Common Theme of "Suicide Note" and "Dreams of Suicide"
There comes a moment in life where we all face the darkness. Some of us work hard to find the light at the end of the tunnel, while others find themselves loss in an abyss. Depression is a disease of the mind that plagues the body and relinquishes you helpless to the world around you. Recently there have been more and more cases of people coming out about their battles with depression and more and more one sees that devastating effects that it can have on someone. Although being sad is a major factor within depression, it is not the main idea that is conveyed amongst authors. The poem "Suicide Note" by Janice Mirikitani and "Dreams of Suicide" by William Meredith have unmistakenly gives …show more content…
Throughout the poem, Mirikitani repeats the chorus, “not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough” to explain as to why the speaker feels that suicide is the only answer to end the constant shame being brought onto herself and her family. She feels that no matter how hard she works she can never rise to her parent’s expectations. Mirikitani also makes reference to the speaker believing that her parents always wanted a son instead of a daughter. As stated in line ten, “If only I were a son, shoulders broad / as the sunset threading through pine, / I would see the light in my mother’s / eyes, or the golden pride reflected / in my father’s dream / of my wide, male hands worthy of work / and comfort”. Her feelings about her academic failure grow and become too much for her to even feel that she can face her parents, as stated in lines twenty-five through twenty-eight, “Each failure, a glacier. / Each disapproval, a bootprint. / Each disappointment, / ice above my …show more content…
The poem is written in honor of three of his literary peers that committed suicide: Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and John Berryman. Each writer is hinted to individually in the three stanzas. Meredith uses the allusion of a dream reality to describe the different suicide method used. This is noted in the first verse, which pays homage to Hemingway, “I reach for the awkward shotgun not to disarm / you, but to feel the metal horn, / furred with the downy membrane of dream”. Meredith also takes the time to vocalize to the reader and make it clear that Sylvia Plath, “who asphyxiated herself in a gas oven” (Kirszner & Mandell 871), is not symbolic of all writers. Line six indicates, “On all fours / I am imitating a totemic animal / but she is not my totem or the totem / of my people, this is not my magic oven.” In the last stanza Meredith uses it to allude to a mythological character Icarus who made wings out of wax and feathers but flew to close to the sun. Therefore, the wings melted and he fell to his death, much like the writer John Berryman who "leaped to his death" (Kirszner & Mandell 871). He compares the two when he says " If I hold you tight by the ankles,/ still you fly upward from the iron railing. / Your father made these wings, / after he made his own, and now from beyond / he tells you to fly down, in the voice / my own father might say walk, boy" (Meredith
There comes a moment in life where we all face the darkness. Some of us work hard to find the light at the end of the tunnel, while others find themselves loss in an abyss. Depression is a disease of the mind that plagues the body and relinquishes you helpless to the world around you. Recently there have been more and more cases of people coming out about their battles with depression and more and more one sees that devastating effects that it can have on someone. Although being sad is a major factor within depression, it is not the main idea that is conveyed amongst authors. The poem "Suicide Note" by Janice Mirikitani and "Dreams of Suicide" by William Meredith have unmistakenly gives …show more content…
Throughout the poem, Mirikitani repeats the chorus, “not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough” to explain as to why the speaker feels that suicide is the only answer to end the constant shame being brought onto herself and her family. She feels that no matter how hard she works she can never rise to her parent’s expectations. Mirikitani also makes reference to the speaker believing that her parents always wanted a son instead of a daughter. As stated in line ten, “If only I were a son, shoulders broad / as the sunset threading through pine, / I would see the light in my mother’s / eyes, or the golden pride reflected / in my father’s dream / of my wide, male hands worthy of work / and comfort”. Her feelings about her academic failure grow and become too much for her to even feel that she can face her parents, as stated in lines twenty-five through twenty-eight, “Each failure, a glacier. / Each disapproval, a bootprint. / Each disappointment, / ice above my …show more content…
The poem is written in honor of three of his literary peers that committed suicide: Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and John Berryman. Each writer is hinted to individually in the three stanzas. Meredith uses the allusion of a dream reality to describe the different suicide method used. This is noted in the first verse, which pays homage to Hemingway, “I reach for the awkward shotgun not to disarm / you, but to feel the metal horn, / furred with the downy membrane of dream”. Meredith also takes the time to vocalize to the reader and make it clear that Sylvia Plath, “who asphyxiated herself in a gas oven” (Kirszner & Mandell 871), is not symbolic of all writers. Line six indicates, “On all fours / I am imitating a totemic animal / but she is not my totem or the totem / of my people, this is not my magic oven.” In the last stanza Meredith uses it to allude to a mythological character Icarus who made wings out of wax and feathers but flew to close to the sun. Therefore, the wings melted and he fell to his death, much like the writer John Berryman who "leaped to his death" (Kirszner & Mandell 871). He compares the two when he says " If I hold you tight by the ankles,/ still you fly upward from the iron railing. / Your father made these wings, / after he made his own, and now from beyond / he tells you to fly down, in the voice / my own father might say walk, boy" (Meredith