Summary In Sonnet 19, the poet addresses Time and, using vivid animal imagery, comments on Time’s normal effects on nature. The poet then commands Time not to age the young man and ends by boldly asserting that the poet’s own creative talent will make the youth permanently young and beautiful. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 19Summary and Analysis Ying-ying St. Clair: Waiting Between the Trees
Lena St. Clair has put her mother in the guest bedroom, the smallest room in the house. Mrs. St. Clair is upset because her daughter does not understand that the guest bedroom should be the best one in the house. To Mrs. St. Clair, her daughter’s house looks as though […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Ying-ying St. Clair: Waiting Between the TreesCharacter Analysis Helen
Harry’s wife seems almost saint-like, especially when compared with her dying husband. She does everything she can to make his illness more comfortable. She is genuinely concerned with his failing strength and tries to give him hope and courage.
Read more Character Analysis HelenSummary and Analysis Sonnet 18
Summary One of the best known of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 18 is memorable for the skillful and varied presentation of subject matter, in which the poet’s feelings reach a level of rapture unseen in the previous sonnets. The poet here abandons his quest for the youth to have a child, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18Character Analysis Harry
Hemingway does not tell us Harry’s last name; we know only that he is a writer and that he and his wife, Helen, are on a safari in East Africa. Their truck has malfunctioned, and, while trying to fix it, Harry scratched himself and neglected applying iodine to the scratch. […]
Read more Character Analysis HarrySummary and Analysis An-mei Hsu: Magpies
To her mother (An-mei), Rose reveals that her marriage is falling apart. Paralyzed with grief and indecision, Rose can do nothing but weep. An-mei understands that by refusing to do something decisive about this problem, Rose is, in effect, choosing to do nothing. She knows that her daughter must make […]
Read more Summary and Analysis An-mei Hsu: MagpiesSummary and Analysis Sonnet 17
Summary In the earlier sonnets, the poet’s main concern was to persuade the youth to marry and reproduce his beauty in the creation of a child. That purpose changes here in Sonnet 17, in which the poet fears that his praise will be remembered merely as a “poet’s rage” that […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 17Character Analysis Margot Macomber
Macomber’s beautiful wife, whom he married because of her beauty, secretly despises Macomber because she knows that he married her for one reason only: She is his “trophy wife.” She despises herself because she knows that she married him for one reason only: He is very rich. He will never […]
Read more Character Analysis Margot MacomberSummary and Analysis Part IV: Queen Mother of the Western Skies
As she plays with her granddaughter, an old woman wonders what she will teach the child. The old woman recalls that she too was once free and innocent, laughing for sheer pleasure. Later, she threw away her innocence to protect herself. She taught her daughter to do the same. She […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Queen Mother of the Western SkiesSummary and Analysis Sonnet 16
Summary Sonnet 16 continues the arguments for the youth to marry and at the same time now disparages the poet’s own poetic labors, for the poet concedes that children will ensure the young man immortality more surely than will his verses because neither verse nor painting can provide a true […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 16