AAFTER US In this poem, the poet uses a surplus of imagery to allow the reader to fully see what she is trying to get us to picture. In the first line, she talks about how rain, which can be destructive or helpful, is seeping into a room where books and other material things reside. In the lines to follow, she writes about how everything that flourished under the sun, turned away to try and find the light that they so desperately need. This shows the destructive side to rain because it paints the picture of a dark day with rain falling and silencing all activities that happen during the day. In the second paragraph, the poet writes about a portrait, which has sketches of boats and barns and this creates the image of a perfect utopia where everything is peaceful and nothing has disturbed it. The paragraph that follows this peaceful picture, is where the foreboding and evil rain begins to make its appearance again. She writes about how everything that was ever thought of or invented or t...
WWINESBURG, OHIO Winesburg, Ohio begins with a sort of prologue, in which an old writer imagines all the people he has known as "grotesques," warped in their pursuits of various truths. A series of stories ensues, each concerned with a single resident of Winesburg. The first, entitled "Hands," describes Wing Biddlebaum, a recluse with remarkable hands that he cannot control, who has fled from false accusations of molesting a boy in another town. The second, "Paper Pills," is about Doctor Reefy, an aging medical man who marries one of his young patients, only to have her die six months later. In the third, "Mother," we meet Elizabeth Willard, the mother of the book's central character, George Willard, who is a young reporter for the local paper. Elizabeth is a sick woman, trapped in an unhappy marriage, and she imagines herself locked in a struggle with her husband for influence over George. In the next story, "The Philosopher," the...