essay on island man

Island Man Summary & Analysis by Grace Nichols

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
Poetic Devices
Vocabulary & References
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
Line-by-Line Explanations

“Island Man” was written by the poet Grace Nichols, who was born in Guyana but moved to England in 1977. Like Nichols, the man in the poem is an immigrant from the Caribbean. Each night, he dreams of his home in the West Indies, only to “come[] back” each morning to the harsh reality of his London surroundings. The poem expresses the homesickness immigrants can feel in a new country, while also suggesting that many immigrants keep their home alive within themselves and thus never truly leave it behind. Nichols first published “Island Man” in her 1984 collection, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems .

Read the full text of “Island Man”

The Full Text of “Island Man”

“island man” summary, “island man” themes.

Immigration, Homesickness, and Identity

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “island man”, before line 1.

(for a Caribbean ... of the sea)

Morning ... ... breaking and wombing

wild seabirds ... ... small emerald island

Lines 11-13

he always comes ... ... grey metallic soar

Lines 14-15

to surge of ... ... North Circular roar

Lines 16-17

muffling muffling ... ... crumpled pillow waves

Lines 18-19

island man heaves ... ... Another London day

“Island Man” Symbols

Before Line 1: “for a Caribbean island man in London”
Line 2: “island man wakes up”
Line 10: “his small emerald island”

Line 10: “of his small emerald island”

Green and Gray

Line 13: “a grey metallic soar”

“Island Man” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Line 3: “the sound of blue surf”
Lines 6-10: “wild seabirds / and fishermen pushing out to sea / the sun surfacing defiantly / from the east / of his small emerald island”
Lines 12-13: “sands / of a grey metallic soar”
Line 14: “surge of wheels”
Line 15: “dull North Circular roar”
Line 17: “crumpled pillow waves”

Juxtaposition

Lines 11-19
Line 5: “the steady breaking and wombing”
Line 12: “to sands”
Line 14: “to surge of wheels”
Line 15: “to dull North Circular roar”
Line 2: “island man”
Line 11: “comes back,” “groggily groggily”
Line 12: “Comes back”
Line 16: “muffling muffling”
Line 18: “island man”

Personification

Line 8: “the sun surfacing defiantly”
Line 4: “head”
Line 5: “steady”
Line 7: “sea”
Line 8: “defiantly”
Line 9: “east”
Line 13: “soar”
Line 15: “North,” “roar”
Line 17: “crumpled,” “waves”
Line 19: “day”

Alliteration

Line 3: “sound,” “blue,” “surf”
Line 5: “steady,” “breaking,” “wombing”
Line 6: “wild,” “seabirds”
Line 8: “sun surfacing”
Line 10: “small”
Line 12: “sands”
Line 14: “surge”
Line 15: “Circular”
Line 18: “heaves himself”
Line 7: “fishermen pushing,” “sea”
Line 10: “small emerald island”
Line 11: “groggily groggily”
Line 13: “grey,” “soar”
Line 15: “North Circular roar”
Line 17: “crumpled pillow”

“Island Man” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

Breaking and wombing
North Circular roar
(Location in poem: Line 5: “breaking and wombing”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Island Man”

Rhyme scheme, “island man” speaker, “island man” setting, literary and historical context of “island man”, more “island man” resources, external resources.

Grace Nichols Discussing and Reciting “Island Man” — Listen to the poet talk about how she came to write “Island Man” and how it connects to her own experience as an immigrant in the UK. Nichols goes on to recite the poem in the last minute of the video.

Audio of Poems by Grace Nichols — Read more about Grace Nichols’ work and listen to her read six of her poems at the Poetry Archive in the UK.

The Windrush Generation — Learn more about Caribbean immigration to the UK in this British Library page on the Windrush Generation, a generation of immigrants from the West Indies who migrated to the UK in the wake of World War II. This timeline and associated resources discuss how Caribbean immigrants played a key role in rebuilding England following the war. The poet, Grace Nichols, also migrated from the Caribbean to England, in 1977.

British Treatment of Caribbean Immigrants — The poem depicts England as a harsh and unwelcoming place for the “island man”; learn more about the British Government’s treatment of Caribbean immigrants in this article from CNN.

Biography of Grace Nichols — Learn more about Grace Nichols’s life and work in this biographical article from the British Council of Literature. This page also includes a critical essay on Nichols's work.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Grace Nichols

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Praise Song for My Mother

Everything you need for every book you read.

By Grace Nichols

(for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea) Morning and island man wakes up to the sound of blue surf in his head the steady breaking and wombing wild seabirds and fishermen pushing out to sea the sun surfacing defiantly from the east; of his small emerald island he always comes back groggily groggily Comes back to sands of a grey metallic soar to a surge of wheels to dull North Circular roar muffling muffling his crumpled pillow waves island man heaves himself Another London day

Summary of Island Man

Popularity of “Island Man”: Written by Grace Nicholas, a female poet of Georgetown, this short, free verse poem first appeared in 1984 . She published it in her second collection of poetry, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems . Presenting her own experience of living in a diasporic environment, Grace Nicholas shows an old man feeling odd in London after having arrived from a Caribbean Island. His experience of the coastal area still resonates in the urban lifestyle of London, making him an odd man out. Herein lies the reason behind the popularity of this poetic output.
“Island Man” As a Representative of Alienation of an Immigrant: Although it seems a contradictory concept that a woman presents the experience of an old man, after all, the alienation a person experiences as an immigrant is universal. The old man wakes up in the morning as if he is on the same island, experiencing the sound of the sea, hearts the voice of the surf, the sounds of the wild seabirds, and almost experiencing the same departure and arrival of the fishermen. His memories of the rising of the sun, of his coming back to the island, walking on sand, and hearing the purr of the motorcars on the North Circular Road stay with him. Moving his pillow and jerking these random thoughts, the old man tries to pass another day in the metropolis of the world.
Major Themes in “Island Man”: The alienation of an immigrant, solitude, and old habits die hard are some of the major themes of this short poem “Island Man.” Although the old man has reached London, a dream place for several people, he has not fit into that society and its routine. He still feels that he lives on the Caribbean Island in his home town where he experiences the coastal activities of seeing the seabirds, walking on the sand, and meeting the roar of the cars. As he is alone in London, this solitude goes out through the memories of his hometown and his own activities. That is why he still feels all of these old activities in his bones, as if they stay with him and make up his routine.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used in Island Man

Grace Nichols demonstrated her skill in using literary devices in her poem. Some of the major literary devices are as follows.

Allusion : It is a reference to a literary, historical, and social event, incident, or figure to show its importance in the existing context . The poet used geographical allusions, such as the North Circular Road in Georgetown and London, the city of England.
Assonance : Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /a/ in “Morning and island man wakes up” and the sound of /o/ in “he always comes back groggily groggily.”
Alliteration : Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line in quick succession, such as the sound of /m/ in “sun surfacing” and /m/ and /g/ in “groggily” and “muffling” each repeated once.
Consonance : Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /m/ in “from the east; of his small emerald island” and the sound of /w/ in “his crumpled pillow waves.”
Enjambment : It is a device in which the meanings of verse roll over to the next without having any pause or punctuation mark. The sonnet shows the use of enjambment , such as;

Comes back to sands of a grey metallic soar to a surge of wheels to dull North Circular roar muffling muffling his crumpled pillow waves island man heaves himself Another London day

Imagery : Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Grace Nichols used imagery in this poem, such as “and fishermen pushing out to sea”, “the sun surfacing defiantly” and “he always comes back groggily groggily.”
Metaphor : It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between objects different in nature. The poet presents the sun as demonstrating defiance like an angry man, showing its metaphorical representation.
Symbolism : Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from the literal meanings. The poem shows symbols, such as morning, island, breaking, seabirds, and sun surfacing, show the life of an island man.

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in Island Man

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is an analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

Diction : It means the type of language. The poem shows good use of formal and precise, and concise diction .
Free Verse : It means using verses without patterns of rhyme or meter . This is a free-verse poem.
Repetition : It means to use repeated words or phrases for impact. The poem shows the use of repetition, such as groggily or muffling.
Stanza : A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. This is a single-stanza poem having seventeen verses.
Tone : It means the voice of the text. The poem shows a nostalgic tone at the beginning and a memory-based tone at the end.

Quotes to be Used

The following lines are useful to quote when describing the routine of an island man.

Morning and island man wakes up to the sound of blue surf in his head the steady breaking and wombing wild seabirds

Ellis Island
Mother to Son
She Walks in Beauty
A Dream within a Dream
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
Little Bo-Peep
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Hey, Diddle, Diddle
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Highwayman
Lift Every Voice and Sing
The Walrus and the Carpenter
The Cremation of Sam McGee
Sailing to Byzantium
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Little Miss Muffet
The Albatross
The Snow Man
The Man He Killed
Abou Ben Adhem
Verses upon the Burning of Our House
The Mother
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
The Convergence of the Twain
Sunflower Sutra
A Supermarket in California
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Fra Lippo Lippi
Speech: “Is this a dagger which I see before me
On The Life of Man
We Real Cool
Man and Woman
For Julia, In the Deep Water
Daddy Fell into the Pond
The Heaven of Animals
The Last Leaf
Velvet Shoes
Woman to Child
Birdshooting Season
A Married State
A Blackbird Singing
Stolen Rivers
The Shepherd and His Flock
No Loser, No Weeper
Peace of Wild Things
Sir Patrick Spens
Cherokee Rose
Disembarking at Quebec
Five O’Clock Shadow
Kicking the Habit
I Do Not Love Thee
Munition Wages
The Albuquerque Graveyard
The Runaway
Madam and the Rent Man
What He Thought
The Habit of Perfection
The Tom Cat
Africa My Africa
Life is but a Dream
All along the Watchtower
The Sea of Glass
Amoretti XXX: My Love is Like to Ice, And I To Fire
From the Dark Tower
On Being Human
The Bean Eaters
The Heart of a Woman
The Power of the Dog
maggie and milly and molly and may
A Lake and a Fairy Boat
Live Your Life
The Sugar Plum Tree
A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

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The Analysis of the 'Island Man'

Sample details

Analysis of Island Man

Island Man, a poem written by Grace Nichols, depicts the tale of a Caribbean man residing in London who yearns to be back in his homeland. This piece is structured into three primary stanzas and incorporates occasional rhymes like “of gray metallic soar” juxtaposed with “to dull north circular roar,” enhancing its poetic allure and ease of comprehension. The poet’s relaxed writing style, lack of punctuation, and enjambment all contribute to the seamless flow of the poem, mirroring the rhythm of both the sea and dreams.

The poet effectively conveys the sensation of longing for home by skillfully depicting the act of envisioning a place one has never visited. This technique imbues the poem with an intimate and relatable essence, enabling us to vividly visualize the emotions involved in departing from a vibrant island and arriving in a foreign and mundane city on the opposite side of the world.

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The poem’s uneven line lengths symbolize the sea and its irregular waves, helping readers to envision themselves near the ocean and understand the poem’s themes. The simple language indicates that the speaker is still in a state of sleep and dreams. The poet effectively employs various techniques to convey a sense of longing and longing for a distant place. For example, Grace Nicholls uses sensory imagery with the phrase ‘the sound of blue surf,’ allowing readers to imagine the auditory and visual aspects of the sea. Additionally, the poet personifies the sun as it ‘surfaces defiantly,’ giving it human qualities and showing how it rises every day in the Caribbean, casting a bright light over everyone.

The absence of the sun in London and England is juxtaposed with the bright, always present sun in the Caribbean in this line. It represents how the ‘island man’ belongs in the Caribbean just as the sun belongs in the sky. Juxtaposition is also seen in the next line with the mention of the ‘small emerald island’ – a beautiful contrast to the dull gray city life of London.

Grace Nicholls employs metaphor in her poem to highlight the connection between the Caribbean and London. The phrase “comes back to sands of gray metallic soar” symbolizes how sand suns of gray skyscrapers represent the urban landscape in contrast to nature. Another metaphor is seen in “his crumpled pillow waves,” which evokes the image of waves in the sea, reminding the ‘island man’ of his home. Additionally, the lines “groggily groggily” and “the surge of wheels” are set apart to signify the physical distance that separates the man from the Caribbean as he experiences life in London.

The author suggests that the man in the poem is gradually returning to reality after his dream, with the separate lines indicating this transition. The repetition of “groggily” emphasizes his reluctance and slow awakening. Additionally, the phrase “groggily groggily” highlights his strong desire to stay in his dreams of the “emerald island.” The phrase “the surge of wheels” implies that the man is trying to push thoughts of London out of his mind as he longs to remain in the Caribbean. The penultimate line, “island man heaves himself,” further illustrates his resistance to leaving his dream and returning to London. The poet employs ambiguity in the phrase “in his head,” suggesting that either the man is not at home or that home exists solely in his mind. The real interpretation of this line remains unclear, leaving it up to the reader to decide. The phrase “steady breaking and wombing” represents the sounds of the waves, connecting it to the restless nature of the man. Just as the sea appears calm but can quickly become turbulent, he never truly feels settled before having to move again.

The poet introduced the term ‘wombing’ to represent the feeling of security in the womb, as well as the safety found in the sea, similar to being in a womb. The poem depicts both joyful and sorrowful themes through the man’s memories of home, emphasizing his happiness when reminiscing about his homeland and his sadness due to being in London. This allows readers to understand and connect with the man’s emotions and see things from his perspective. The distinction between happiness and sadness is evident in stanzas 2 and 3, where vibrant and optimistic descriptions of the island contrast with the plain and monotonous depiction of London.

The poem concludes with the line ‘Another London day’, creating a definitive and conclusive statement that suggests the man’s routine of waking up to disappointment in London. This indicates that his dreams of home are not occasional occurrences but a daily struggle. Through her descriptive skills and language, the poet effectively allows readers to empathize with the character, despite my personal difficulty in relating to themes like this due to limited experience of moving. Nonetheless, the poet’s writing style and clever poetic techniques immerse me in the mind of the ‘island man’, evoking genuine emotions and a longing for an unfamiliar island.

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Comparing two poems 'Island Man' and 'Blessing'

Essay- Comparing two poems

‘Blessing’ by Imtiaz Dharker and ‘Island Man’ by Grace Nicholls are set in different cultures and countries. ‘Blessing’ is set in a poor Middle Eastern country, and the poem is set around the bursting of a water pipe. ‘Island Man’ on the other hand, it set in London. It is based around a Caribbean native who is reminiscing about his old life, as he wakes up to go to work, in a cold and Busy London.

The title ‘Blessing’ in the context of this poem, is ironic, because the events described in the poem are both a blessing, and a reminder of the poverty they have. It also describes the ‘water pipe bursting’ as a blessing, which is usually a word to describe a short and ephemeral moment. This is effective because it informs the reader that this water is a rare occurrence, and will not last long. This contrasts with the meaning of the title ‘Island Man’ for several reasons. Firstly, ‘Island Man’ could be taken in the literal sense, meaning what he is ‘a man from the Caribbean’. Or it could mean how lost the man is in London, like an island in the sea.

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The mood in blessing on the surface is cheerful, and celebratory. This is because the people are getting water, which they have not had for a long time. The poet has used imagery creation in line 3 with ‘Imagine the drip of it’, which symbolises the water dripping. It shows a happy and peaceful picture, with the language used in the first stanza. However, the poet clearly reminds you of the sincerity of the poem with the definitive firm of ‘there never is enough water’, bringing the poems subject back to negativity and sorrow of the situation. This differs from ‘Island Man’, where the poet has used a different technique. Whilst imagery has been used strongly all throughout the poem, with ‘fishermen pushing out to sea’, the mood in this poem is not necessarily cheerful. It is rather more reflective, with the character in the poem looking back on his past life. ‘Island Man’ also differs in that, the mood changes halfway throughout the poem, and it is obvious when this happens. In ‘Blessing’, the mood could be taken as negative all the way through, with some positive irony being used, in ‘the sudden rush of fortune’. This is ironic because the ‘fortune’ is usually associated with a good thing, yet a ‘sudden rush’ usually does not last long, symbolising the short time that this water will last for. Also, the ‘fortune’ that the people are getting, is really not very much, compared to what the word ‘fortune’ is usually associated with.

These poems again differ by way of the perspective taken by the poet in each poem. In ‘Island Man’, it is describing an event in the past, as if it has happened, and the character and poet are looking back at this. On the other hand, ‘Island Man’ is describing a moment in the present, and the poet has questioned what will happen when the water runs out, meaning that this poem is looking forward into the future.

In ‘Island Man ’Grace Nichols has used positive imagery such as‘ blue surf ’and‘ emerald Island’ to describe the Caribbean morning, creating a vibrant image, and showing that the island man has not forgotten what it is like back home. By using the present participles ‘breaking and wombing’, the poet forms a relaxed and continuing rhythm in the poem, representing the movement of the waves. This is also achieved by the enjambment used throughout the stanzas, as in ‘morning/an island man wakes up/to the sound of the blue surf’, which is similar to how a dream would flow, as if the man is confused and dazed.. In the phrase ‘the sound of the blue surf’, sibilance and assonance has been used with the repetition of the ‘ou’ sound, the sentence has been enhanced, to represent the relaxed atmosphere in the Caribbean. The use of personification with ‘sun surfacing defiantly’ implies that the man takes pride and enjoyment out of his island home. It also suggests that the image is so vivid in his mind that he cannot get used to the feeling of not being there.

Similar techniques have been used amongst the stanzas in ‘Blessing’. Imtiaz Dharker has used no rhyme scheme in the poem, which is likened to the people running everywhere to get the water, and symbolises chaos. There is no rhyme scheme, creating confusion during the poem, especially in the main descriptive stanza. The rhythm runs fast in stanza three, which relates to the flowing of the water, and the people running to get some in panic. ‘Blessing’ also has religious connotations, in the title, and lines eleven twelve, with ‘roar of tongues’ and ‘congregation’. This creates religious imagery, and also implies that the bursting of this pipe is perhaps ‘a gift from god’.

The verse form in both of these poems relates in some way or another to water flowing or dripping. In ‘Island Man’, the way the lines are structured is similar to the building up and crashing down of waves. In ‘Blessing’, having the stanzas get longer and then with a shorter one at the end symbolises the build up to the bursting of the pipe, and then the short lived flow of water.

Both of these poems have strong effects on the reader. ‘Blessing’ creates a sympathetic feeling towards the people, who the pipe has burst for. ‘Island Man’, encourages the reader to imagine what it is like for the man stuck working in London, by creating several distinct images of both the Caribbean and London, making it easier to distinguish and identify the differences between both, and how the man must be feeling.

Amy Barton.

Comparing two poems 'Island Man' and 'Blessing'

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Word Count 977
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Subject English

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Compare and Contrast The Two Poems "Island Man" and "The Fringe Of The Sea" I recently read two poems entitled "Island Man" and "The Fringe Of The Sea". They are both similar in theme, but they also have many differences. Both poems are based on the emotions of people who live near the sea and their feelings towards it. This theme relates to both of the authors, and connects them; the author of "The Fringe Of The Sea", A.L. Hendricks, was born in Jamaica and later in life moved to Britain. Grace Nichols, author of " Island Man", was born in Ghana and then also immigrated to the UK. Grace Nichols' poem "Island Man" is about a Caribbean man who lives in London, but still longs for his home and the sea. The poem follows the man as he wakes …show more content…

These lines use enjambment for the effect of the lines flowing into each other to make it seems like the sea. The first half flows smoothly, as does the second half, except for the final word. The letter "S" is used in both halves to bring them together - to remind the readers of Islands Man closeness to the sea. The letter "H" ("head") is a break from the "S's" and therefore the rhythm is lost. The third line ("to the sound of blue surf") has alliteration of the letter "S". The sound of this letter is very much like that of the waves to remind the reader of the sea. To insure that this comes across to the readers there is emphasis on these letters. There is also an emphasis on the word "head" here to make the readers realize that it is only in Island Man's head, as he also realizes the truth. The fourth line uses two verbs, which have internal rhyme to make the line flow easier (breaking and wombing). The first verb "breaking" suggests the repetitive and steady breaking of the waves on the Caribbean sands. More evidence of this meaning the waves is the fact that the line says "the steady breaking and wombing" which clearly illustrates the waves motion. The second verb "wombing" is derived from the word "womb"; therefore this connotes warmth, maternal love and family. Island Man would connect all of these with his home, and he would connect

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Essay Analysis of Daddy by Sylvia Plath

She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with her open form, there is no set scheme to the rhyme pattern. However, there is a single ending sound constantly repeated without a set pattern throughout the work. She also connects pairs of lines at random just for the sake of making connections to make that particular stanza flow. At the same time, she chose blatantly not to rhyme in certain parts to catch the reader’s attention.

Explication of We Wear Our Mask Essay example

The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.

Grace Nichols' Island Man

The mood of this poem is very soothing and is a sense of relaxation and security. Grace Nichols is showing that the island mans first home is the Caribbean. “the steady breaking and wombing.” The word “wombing” is a made up word by the writer. It has many associations but it makes us the readers imagine a place of comfort and security but more importantly a sense of home and belonging. The reason why this image is put in to the readers mind is because babies grow in the mothers’ womb, so we could say that the womb is everyone’s “first home”. The word ‘wombing’ can also mean his mother land.

Ellis Island Vs America Analysis

The father’s dreams include a mix “...of desperation and worn threads,” (2). His father’s dreams resulted in, “...I am bedded upon soft green money” (5), while “...my father / who lives on a bed of anguish…” (7-8). Additionally, the narrator states, “You have heard the scream as the knife fell; / while I have slept…” (16-17). In both poems, one can recognize the appreciation for the parents and grandparents who left their home countries in hopes of reaching their ultimate dreams elsewhere. However, one can also recognize the different moods within the poems. For example, the narrator of Ellis Island shows feelings of distaste when discussing another voice that speaks to him regarding native lands taken away in the last stanza. In contrast, the narrator of Europe and America shows overwhelming gratitude for his father’s hardships throughout the poem. In brief, Joseph Bruchac’s Ellis Island and David Ignatow’s Europe and America both possess indistinguishable and varying components in regards to the American

An Analysis Of PoBoy Blues By Langston Hughes

The poem, “Po’ Boy Blues” uses rhyme in the fourth and sixth lines of each stanza.

Comparing Blessing by imtiaz Dharke and Island Man by Grace Nichols

The poem “Blessing” is about an unfortunate group of people who miraculously find clean water because of a pipe bursting. This is seen as a blessing because of the inadequate amount of water they get in addition to the hot weather conditions and constant droughts. Imtiaz Dharker sets the poem “Blessing” in a shanty town near Mumbai. She starts the poem with a powerful simile describing the state of these people whilst setting the scene. “The skin cracks like a pod”. The word “skin” could demote metaphorically to the earth. Immediately an image of drought and dry soil comes to mind. The phrase “cracks” highlights how hot the country is. This is effective because it allows the reader to envision the scene. The use of onomatopoeia exemplifies the noise of the ground exemplifies the noise of the ground. On the other hand the poem. “Island Man” is about a Caribbean man who one morning woke up in London. This anonymous character is used live in the Caribbean island but wakes up every morning to the sounds and blissful memories of the Caribbean. The Caribbean Scenario that he thinks he has woken up to contrasts harshly with the reality of his existence in London. The sentence “wakes up to sounds of blue surf” proves that Island Man sees the Caribbean as a calm and relaxing location however the poet describes London as a “grey metallic soar”. This usage of language is an illusion compared to the

The Kids Have To Stay Analysis

The second and fourth line of every stanza rhymes, yet there’s no clear rhyme scheme.

Comparing Poems 'Dover Beach And' The Ruined Maid

Each poem that we have read is completely different from the last, but they each do not have the same meaning. I decided to compare the themes of the poems “Dover Beach” and “The Ruined Maid.” “Dover Beach” is about a couple looking at the water on the English Channel and what the sound waves bring the speaker to think about. “The Ruined Maid” is about two old friends, who used to work together, running into each other and speaking on how one of them has moved up in life, as some would say. These two poems may not be alike, but they both share the same theme of man and the nature world.

How Does Shelley Use Sound Devices In Ozymandias

Starting from line three, the rhyme pattern incorporates every 3 lines, with the first and third rhyme while the second does not. However, an exception to that pattern is the rhyme of 1-3-5. As a result,

Emily Dickinson Poem Explication

In each line of the first stanza, there are two groups of two syllables with the second syllable of each group being accented. In each stanza, the second and forth lines rhyme which allow a night of passion to be captured in just a few short words. The verbs are not as active as they

Deep As An Ocean

The speaker uses the reader’s knowledge of the ocean to explain her own complexity. She is talking about herself in this poem and the way she feels. Shepherd discusses a number of heartbreaking emotions and experiences

Grace Nichols wrote 'Island Man' when she moved from Caribbean to England in 1977. In this poem 'Island Man’, Grace Nichols is writing about her experience of moving to London where she had to emigrate from her homeland in Caribbean. Island man the theme is the sea, which is referred to as the 'blue surf'. In an extract from Graces interview she reveals ''I feel I belong from Guyana because I speak their language and I have sprung from that background''. This shows that the poets feel culture is the centre of their identity.

Sophocles Poem

This line indicates imagery of the first stanza – the speaker focuses on the sound of the waves and how it entwines with the rhythm of the poem.

Essay on Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach

1 Works Cited

(line 1) and ?light? (line 3) through sound instill an idea of chaos in the reader?s mind, how can light be present in something associated with dark such as night? There are also few cases of words that appear to rhyme due to similar letter arrangements. The meter is in chaos as the number of feet per line increases to a point then decreases and increases again throughout the stanza. Since the first stanza is the largest this process occurs more often in the first stanza than in any other. The meter also reminds the reader of the chaotic waves that will tamper with any tranquil beach scene. The beach is not a place the speaker can go to relax and enjoy his life with his loved one. Visually it appears to be such a place, but as he calls the reader and his loved one to the window we hear the sense of chaos he hears on the beach.

The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me. But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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Man wins $2.6 million after receiving a scratch-off ticket from his father

A Rhode Island resident becomes a millionaire after receiving a scratch-off ticket from his father.

Steven Richard, of Barrington, about 10 miles south of Providence, won the $4 million top prize in the $4,000,000 Bonus Bucks scratch-off game, according to a press release from the Massachusetts Lottery .

Richard told lottery officials that he was having breakfast with his father on March 29 when his father gave him a scratch-off ticket. Richard said that his father always does this, so he didn't think anything of it.

Later that day, Richard decided to scratch the ticket to reveal its prizes. The ticket showed that he was now a millionaire, but he couldn't believe it. To get a second opinion, Richard scanned the ticket in the Massachusetts Lottery App to confirm what he saw, the lottery said.

Lottery winners: See Americans who won millions through Powerball, Mega Millions

After getting the confirmation, Richard told his wife and then his father about his big win.

The $4 million ticket was purchased at Star Country Store & Deli in Westport. The store received $40,000 for selling the lucky ticket, the lottery said.

Richard chose the one-time payment cash option which would you give him $2.6 million in cash before taxes.

What does Richard plan to do with his winnings?

After choosing the cash option of $2.6 million, Richard said he plans to use some of his winnings to travel with his wife, according to lottery officials.

What are the odds of winning $4,000,000 Bonus Bucks?

The overall odds of winning $4,000,000 Bonus Bucks are 1 in 3.47 , the Massachusetts lottery states .

The odds of winning the top prize of $4 million are 1 in 5,376,000, according to the lottery .

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In order to purchase a ticket, you'll have to visit your local convenience store, gas station or grocery store - and in a handful of states, you can get tickets online.

You can also order tickets online through Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network , in these U.S. states and territories: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Texas, Washington D.C. and West Virginia. The Jackpocket app allows you to pick your lottery game and numbers, place your order, see your ticket and collect your winnings all using your phone or home computer.

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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by Grace Nichols

Island man literary elements, speaker or narrator, and point of view.

The poem is narrated in the third person from an omniscient point of view, which describes the morning of an island man.

Form and Meter

Metaphors and similes.

In the fourth stanza, the man's "crumpled pillow waves" as the man gets out of bed. This could be interpreted as a farewell from or to the island. The "waves" could also be conjuring the movement of the ocean, which could represent the habitualness of this morning scene.

Alliteration and Assonance

There is alliteration of the "s" sound a few times throughout the poem. This is most obvious in the second stanza with "sun surfacing." In the first and third stanzas, there are several words that begin with "s" as well: "sound," "surf," "steady," "sands," "soar," and "surge." This repetition suggests the repetition within the events of the poem, which has an overall sense of habitualness.

The poem takes place on an imagined island and in the city of London, England.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Major conflict, foreshadowing.

In the second stanza, the sun is described as "surfacing defiantly." This could foreshadow the man's realization that he is not hearing the ocean, but rather the traffic of London. The words "groggily groggily" are repeated and set off through spacing from the rest of the lines in the second stanza. Similarly, this shift in subject from the island scene to the man's internal state and the offset spacing foreshadows the disorientating realization that he is in London.

Understatement

Metonymy and synecdoche, personification.

In the second stanza, the sun is described to be rising "defiantly." This is a humanlike manner attributed to the sunrise, something that happens each morning in the same way. It suggests that the sunrise over the island is happening in the midst of opposition. This sense of opposition could be from the contrast between the man's imagined landscape versus the real one, geographically and/or culturally.

In the fourth stanza, the man's "crumpled pillow waves." Since pillows are inanimate objects, the movement in this line is metaphorical and an example of personification. The man could be likening the pillow to the ocean. On the other hand, the pillow could be seen as waving farewell to the man as he gets out of bed, as if the island scene were saying goodbye to him.

Onomatopoeia

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Island Man Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Island Man is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Island Man

Island Man study guide contains a biography of Grace Nichols, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Island Man
Island Man Summary
Character List

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Rhode Island Man Sentenced to More Than Two Years In Prison for Fentanyl Conspiracy

BOSTON – A Providence, Rhode Island man was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for his involvement in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl.

Yeury Garcia-Rodriguez, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to 25 months in prison and two years of supervised release. On May 9, 2023, Garcia-Rodriguez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute fentanyl.

Between May 2021 and June 2022, Garcia-Rodriguez distributed fentanyl on at least four occasions to a government cooperating source on behalf of his co-defendant and co-conspirator Estarlin Ortiz-Alcantara. In addition to delivering fentanyl for Ortiz-Alcantara, on two occasions, the defendant separately sold fentanyl to the cooperating source. The defendant told the cooperating source that he cooked, pressed, packaged and delivered fentanyl for Ortiz-Alcantara. Approximately 36 grams of fentanyl was seized from the defendant’s residence on July 19, 2022.

Estarlin Ortiz-Alcantara pleaded guilty on Dec. 14, 2024 and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9, 2024.

Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy; Stephen Belleau, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, New England Field Division; New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira; and Fairhaven Police Chief Michael J. Myers made the announcement today. Special assistance was provided by the Massachusetts State Police; Homeland Security Investigations; Bristol County Sheriff’s Office; and Fall River, Taunton, Attleboro, Scituate, Yarmouth, Providence (R.I.) and West Warwick (R.I.) Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorney John T. Mulcahy of the Narcotics & Money Laundering Unit is prosecuting the case.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF .

The details contained in the charging document are allegations. The remaining defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law.

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Taiwan quake

7.4 magnitude quake hits Taiwan, strongest in 25 years

By Nectar Gan , Wayne Chang , Jerome Taylor, Antoinette Radford, Deva Lee and Maureen Chowdhury , CNN

Our live coverage of the Taiwan earthquake has moved here.

Search and rescue efforts continue after 7.4 magnitude earthquake rocks Taiwan. Here's the latest

From CNN staff

Rescue workers stand near the site of a leaning building in the aftermath of an earthquake in Hualien, Taiwan, on April 3.

Rescuers are working to free dozens trapped after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast of Taiwan — causing landslides and collapsed structures.

At least nine people have died , more than 900 others are injured and over 100 buildings have been damaged.

The quake is the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years .

Here's what else we know:

The quake: The earthquake hit at 7:58 a.m. local time, 18 kilometers (11 miles) south of the city of Hualien at a depth of 34.8 kilometers, according to the US Geological Survey.
Aftershocks : The quake was followed by 29 aftershocks greater than a magnitude of 4.0 near the epicenter of the earthquake in east Taiwan so far, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Tremors have been felt across the island, including in Taipei. Tremors as high as magnitude 7 are expected in the following days.
Hualien County: The region where the quake struck, Hualien County, has a population of about 300,000, around 100,000 of whom live in the main city of Hualien. But many in the region live in remote coastal or mountain communities that can be hard to reach , so it might take time to understand the extent of Wednesday's quake.
Trapped miners: Taiwan's national fire agency said that 71 people are trapped in two mines in Hualien.
Power cuts : More than 91,000 households were without electricity, according to Taiwan's Central Emergency Command Center.
Medical facilities: Hospitals across Taiwan’s capital , Taipei City, are operating normally despite being damaged by Wednesday’s earthquake, according to the Municipal Government.
US monitoring: The Biden administration is monitoring the earthquake in Taiwan overnight and is prepared to offer assistance, a National Security Council spokesperson said Wednesday.

71 miners trapped in 2 mines in Taiwan after earthquake, national fire agency says

From CNN's Shawn Deng

Taiwan's national fire agency said that 71 people are trapped in two mines in Hualien after a powerful earthquake struck the island.

In the Heping mine, there are 64 people trapped, and seven more are trapped in the Zhonghe mine, the fire agency said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Video shows man swimming in a rooftop pool when massive earthquake hit

When a magnitude of 7.4 earthquake rocked Taiwan on Wednesday, it struck during the morning commute.

Video shows highway roads shaking and even a man being heavily swayed and rocked on a rooftop pool.

Watch the moment here:

Taiwanese semiconductor facilities will resume production overnight following earthquake

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), the chipmaking giant, said on Wednesday that its facilities which were impacted by the 7.4 magnitude earthquake are expected to resume production overnight.

TSMC reported that their overall tool recovery is at more than 70% within 10 hours of the earthquake striking the island. Safety systems are also operating normally, TSMC added.

The company noted that a small number of tools were damaged but that there was no damage to its extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) tools. Work at construction sites will resume after further inspections are complete, TSMC said.

Earlier, a TSMC spokesperson told CNN they had evacuated some manufacturing plants. All personnel are now safe, TSMC said in an update.

Biden administration monitoring Taiwan earthquake, White House says

From CNN's Sam Fossum

The Biden administration is monitoring the earthquake in Taiwan overnight and is prepared to offer assistance, a National Security Council spokesperson said Wednesday.

"We are monitoring reports of the earthquake impacting Taiwan and continue to monitor its potential impact on Japan. The United States stands ready to provide any necessary assistance. All those affected are in our prayers," a statement from National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

7 major earthquakes have hit Taiwan over the last 50 years

The 7.4 magnitude earthquake that killed at least nine people and injured hundreds Wednesday, is the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years .

Over the last 50 years, the island has experienced a total of seven major earthquakes, the last being a 7.1 magnitude quake in 2006 in Pingtung County in southern Taiwan.

The island sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire , which makes it prone to earthquakes.

See a full list of the earthquakes that have hit Taiwan:

29 aftershocks above 4.0 magnitude have occurred near epicenter since earthquake, US Geological Survey says

From CNN's Sara Tonks

There have been 29 aftershocks greater than a magnitude of 4.0 near the epicenter of the earthquake in east Taiwan so far, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Of these aftershocks:

One was above 6.0
13 have been at or above 5.0
14 have been above 4.0.

Forecast during recovery efforts: Tonight's forecast in Hualien City, near the epicenter, calls for increasing cloud coverage. Thursday is looking at mostly cloudy skies with afternoon showers and rain Thursday night and Friday during the day.

Rainfall totals should be relatively light for Taiwan, with models calling for under 25 mm (less than 1 inch) by Friday evening local time.

Watch landslide engulf road after 7.4 magnitude earthquake hits Taiwan

A dashcam camera has caught the moment a large landslide came down a mountain in Taiwan, triggered by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday morning.

The quake is the strongest to have rattled the island in 25 years, killing at least nine people and leaving more than 150 trapped.

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Island Man by Grace Nichols/Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker. This essay is a comparison of the two poems 'Island Man' by Grace Nichols and 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker. I am going to focus on the similarities and differences between the two poems, i.e. what they are about, where they are set and the style that they are written in.
Grace Nichols' Island Man: Analysis
The themes explored in Island man by Grace Nichols are Cultural identity. The difficulty of belonging to 2 cultures, feeling separated from home and not being able to distinguish dream from reality. The man's reluctance to come round to his present life in London is emphasised by the repeated adverb 'groggily groggily'. Cultural Identity ...
Free Essay: island man
Island man is a poem written by Grace Nichols; she was born in 1950 in Guyana and is still alive today. In 1977 she migrated to England. Just like John Agard the author of the poem "half-caste" they both are of mixed cultures, and they try to show this mixture on the language in their poems.
Comparing two poems 'Island Man' and 'Blessing'
Essay- Comparing two poems. 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker and 'Island Man' by Grace Nicholls are set in different cultures and countries. 'Blessing' is set in a poor Middle Eastern country, and the poem is set around the bursting of a water pipe. 'Island Man' on the other hand, it set in London. It is based around a Caribbean ...
Compare and Contrast The Two Poems "Island Man" and "The ...
Island Man. Grace Nichols wrote 'Island Man' when she moved from Caribbean to England in 1977. In this poem 'Island Man', Grace Nichols is writing about her experience of moving to London where she had to emigrate from her homeland in Caribbean. Island man the theme is the sea, which is referred to as the 'blue surf'.
Island Man Essay Questions
Island Man Essay Questions. Buy Study Guide. 1. Compare and contrast the imagery in the island scene and the imagery in London. One primary difference between the island scene and the London scene is the employment of color in the descriptions. Several hues are featured prominently within the poem. In the first stanza, the man hears the ...
PDF ISLAND MAN By Grace Nichols Work Booklet Pupil
The island man could be the poet because she came to this country in 1980. However, the name Island Man also makes you think of every _____ who has left their original home to come and live in Britain. The first half of the poem is peaceful and relaxing. It describes the _____ sights and sounds of a beautiful Caribbean island.
Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man
A series about ways to take life off "hard mode," from changing careers to gaming the stock market, moving back home, or simply marrying wisely. Illustration: Celine Ka Wing Lau. In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty ...
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April 3 (UPI) --A Rhode Island man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to selling fentanyl eight days after being released from prison on a separate offense."Rafael ...
Island Man Poem Text
Island Man study guide contains a biography of Grace Nichols, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. More books than SparkNotes.
The Cut's viral essay on having an age gap is really about marrying
The Image Bank/Getty Images. Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine's the Cut argues, to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when ...
Island Man Essay Example
Island Man Essay Example. Island man. Island man is a poem, which presents the feeling of homesickness and a theme of being 'out of place'. The first two sentences are written in brackets " (for a Caribbean island man in London, who still wakes up to the sound of the sea)". Perhaps Grace targeted the poem to a person in mind, a friend ...
Lottery ticket gift from dad earns man $4 million
April 3 (UPI) -- A Rhode Island man said a gift of a Massachusetts State Lottery scratch-off ticket from his father led to a $4 million jackpot. Steven Richard of Barrington told Massachusetts ...
Island Man Literary Elements
This is a humanlike manner attributed to the sunrise, something that happens each morning in the same way. It suggests that the sunrise over the island is happening in the midst of opposition. This sense of opposition could be from the contrast between the man's imagined landscape versus the real one, geographically and/or culturally. In the ...
Rhode Island Man Sentenced to More Than Two Years In Prison for
BOSTON - A Providence, Rhode Island man was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for his involvement in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl. Yeury Garcia-Rodriguez, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to 25 months in prison and two years of supervised release. On May 9, 2023, Garcia-Rodriguez pleaded ...
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The 7.4 magnitude earthquake that killed at least nine people and injured hundreds Wednesday, is the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years. Over the last 50 years, the island has experienced a total ...