Monday, January 8, 2018
"The Year"
Share one idea you discussed about the poem "The Year" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (ideas conveyed, attitude/tone, how she expresses her ideas, why she might have written the poem, your personal response...) before January 16th. Don't forget to sign your name, and don't hesitate to comment on a classmate's post!
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She conveys her ideas toward the subject through contrasts/parralelisms
ReplyDeleteChahin
Thanks for sharing Chahin. Try to go into a little more detail than this, though. Give an example and/or say what her ideas are! (*parallelism)
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ReplyDeleteThe chiasmus "We know we dream, we dream we know" highlights the state of uncertainty of the speaker and reveals a cynical and discouraged tone.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main aspects of the poem is the presence of fatality, expressed through the idea of cycle. The poem gives an impression of contrast between happy and sad feelings but always come back to the negative impressions. Ella Wilcox conveys these ideas via imagery, for instance the chiasmus (L4), the hyperbole of the « thousand times » (L2) but also through vocabulary and words with negative connotations in order to end the poem with the “burden of the year” (L12).
ReplyDeleteColin P
"We live, we love, we woo, we wed”
ReplyDeletethis alliteration in W reflects the cyclic temper of the poem which is also evoked earlier "The new years come, the old years go”.
Charles-Eliott
The poet uses a counter exemple for every good thing that could happen for the new year and ends on a bad note, saying that life is a "burden". This recurrent negativeness shows a tired and hopeless tone.
ReplyDeleteElla Wheeler's poem is about time-passing and the different aspects of the year. It is constructed as a cycle. Indeed the structure of it (6 stanzas of 2 verses each), the rhyme pattern, and the very first stanza ("What can be said in New Year rhymes/That's not been said a thousand times?") support this idea. However this cycle is not reflecting perfection at all for despite the good aspects of a new year ( we live, we love") the vision of the speaker remains dark and despairing ("burden")
ReplyDeleteThe view of Ella Wheeler Wilcox on the new year presented in the poem might seem in a way surprising as we tend to associate this time of the year with positive ideas (party, new beginning,joy, everything is possible...). Indeed she decided to describe it in a more down to earth way showing a realist point of view: the new year will definitely be filled with happy events but also with sadder ones.
ReplyDelete-Héloïse
Throughout her poem, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, shows the dark side of the new year : she conveys that idea through the reality of the new year. Instead of having resolutions she describes what usually happens during the new year which isn't always that cheerful.
ReplyDeleteJuliet
The main theme of this poem is the idea of the endless cycle of life. This theme is conveyed through parallelism and a lot of repetition in the structure, such as anaphoras and alliteration.
ReplyDeleteLéa
The ironical tone is set as soon as the poem begins, with the sentence "What can be said in New Year rhymes/That's ot been said a thousand times ?", where the poet is almost breaking the fourth wall ; the speaker is acknowledging the fact that he/she is inside a poem.
ReplyDelete-Elise
The fact that Ella Wheeler Wilcox uses the pronoun "We" throughout the poem can express its universality : the writer speaks not only for her but for everyone, showing that we are all traped in the circle of life and that none of us can escape it.
ReplyDeleteThe poem 'The Year' by Ella Wheeler Wilcox has a very jaded, heavy-hearted tone created through the short sentences, phrases and the straight forward structure. The tone of the poem is emphasized by the ideas of perpetual illusions and opression of the year.
ReplyDeleteI get the impression that Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote this poem while trying to draw a review of her past year. She probably realised that she didn't achieve many of her her goals and dreams. This is expressed trough an idea of fatality. Maybe her message for us is to stop macking lists of goals because we won't achieve them anyway and it will only frustrate us.
ReplyDeleteJilie
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ReplyDeleteThe anaphora creates an effet of a cycle that we can link with the idea of a year repeating itself, which is the theme of the poem.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the author uses "We" and that her verses are mostly straightfoward really shows that everyone is trapped in an ever ending cycle and that nothing about the new year makes it special
ReplyDeleteIt feels quite depressing in my opinion
Dorian
The lingering, monotonous, and resigned tone is sensed by the reader because of the fact that the poem is a list of statements and facts.
ReplyDeleteEddy
As she enumerates several types of emotion and events that are suposedly going to happen, she in a way shows a kind of fatality.
ReplyDelete"The Year" is the title, thus, the first thing read and repeated at the end, so, also the last words read ; this gives a sensation of confinement and reflects the idea of cycles in the poem.
ReplyDeleteColin M
The use of the pronoun "we" helps the reader relate to what the author is writing about. In this case, it helps the reader relate with the description of the New Year in a different way than what we usually see.
ReplyDeleteCéline
By alternating a positive and a negative action in "We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear", Wilcox conveys the idea that life is composed of both positive and negative aspects and that for every good thing that happens a bad one will come too. She may be trying to express an idea of balance that is present in people's life.
ReplyDelete~Solène
This poem uses a lot of parallelism to emphasize the fact that every year repeats itself and that life is an endless cycle.
ReplyDeleteLisa
Ella Wilcox expresses and exposes through this poem a taboo subject which is the fatality of new year, which is when we think about it, an universal one. She admits it at beggining of the poem with the verse
ReplyDelete"What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand time"
Romane
Although this poem is pleasant to read I find it lacks emotions and feels impersonal. In my opinion the poem would have been much better if she had involved her own feelings and opinion on the subject.
ReplyDeleteFlora