if the youth laugh, as he is laughing now, at the silly branch that he clings to.
There are a few similes used in the poem. They say that his cheek used to be like a rose in the snow, and they say that his nose now sits on his face like a staff. The only other poetic device used is likening the old man to the last leaf on a tree because he is the last one left where many used to be, and they liken his style and mannerism and the way they are thought of as weird by the youth to the way an old bough on a tree looks strange when it has only one leaf left on it.
The hidden meaning is that the old man is like the last leaf hanging from the bough of a tree. All the other leaves that have fallen off already are the people that he loved who have already died and been buried. The bough is old and outdated and so to outside observers it looks strange, which means that the old man is old and outdated and those around him who see him think that his mannerisms and dress are strange, so they laugh at him.

Fall

The leaves are falling softly all around
Gliding gently to their rest upon the ground
It seems to some that it's a lot like death
But it's really the earth, giving us our breath
A chance to settle down and to relax
When life begins to really start to tax
So breathe it in cuz soon life will go on
For winter comes and then the sun is gone

Analysis of Thanatopsis

Thanatopsis is a very difficult poem to simply think about in a literal sense because it uses a lot of symbolism that makes you want to look deeper. However, here is what I think the literal meaning of the poem is. It starts off by talking about how nature can take different forms depending on what you need from it at the time. When you’re happy it has a happy side, but when you’re sad it has a soothing side to make you feel better. It then goes on to tell you that when you start to think about death you should go out into nature and you will hear its voice coming to you from all around. Then, soon after, you will die and be joined to nature. You will
literally mix back into the elements of the earth and be a part of it. It then goes on to talk about how the whole world is just one giant tomb for all of the people who have come before us and died. All of the vast numbers of people in the world are nothing compared to the people who are laid to rest beneath it. Everywhere you go, even if you are alone among the living, you are still among the dead because they rule everywhere. And when you die it doesn’t matter if nobody even notices you’re gone because everybody has the same fate in the end. Even if the people who
are happy go on being happy and the people who are sad go on being said, they’re still all going to meet the same end eventually. The people who are alive now will eventually be buried and the ones who bury them will eventually be buried too. So live in a way that when you end up getting taken to the land of death you will go like peacefully and not like a prisoner being taken to their doom.

The term couch is used a few times throughout the poem as a metaphor for a grave or a
final resting place. In the last stanza they also used a prisoner dragged to a dungeon as a metaphor for a person being dragged to their grave unwillingly. There is also an allusion to mythology and the underworld in the way that they talk about where you go after death. They talk about the way that the dead rule there and you get dragged there when you are dead. I believe this goes along with Greek mythology and the idea the afterlife taking place in an actual world where all of the dead go.

The true meaning and point of this poem is that no matter who you are and no matter
what you have or don’t have in this life, we all end up in the same place. We are all going to die eventually and nothing else is going to matter. So the important thing is that we live every day in a way that when it comes our time to die we will be able to go into the light without any regrets at all. The author is trying to tell you to be one with nature and don’t let the thoughts of death that
it can bring up at times stop you from enjoying it while you can. One day you won’t have it anymore, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

Works Cited

Bryant, William Cullen. "Thanatopsis." Poetry Archive | Poems. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. .

Journal 16

I really love nature so I would say I bond with nature a lot. My family owns eighty acres of property in Virginia, Illinois where we basically just go to be in touch with nature and spend some quality time in the great outdoors. We have a small trailer on the property that was there when we bought it, and we renovated in and put bunkbeds, a kitchen table, a couch, and a TV in it. On the weekends when we get the chance we go down there and spend the night in the trailer, and we spend our days outside doing pretty much anything we want. There are two ponds, lots of hills, valleys, streams, and forest areas.

On one hill in particular my stepdad was built what he calls a "lookout tower" to go on the top of the hill. Basically he's just created a three-story open structure out of wood that you can climb to various levels of and look out at the landscape around you. The view is truly breathtaking from that viewpoint. There is also a rockwall on the side of the tower that is fifteen feet tall which you can climb on if you feel like doing something more athletic as you enjoy nature.

There are also many trails that we hike on in Virginia. My stepdad went through the woods and drove with his four-wheeler to make trails. He never does anything to disturb the natural occurrences of the forest. In fact, he has worked with the local conservation people to come up with better ideas on how to preserve the land and make sure everything in it thrives. He has created several food plots to attract deer and other things to the property. He also cut down all of the trees that choke the life out of the other trees in the forest. Virginia is my favorite place to go in order to appreciate nature and natural beauty.

Journal 16

I have two favorite websites. The first one is Facebook and the other is Picnik.

Facebook is obviously really addicting and that is why that one is one of my favorites. It kind of becomes an obsession to constantly check for notifications and update your status. Most of the time I end up writing song lyrics as my statuses because song lyrics are the way I express myself the best most of the time. Music would happen to be my favorite way of expressing myself. I cannot write actual music itself but I can use lyrics more than anything to get my point across. I even write my own lyrics sometimes. Lyrics are much more powerful than regular words in my opinion. They make you listen and they pull in your attention more than just typical writing. Anyway, so most of my statuses come out as lyrics and if you know what is going on in my life the lyrics I post at the time make sense. You can typically decipher my mood through the lyrics I post. I am not one of those people who writes down every second of my life and makes my Facebook page look like more of a Twitter site.

I also like facebook because you can look at everybody's pictures. If you take a good picture with your friends it is nice to be able to show them off to all of your own friends in one place. Nobody really prints off pictures and gives them to people anymore. Typically you can find them on Facebook and save them to your computer and then print them off from there or order them. These pictures off of Facebook bring me to my next favorite website.

My other favorite website is Picnik. It is a website that you upload pictures to and then tweak them to make them look cool. You can change the colors into all kinds of different things and adjust the saturation and temperature of the picture. You can also add in text or stickers and just make your pictures look pretty. I love doing that.

Journal 15

I use logic and reason in pretty much every part of my life. I am the type of person who has conflicting tendencies as far as how I behave towards certain situations. I am a blue-green so I think both with my head and my heart I suppose you could say. But the green side of my mind is very analytical and thinks things through from every possible angle and thoroughly before I do anything.

I think about even the most minute details and analyze them in my everyday life. I try to dissect every single meaning in everything that people around me do. This might sound kind of weird but I love to people watch and see how people interact with each other. I guess that is the writing part of me coming out. I am fascinated by the way people think and deal with others around them. Maybe I should be a psychologist. Anyway, because I like to spend so much time thinking about everything that somebody does could possibly mean, I tend to over-analyze every action that people take around me. This can get mind-numbing because there are so many possibilities for what someone means by something, but nevertheless it is my nature and I cannot stop it.

I also clearly use logic in school. When I'm doing my homework a lot of times you have to use concepts and twist them around to do what you want with them. Equations have to be manipulated, story problems have to be analyzed and a course has to be chosen, and of course in English you have to think deeply sometimes about what hidden points an author is trying to make with every word they choose.

I love literature and reading because so often you find hidden meanings that are not easily detectable if you are not looking for them. So many times people write things with an obvious surface meaning but a deeper underlying meaning that they are hoping somebody will be able to find. This kind of challenge is something that I love. I believe sometimes writers even place hidden meanings inside their texts subconsciously and they themselves do not realize they are doing it.

Common Sense

I appreciated Thomas Paine's ideas about monarchies, specifically hereditary succession, in Common Sense. He makes many valid points about what people believe or claim about certain types of monarchies and what is really true.

For many years people have claimed that usurpations are the root of all evil basically and lead to wars and outbreak and cause all kinds of problems. Those same people say that hereditary succession is the answer because it stops these problems or at least keeps them under control. But, as Thomas Paine points out, this view is very flawed and untrue. The following statement summarizes Paine's view on why hereditary succession is a good idea in theory but not in reality:

"But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions."

This theory is very true because it is human nature to become full of yourself when you are taught from a very young age that you are very powerful and must always be obeyed. Because the throne so often falls to such unfavorable children, there are many wars that break out when people get irritated with putting up with the lack of good leadership that these rulers are entitled to simply because of their bloodline.

I also agreed with Paine's view that the idea of hereditary succession leaves the door open for any person to come to power or manipulate the country based upon the vulnerability of a young ruler. When a child is growing up and not yet ready to take power they are basically at the mercy of their advisors and anyone else who has any sort of influence in the country whatsoever. This leaves so much opportunity for corruption and mischief that it is practically child's play.

The author also comes out and says that monarcy, whatever way the ruler may come to power, succession or usurpation, leaves nothing but problems to the world. He makes this statement:

"In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it."

To sum up, I greatly appreciated the way in which Paine presented his argument about the ridiculousness of monarchies and the way he used a significant amount of historical evidence as proof. He certainly convinced me.

Selected Bibliography

Paine, Thomas. "Thomas Paine's Common Sense - Text Version." Archiving Early America: Primary Source Material from 18th Century America. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. .

Literary Criticism Review

I very much enjoyed the way the author showed that the Autobiography is the first great book in American literature and still remains quite possibly the single most important today. I enjoyed this because the author was sure to point out that the reason for this book being such an influential one was not because it had lots of fancy words and phrases and it was not because it was structurally sound and wonderful. No, the reason that this book is so important to us even today is because of the idea that it conveyed to all who read it; the story itself was the very embodiment of the American Dream (Lemay).
The American Dream has always been portrayed as a "rags to riches" sort of fairytale, as it was referenced in the criticism. However, I appreciated the author's point that the story was not only the embodiment of the American Dream because Franklin began his life a poor boy and ascended to riches and comfort. No, while that was an important piece of what the American Dream is all about, the most important parts were not about the money. As the author states in the criticism, it is about the rise from impotence to importance, and it was also about the rise from dependence to independence (Lemay).
The author proves this point by citing from the original work the following quote, "Having emerg'd from the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World …" which is basically explaining how Franklin rose from being nothing into being one of the most powerful and influential men involved in founding our country (Lemay).
Another of the most important aspects of the Autobiography which was brought up by the author of the criticism was the way that the story showed that individuals truly can make a huge impact on the world. The American Dream provides a way for every type of talent and motivation in existence to thrive in some way. The American Dream is an outlet promising that no matter who you are or where you come from you will always be able to find a way to use what you have and make it (Lemay).
It was interesting to see the author's comments on how Benjamin Franklin believed that every action that a person does has an outcome that can change the course of history. Although it was not really mentioned in the criticism, this idea goes along with the Rationalistic idea that there is an all-powerful God who brought us into existence and gave us the tools which would make us capable of survival, but after that God simply left us to use our own devices to make of life what we will. Franklin is showing that he believes that every one of his actions was necessary as a means to an end of what he would one day become (Lemay).
Overall I found the criticism very insightful and it really got me thinking about how much Franklin's autobiography meant to the people of the time and how it effects us even now.

Selected Bibliography

Lemay, J.A. Leo. "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream." In The Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth Century. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1978. Quoted as "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream." in Bloom, Harold, ed. The American Dream, Bloom's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=1&iPin=BLTTAD005&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 13, 2010).

Declaration of Optimism

I am hereby declaring my belief in the general goodness of optimism. We few people who tend to see the sunny side of life are basically the coolest people ever, I mean no big deal. Truthfully though, when one nation reaches the point in their lives when all hope is lost and everyone is living under a rainy cloud, optimistics are your superheroes. People with a lot of optimism can raise the spirits of five hundred people just by going about their daily business and smiling at people a lot. When you see someone with a bright, sunny smile your natural reaction is to smile too. And even if your day is going terribly and you think the world is ending, no matter if it's fake or not, a smile makes you feel better. Positive endorphins are released that just make you feel better about life. In a sense, they trick your brain into thinking it is happy. And I mean really, who does not need to be tricked into thinking they are happy every once in a while? Because that is all that optimism and happiness is. It's a state of mind.

We optimists truly believe that happiness is a choice that you make. All you have to do is choose to see the sunny side of life rather than the dark one. And maybe when you start out you are just going to be pretending to smile and pretending to be happy. But that's okay. Optimism does not come as naturally to some people as it does to others. Some people have to really work at it. But even if you just start off trying to act happy, eventually it is going to wear off on you and you are truly going to become a happy individual. Happiness and optimism are like an infectious disease that you just catch by being exposed to it every once in a while. It's a wonderful thing, it really is.

Journal 13

I think school spirit is a really important thing to a high school. Especially in recent weeks our high school has had a really rough time with things we have been forced to deal with and ways we have been forced to grow up. I think as a whole this spirit week has been greatly needed to lighten the spirit. Tiffany's passing has brought us all together as a school but that remembrance that brings us together also, understandably, makes us sad. This week of us coming together as a school for something more light-hearted and fun was a welcome change.

Spirit is important in anything you do, and a sense of unity makes anything you do go over better. The sense of pulling together as a class that we have been experiencing this week is fun.

On the flipside, too much spirit can be a bad thing. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in having spirit that we do not even focus on what we are even supposed to be having spirit about. Then we tend to turn on each other or take things to extremes.The classes get so wrapped up in competing against each other that they turn against the other classes in an unhealthy way or even turn against each other, then we start to have problems. Sometimes harmless pranks against other classes escalate and get out of hand. Also, sometimes people in the class simply do not have what they need to dress up for a certain day and do not really have the money or the opportunity to get the proper costume and therefore they dress up. Then people who are so caught up in the "school spirit" get mad at those people for not dressing up even though they could not do anything about it. That victimizes people and takes spirit to a bad place, and that is when we end up getting our spirit weeks or certain parts of our spirit weeks taken away.

Journal 12

Most of the time I don't enjoy working with partners. If I work with a partner it's usually someone I actually like, which means I get absolutely nothing done, or it's with someone I dislike and that is just an unpleasant situation in general. I do not like working in partners because most of the time one person does all the work and the other person sits there and talks or does nothing. It is difficult to find two partners that work at the exact same speed so usually one of the partners works faster and therefore supplies the answers to the first partner in order to keep them up to speed. Although this would seem nice to the second partner in this scenario, I would much prefer to be the person doing all the work. First of all, I trust myself and my own work more than I trust anyone else's work, no matter how smart they are. Second of all, I am aware of exactly how much it actually hurts you to just copy and move on. You never learn the lesson and then later on during a test or quiz you have no idea what's going on and therefore you receive a bad grade. It is much more beneficial to simply do the work yourself.

Another downside to working with a partner is that you tend to compete with the other partner to get the problems done first. Nobody likes to be the slower partner or feel inferior to the other. Therefore, both partners tend to rush through everything in order to be the first to complete the current task and this causes a lot of stupid mistakes to happen. It is best to go at your own pace and slow yourself down to think things through.

I think teams of at least four are a good idea because that involves a lot of people contributing their own individual ideas and collaborating to make something new, however.

Journal 11

Values and ethics are also a really important part of who you are as a person. They determine how you act in society and towards others and what you are or are not willing to do as a person.

Unfortunately, sometimes it is the people with less ethics and values who succeed in life because there are not a lot of lengths they are not willing to go to to get what they want. Business people are typically those who do not have high morals and values. Succeeding in the business world involves a lot of backstabbing and secret deals that disable your conscience.

Those who stick to their beliefs whether or not it hurts them in the long run would be considered to have high ethics and values. Unfortunately these people are taken advantage of by those who do not have high ethics.

Religious people are considered to have high morals and values, or at least they are supposed to. Morals are the foundation of any religion. Morals are what keep people in line or on the right track. If our society today did not have any morals at all everything would be insane. Crime would run rampant because everybody would do whatever they wanted without feeling any guilt and nobody would assist those were being wronged because they would not have the values necessary to help out. It is a scary thought to think about if nobody had any morals or values at all. I picture the kind of world that you see in movies where everything is black and there are fires and black buildings and empty streets everywhere. There would also be graffiti on all of the buildings and kids would be running around with guns. It's pretty creepy really.

Basically the moral of the story is ethics and values are very important to our society, however small. Even if there's not much of them, some is still infinitely better than none at all.