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Week 14 Analysis: Close Reading of Letter to A Prisoner

In this poem, Senghor writes to one of his comrades named Ngom in a German prisoner of war camp. He tells him about what he's seen in wartime Paris after being released from the camp himself. "I write you from the solitude of my precious - and closely guarded -/ Residence of my black skin." (Senghor, 682) This line expresses how he feels as an African man away from his culture. He admits that he is isolated, but rather than use that word he uses a similar one: solitude. Though they both mean being alone, they have very different connotations. Solitude implies that it was a conscious decision, giving him agency in his distance from the people around him. He feels that as a black man he cannot relate to those around him, so he closely guards himself and his identity. "Fortunate are my friends/ Who know nothing of the icy walls and the brightly lit/ Apartments that sterilize every seed on the ancestors' masks/ And even the memories of love." (Senghor, 682...
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Reading Analysis: Literary Analysis of The Dead

A major theme in "The Dead" is, unsurprisingly, death. The inevitability of it, the way it affects the living, and the way it connects us as human beings are all touched upon in the story. One way the theme of death is conveyed in the story is symbolically, in the snow that is present throughout the story. We see it introduced from almost the very beginning of the story, mentioned as Gabriel enters the scene. He is taking off his coat as he enters the house, and it is covered in snow and ice. This is symbolic of how we can try to shield ourselves from death as Gabriel shields himself from the snow with his coat, but it will still impact us regardless, just as Gabriel is still covered in snow. In the following conversation about the snow with Lily, he comments that there is probably going to be snowfall that night. This is foreshadowing about the looming existential crisis Gabriel is going to have involving death. At the end of the story, when Gabriel begins to think about ...
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