Reading Responses to a Poem - Essay Example

The old adage, “money does not buy happiness” is therefore represented throughout almost each and every page as the hardship and misery of the indebted couple brings them nothing but sadness; even as they are able to finally pay off the massive sum of money that they have borrowed to replace the lost necklace. Further, in order to integrate the story more closely with the audience and the understanding that the story is somehow related directly by the woman in question, not by a third person omniscient narrator, simplistic vocabulary is used throughout (Peyrou, 1994).

By means of comparison, simple language and rhyme is utilized in Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night”. The poem serves as an admonishment to his father that even though he lies dying, the fundamental will to life and the struggle against death must be carried out up until the very end. The simple language and the powerful repeated phrase of “rage, rage against the dying of the night/light” are coupled together with the understanding that those who read this poem will come to realize that even though dying is part of the human experience, an individual can cling to a vestiges of their slowly ebbing humanity by refusing to give in and allow death to take its course (Brown, 2009).

The refusal to allow for an easy death serves as a type of exclamatory punctuation to a strenuous life that has championed hard work and physical exertion rather than the life of ease and sophistication. Ultimately, both of these works, even though written in different periods and utilizing a far different format of delivery, help the reader to come to a more broad interpretation of the human condition and impart a level of wisdom with respect to the way in which the authors sought to engage the reader.

Rather than the way in which postmodern literature has a type of effeminate hopelessness towards life, the works in question point definitively, if naively, to universal truths that helps define and illuminate the human experience to a further degree. De Mauppassant defines life in terms of class and the pointless struggle for wealth is underlined as both useless and meaningless in the end of all things. Further, his characterization of the story in terms of presenting it in the third person omniscient narrative style allows for the reader to gain a degree of voyeurism with respect to the travails and hardships of a socio-economic strata that they may very well otherwise not have come in contact with.

By means of contrast and comparison, Thomas Dylan seeks to integrate with the reader on a more visceral level; representing death as the enemy that has no distinction based upon gender, wealth, status, or other factors. Regardless of the different approach that is used, the take away that the reader gains from both the short story and the poem is that life is fleeting and precious. De Mauppassant regards the greatest understand as invariably connected with the importance of the present, love, enjoyment of simple pleasures etc.

Likewise, it is without question that Dylan would stress that life was a continual struggle