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...
TTHE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE Considered a modern classic and having been adapted for both television and film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short novel written by Muriel Spark published in 1961. It tells the story of the charismatic Scottish school teacher Miss Jean Brodie and her influence on the lives of six impressionable students at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1930s. The story opens in 1936 as Miss Brodie comes upon The Brodie Set, the name given to the group of students the teacher selected six years ago from the junior class to become “the créme de la créme,” the best of the best, through lessons often having little to do with academics. Supremely confident in her views of the world, Miss Brodie expands their ideas and knowledge while also manipulating their growing perceptions to remain as much in alignment with her own as possible. Still, it’s known Brodie’s girls are the brightest in the school, and now, at sixteen and in thei...