Authors have a way of captivating a reader’s attention by using words that provide images in one’s mind. Apart from this, words also express tone, rhythm, and also bring out the concept of symbolism. Normally, the reader takes these written words and ingests them. The words used in the short story “I Used to Live Here Once” by Jean Rhys and the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost all come to the same theme: death. Although both of these literary works are of different genres, they both discuss issues surrounding life and death.
Additionally, the two categories of literature take one through a journey; the first work of art takes one through the journey of a woman’s spirit while the other literature takes one through the journey of life.
Each work is a representation of death and impermanence displayed in different forms of literature. In this paper, I will discuss the two pieces of literature because both works of art move me due to their educative nature and the enlightenment that can be derived after understanding the notion of death. Although each literature portrays the theme differently, it is clear that they have numerous similarities. Therefore, I will also make an elaborative comparison between the two works of art to have an extensive understanding. As I also make a comparison, I have chosen the chief areas which will be my area of focus which includes; the content, form, and style.
Therefore, I will discuss how these three elements relate to one another whilst focusing on facilitating the reader to understand the main theme. It is quite clear that, even though both kinds of literature were different in style, they still communicate to the reader about the theme of death and the impermanence of life. Thus this is proof that creative work of literature can communicate factual themes while evoking emotions from the reader even if the works are from different literary genres.
Discussion
In the story “I Used to Live Here Once”, the authors use the third personas as a point of view. The third person’s point of view takes us through the journey of a woman’s spirit back to the home where she used to live. Furthermore, this point of view provides the reader with the perception of someone looking into another person’s worldly experiences. This concept is evident in this short story especially considering how the author introduces the subject-“She was standing by the river looking at the stepping stones and remembering each one” (Clugston, 2010, pg. 118). This content provides the reader with an understanding of the third person point of view from the very beginning of the story. Additionally, the author also explains right from the beginning how the individual being discussed was having thoughts about the past. The story in this book contains an extensive description of the scenery, the flashbacks, and the numerous differences which were noticed by the women. Throughout the discussion, the narrator in this story appears to see what the woman is experiencing and it provides the reader with the feeling of the main character in the story that is set in a dream-world. Flashbacks are also used, not in the sense of describing actions or experiences but to bring memories of past happenings.
When the woman is walking back from the river, she notices the sky appearing different it is glassy. The woman approaches the house where she once lived during her life and notice’s there is a car parked on the front side, which according to her is very strange. Regarding other memories, this annotation makes the reader understand that the woman has not stayed in this home in a long time. The woman in this story sees two children in the yard under a tree and she calls them but they do not answer which suggests that they do not hear her. For this reason, the author utters that “I used to live here once” which confirms that actually, she has not lived there for a long time. However, the children ignore her and do not acknowledge her presence, instead, they speak to each other goes inside. The story fades immediately once the main character realizes that she was no longer alive.
Unlike the story “I Used to Live Here Once,” the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost does not have a main character and neither is it set in a dream-like background. This poem seems to take the reader through the journey of life and nature with the use of figurative language. “In figurative language, the intended meaning does not coincide with the literal meanings of the words and sentences that are used” (Glucksberg, 2001, pg. 79). Frost’s content in the poem includes styles such as paradox, metaphors, and rhyme. In the beginning, the poem starts with a paradox, a clear contradiction of colors and a leaf being described as a flower; this notion is important as it provides the reader with the fact that when life in plants begins they bud in a different color other than the natural color-green. It also does provide a basic understanding that the author is showing paradox through growth, maturity, and change in color which is the factual situation in life.
Additionally, the situation is a paradox because it creates a conflict of logic by putting things together which would normally not be put together. To me, the first line of this poem, “Nature’s first green is gold”, is a description of the new life brought to plants (Clugston, 2010, pg. 228). However, when reading the poem, I encountered some difficulties in understanding how the use of “gold” indicated paradox. All the same, after extensive research, I comprehended that the use of gold was a representation of vegetation in New England. According to Ferguson (1973), “…yet in fact, the first flush of vegetation for the New England birch and the willow is not green but the haze of delicate gold”, the second line of the poem seems to take the author back to thoughts of a beautiful beginning of life-ending. “Her hardest hue to hold” is simply stating what one wants to enjoy in life, the youthfulness, the beauty and so on which is however swept away by nature (Clugston, 2010).
Robert Frost goes ahead to use more paradox and a metaphor in the third line, “Her early leaf’s a flower” (Clugston, 2010). In the following line, Frost again reminds us that youth and beauty will only last a short time. He says that “then the leaf subsides to leaf”, which is meant to explain to the reader how nature has completed the cycle, the beauty has withered (Clugston, 2010). Frost continues to the next line with a reference to Eden; the Garden of Eden in the bible is a beautiful and absolute place but in this line, Eden is grieving and with all this, the beauty is gone. “So dawn goes down today” which is yet another contradiction, a paradox in which I believe means the day quickly ends and another day ends (Clugston, 2010). The last line which happens to be the title of this work points out an end to everything. This poem speaks about good things and how much good things come to an end which is a response to the life cycle and nature of life.
Conversely, to the short story “I Used to Live Here Once”, life has completed and the next journey begins; in this short story, the author goes through the memories of one’s life at her home and she sees what it is in form of spirit.
On the other hand, Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” speaks about the same theme of death although it describes how life begins, the several cycles, and how it finally ends.
As we have already seen, the content can deliver a theme in both the story and the poem; additionally, by using different literary elements, then we can see that the form of each literature is vastly different in numerous ways. For instance, in short stories, there are four types of forms that the author has used namely, legends, fables, parables, and tales, while the entire story “I Used to Live Here Once” is a parable. It is stated in our text, Journey to Literature, “Parables are brief stories that also illustrate a moral situation or lesson” (Clugston, 2010). “I Used to Live Here Once” falls in this category because this story illustrates the notion of death and the story also gives a feeling of alienation.
Like short stories, poetry has different forms in which the author can integrate to communicate the message. There are many different forms in poetry such as ballad, sonnet, haiku, and lyric which have specifically been used in the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (Clugston, 2010, pg. 255). Indeed, the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has melody and emotion which provides the unified impression that nothing young can stay as it is, nature takes its course in all things. The form provides a beginning stance to the literature and helps provide meaning to it; “Literary form is thus very similar to meaning; in fact, literary form is a kind of meaning.”
(Fabb, 2002, pg. 63) In both the short stories and poems, literary forms are defined in different categories according to what the story contains and the forms facilitate to magnify the theme by providing the reader a more in-depth understanding of what is being communicated by the author in each work. This concept provides the reader a starting point of understanding both pieces of literature and such elements are all tied together in what is considered the style of literary works.
Style is a collaborative term in a broader meaning, style incorporates many elements provided and preferred by the author. Through extensive research, I found an interesting article dubbed Quantitative Analysis of Literary Styles (2002), which makes an elaborative analysis of styles such as words used and the length of words used by authors. In this article, R.D. Peng and N.W. Hengartner stated, “It is often recognized that authors have inherent literary styles which serve as fingerprints for their works” (pg. 175). Writing styles include diction, form sentence structure, punctuation, tone, among many others. Jean Rhys’ short story “I Used to Live Here Once” has incorporated several words indicating symbolism and colors have also been used to provide symbolism. The author also uses some words which make the reader feel attached to the main character since they make the reader sympathize with her, additionally when reading this story you feel like you want to reach out to her to make her feel wanted and accepted. This seems to be something Rhys used commonly in her works. The article stated that “…Rhys’s five novels, whose sparse and repetitive narratives are variations on the themes of failure and rejection” (Abel, 1979, pg. 156).
On the other hand, an article by Abel goes on to explain that Rhys heroes in her work experience alienation which is clearly outlined as follows “dissociated from bodies they experience as mechanical and alien, lose interest in a world they perceive as flat and gray, and succumb to obsessions that drive them in repetitive, unproductive patterns from which all pleasure has been drained” (Abel, pg. 156). The author’s style is noticeable in the story starting e way the story begins especially with the word ‘she’. Her word choice is vital to this story and helps to manifest the theme in this story.
Unlike Rhys, Frost’s style of writing projects his moral awareness and dramatic elements. Both literary works impact the readers differently due to the style described. Rhys uses the words “she” to develop the theme of the story and Frost also uses figurative language to provide the readers an understanding of the theme. When Frost wrote this poem, the main intention was to show facts; the facts portrayed through Frost’s poetry provide the reader with a realization of what life is and how it will eventually end just as the life of a tree or flower does.
To elaborate further, in the poem the author has created a lot of suspense and imagination by use of specific language. For instance, the punctuation used in this poem creates brief pauses at the right times and punctuation also gives emphasis to what the line states and gives the reader a moment to let what is stated sink in deeper. The author’s choice to use paradoxes and metaphors is unique.
The diction or words he used create instances of paradoxes and metaphors throughout the story. The big question is, why did the author decide to choose the words he used in this work of art? out of experiences I have with other many poems, this particular poem by Frost is based on his life experiences which influence his style of writing. While in “Nothing Gold Can Stay” there are words that project similar sounds when they are read. The first line ends with “gold” whereas the second line ends with “hold”; such uses of words have similar sounds which also provide the rhyme. Moreover, other words have also been used with similar sounds including flower, hour, leaf, grief, day, and stay and this type of written word carries weight to the reader. The choice of the words and the way they are used create importance in the message of the poem in a fundamental way. As a reader, the words used in this poem made me visualize every line bringing a vivid picture of the situation; the imagination of watching a new spring life and how it fades made me feel the message with more intensity.
Symbolism is also widely used in this poem. In Frost, Robinson, and The Judgment of Posterity by Scott Donaldson (2011) it is stated that “Frost, on the other hand, concentrated on rural settings and characters in a latter-day pastoral at once sensitive to the natural world and acutely aware of the costs of the existence of the modern world”. To me, this translates to mean that Frost used his words and his style to project the truth in the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” The diction provides a picture of something even though the words do not directly state it and this type of diction or written word also carries weight to the reader. The aspects of Frost’s content, form, and style evoke awakening inside the reader’s mind and give perspective on life experiences for one to ponder.
In making a direct comparison, “I Used to Live Here Once” by Jean Rhys and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, it is quite obvious that both are of different genres; one is a short story while the other is a poem.
However, each work has content, form, and style unique in its way while each literary element gives something to the work and helps to create the theme of the work as a whole. The point of view in the story “I Used to Live Here Once” along with the descriptive nature of the story and use of flashbacks provides the reader with the content whereas the form in this short story was that of a parable providing a moral lesson by allowing for the theme to evolve with the diction. Additionally, the style of Rhys’s work includes the use of symbolism which makes the reader feel the alienation of the main character and also the sadness when the main character realizes that she is no longer living.
Conclusion
On the other hand, just like the short story, the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has content, form, and style and it also does include content such as paradoxes, metaphors, and rhymes. The form of this poem is that of a parable creating the real situation. Frost’s style of writing in this work included punctuation which enables the reader to absorb the message deeply. Each literary element discussed provides a foundation of the theme in the story. Generally, three, the content, form, and style help to mold the story and the poem to a cohesive unit regardless of being a short story or a poem. All the elements in both works provide the means to communicate literary themes which consequently evokes emotions of the reader. Each of these works delivers the theme of death.
References
Abel,E. (1979). A comprehensive guide to literature. Web.
Clugston, R.W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, Califrnia: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Donaldson, S. (2011). The Judgment of Posterity. Sewanee Review – Vol 119, Web.
Fabb, N (2002). Language & Literature Structure. Web.
Ferguson, A. (1973). Modern American poetry. Web.
Gluckberg, S. (2001). Understanding figurative language. Web.
Hengartner, N.W & Peng, R.D (2002). Quantative analysis of literary styles. Web.