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Essay / The Concept of Death of the Young in Wordsworth's Poetry
The poetry of William Wordsworth shows a man who yearned for more and someone who found solace in his writings about nature. In Wordsworth's poetry, particularly "We are Seven", death plays a central role in the expression of his characters. He wanted to penetrate the feelings of his reader by applying youth and he wanted to achieve “the naked and native dignity of man”. Wordsworth successfully develops the important place of death in his poetry through imagery, tone, and diction. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original EssayThe first change occurs when the speaker asks the little girl about her siblings. In the first stanza, Wordsworth uses imagery to contrast the child's youth, symbolizing life, and simple diction for death. “A simple child, who breathes lightly, and feels his life in every limb, what should he know about death? In this stanza, Wordsworth contrasts the words breath and death to create life and death in his opening paragraph. This also introduces the naivety of the child, begging the question; Should children have an idea of death? The structure of the poem is a ballad, and the opening paragraph and the concluding paragraph are the only ones that do not follow this sequence. The alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter give the poem a similar style to that of the song, and make the little girl seem more bubbly. In the second and third stanzas, Wordsworth describes the girl so that she is young and innocent. “I met a little cottage girl: she was eight years old,” she said; Her hair was thick and had many curls that gathered around her head. She had a rustic, woodsy look, and she was dressed extravagantly: her eyes were bright and very clear; — Her beauty made me happy. By directly stating that she is eight years old and has very fair, even pale skin, she is seen as pure and innocent. Like Lord Byron, at that time she would have been considered very beautiful. The narrator also describes her as a "little girl", reinforcing the idea that she is still a young girl. In the same stanza, Wordsworth begins to develop the main storyline of this poem, where the narrator asks the child how many brothers and sisters she has. Some foreshadowing is implemented when the narrator describes her gaze as “amazed.” This moves on to stanzas five and six, where the reader learns the fate of all of his siblings. The second change occurs when the speaker learns that two of her six siblings are dead. The first couple is in Conway and the second couple is at sea. The third group is not so lucky, they are in a church cemetery. She very proudly proclaims “There are seven of us”. This confuses the narrator, because by their count, there are five siblings in total. This causes the division between the narrator and the child. For her, her deceased brothers and sisters are still among the seven, but for him, they are not like her, so they are not part of the seven. Despite everything, the young girl has no doubt about the presence of her brothers and sisters who died alongside him. He contrasts sharply by comparing his liveliness to the dead silence of his compatriots. “You run, my little Maid, Your limbs are alive; If there are two in the cemetery, then there are only five of you. For him, death is the end, and that cannot change. He sees her as naive and incapable of understanding death. The girl seems to think she knows everything about death and the speaker just doesn't understand, 1892.