The Literary Devices Used in To His Coy Mistress

This by far has been one of the best semesters of my whole high school experience and having Dr. Berry as my English teacher has made it even better. To kickstart the year off we first discussed the type of nouns. Nouns- person, place, thing or idea. Pronoun- a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase (I, me, you, she, etc.). Interrogative pronoun- nouns used to ask a question (Who, what, when, and where). Common noun- explain person, place, thing, or idea. Compound noun- a noun that is made up of two words (Same as a compound word). Personal noun- used to refer to the speaker as a person or the person spoken to ( I, you he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, and them). Demonstrative pronoun- to point out person, or things. Proper noun- specific person, place, or thing.

Next, we went into different kinds of verbs such as action verbs, linking verbs, and helping verbs. Action verbs consist of like, sang, fall, wants, owns, and playing. Linking and helping verbs often have similar words such as am, is, are, was, were, being, been, have, has, had, do, did, does, will, would, shall, and should. Moving on we went into adjectives and adverbs. An adjective describes a noun they consist of charming, cruel, fantastic, gentle and huge; an adverb provides a greater definition to a verb and it consists of slowly, rapidly, clumsily, badly, diligently, sweetly, warmly, and sadly. After this, we shifted into foreign words and expanding our vocabulary with words like negligee, neurosis, powwow influenza, and the ghetto it is was fun to learn the correct meaning of the word I use almost every day. A little while later we moved into stories like Dante’s Inferno and here’s a summary of that. At the beginning of the poem, Dante is lost in a dark wood, symbolizing sin, and is attacked by three wild beasts. He is rescued by the ghost of Virgil, who tells him that he was sent by Beatrice, Dante’s deceased lover in heaven, to help save his soul. To reach salvation, however, Dante must accompany Virgil on a journey through the nine circles of Hell. The two begin at the Acheron, the river leading into Hell, where a boatman named Charron ferries them down the river into Limbo, the first circle of Hell.

Limbo is mostly populated with non-Christians and people who lived before the time of Christ. Virgil lives here, along with the other ancient Greeks and Romans. Virtuous Jews and Muslims also reside here. The inhabitants of Limbo live in a peaceful green meadow and are not tormented. Dante and Virgil continue to the second circle of Hell, where lustful sinners are blown around by a strong wind. Dante stops to talk to the spirit of Francesca da Rimini, who had committed adultery with her husband’s brother. Dante faints out of sympathy for her plight. In the seventh pouch, thieves are bitten by venomous serpents and transformed into serpents themselves. In the eighth pouch, fraudulent counselors are set on fire. Here, Dante meets the ancient Greek hero Ulysses and the papal advisor Guido da Montefeltro, who advised the pope to massacre innocent people thinking that his soul would be protected by a papal pardon. In the ninth pouch, the sowers of scandal and schism are repeatedly disemboweled. In the tenth pouch, various forgers, counterfeiters, liars, and impersonators are punished. Dante and Virgil move on to the ninth circle of Hell, which consists of four rings of traitors – the first for those who betrayed their kin, the second for those who betrayed their parties and homelands, the third for those who betrayed their guests, and the fourth for those who betrayed their benefactors. These sinners are frozen in ice to various degrees; in the fourth ring, they are completely covered in ice. At the bottom of Hell, Dante and Virgil see the giant body of the fallen angel Lucifer, who chews the souls of the three worst sinners – Judas, Brutus, and Cassius – in his mouth. They climb up Lucifer’s body until they emerge onto the surface of the Earth again. Next, we moved into Frankenstein and here’s a summary of what we went over In 1794, in the Arctic Sea, Captain Robert Walton is a man obsessed to reach the North Pole, pushing his crew to exhaustion. When his ship hits an iceberg, it is stranded in the ice. Out of the blue, Captain Walton and his men overhear a dreadful cry and they see a stranger coming to the ship. He introduces himself as Victor Frankenstein and he tells the Captain the story of his life since he was a little boy in Geneva. Victor is a brilliant student, and in love with his stepsister Elizabeth, an orphan that was raised by his father Baron Victor von Frankenstein.

In 1793, Victor moves to Ingolstadt to study at the university, and he promises to get married to Elizabeth. At the university, Victor befriends Henry Clerval, who becomes his best friend. Victor gets close to Professor Waldman and decides to create life to cheat death, but Waldman advises him that he should not try this experiment since the result would be an abomination. When Waldman dies, Victor steals his notes and tries to create life. He succeeds and gives life to a strong Creature, composed of parts of deceased people. However, he realizes that his experiment is a mistake and he abandons the Creature, expecting that it will die alone. However the Creature survives and learns how to read and write, but he is a monster rejected by society and his creator. The Creature decides to seek revenge from Victor by killing everyone he loves. To follow and understand Frankenstein we went over a more simple story called Frankenweenie and here’s what we went over In New Holland, the boy Victor Frankenstein is a bright but outcast student without any friend but his dog Sparky. When the newcomer science teacher Mr. Rzykruski challenges the students to participate in the science fair, Victor's father forces him to play baseball otherwise he would not sign the necessary authorization for his son. During the game, Sparky chases the ball and is hit by a car. Victor recalls Mr. Rzykruski's class about the effects of electricity and successfully resuscitates Sparky using lightning. Victor hides Sparky in the attic but the weird Edgar sees the dog in the garden and blackmails Victor to learn how to bring the dead to life. Edgar does not keep the secret and soon Victor's envious schoolmates revive several creatures to win the science fair contest. When the town is invaded by the monsters, Victor and Sparky are the last chance to rescue the girl Elsa van Helsing from the claws of Mr. Whiskers. And to finish the year off we ended with To His Coy Mistress and here’s a summary 'To His Coy Mistress' is divided into three stanzas or poetic paragraphs. It’s spoken by a nameless man, who doesn’t reveal any physical or biographical details about himself, to a nameless woman, who is also biography-less.

During the first stanza, the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her 'coyness' wouldn’t be a 'crime.' He extends this discussion by describing how much he would compliment her and admire her if only there was time. He would focus on 'each part' of her body until he got to the heart In the second stanza he says, 'BUT,' we don’t have the time, we are about to die! He tells her that life is short, but death is forever. In a shocking moment, he warns her that, when she’s in the coffin, worms will try to take her 'virginity' if she doesn’t have sex with him before they die. If she refuses to have sex with him, there will be repercussions for him, too. All his sexual desire will burn up, 'ashes' for all time.

In the third stanza he says, 'NOW,' I’ve told you what will happen when you die, so let’s have sex while we’re still young. Hey, look at those 'birds of prey' mating. That’s how we should do it but, before that, let’s have us a little wine and time. Then, he wants to play a game the turn ourselves into a 'ball' game. He suggests, furthermore, that they release all their pent up frustrations into the sex act, and, in this way, be free.

In the final couplet, he calms down a little. He says that having sex can’t make the 'sun' stop moving. In Marvell’s time, the movement of the sun around the earth was thought to create time. Anyway, he says, we can’t make time stop, but we can change places with it. Whenever we have sex, we pursue time, instead of time pursuing us. This fellow has some confusing ideas about sex and time. Come to think of it, we probably do, too. 'To His Coy Mistress' offers us a chance to explore some of those confusing thoughts.