Unit 3::Ecology And Environment
The Poplar Field
The poem urges us to protect nature. In the poem the poet express his personal emotion and feeling with nostalgic tone. The poet used to enjoy among the poplar trees in the past but now as the tree has been cut down the poet doesn't get any cool shade and melodious song of the wind. The wind no longer plays and sing in the leaves of poplar trees because the tree is no longer exist also the poet could no longer see the reflection of poplar trees in the water of Ouse river .Here, the tone of the poet is nostalgic.
His nostalgic tone continuous even in the second or third stanzas. Twelve year before the poet used to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the poplar field. He used to sit under the cool shade of the trees but now as the trees are laid down on the grass he sits on their logs. Once he used to hear the sweet song of the blackbirds but now they have flown away for another shelter.
The poet years are passing very quickly and one day he will have to die and lie in his grave but by then other poplar trees will not have grown in the place of the dead trees because it takes a longtime for the new trees to grow .Here the poet images himself dying and lying on his grave. He means that he has to die before another such groove of poplar trees grow in the place of the dead ones.
The bitter fact makes the poet contemplate on the temporary nature of human pleasure. The poet used to feel tremendous pleasure in the company of the poplar trees but now when the trees have been destroyed his pleasure too has perished and his pleasure cannot be restored in his lifetime ,because it takes long time for the new poplar trees to grow in the place of the old ones. So the poet concludes that human enjoyment have shorter death than their short lives. The poet means that human pleasure die sooner than human themselves.
The Nightmare Life without Fuel
In this essay the writer Isaac Asimov(1920-1992) deals with problem of fuel crises and draws our attention to the issue of conserving fuel. The major thrust (focus) of this essay is what is going to happen if we don't conserve the world natural resources. Throughout the essay the writer depits the nightmare life without the fuel. In this essay the writer portrays the American life during late 1990 when Americans were having horrible problem by the fuel crises. Because of the fuel crises in 1997 the prices of the fuel raised high and only very rich people can have the car. Life was worse outside the city area in the suburb area as due to the fuel crises the people living in suburb's used to push carts. If the road was blocked due to the snow storm ,they suffered more. They couldn't buy a lot of food at one time and they couldn't use the refrigerator either. Because of the difficulty of the distribution of the food, Americans were forced to eat less.
The situation of the people outside America was worse. Not more than 20% of population has enough food to eat. The first and for most helpless victim of this starvation were babies after their mothers had gone dry because of the lack of nutrition.
About 40% of the people manage to little to keep their bodies working but that provide to be not enough for their brain. Those people were alive but they were permanently brain-damaged under nutrition. Moreover because of the fuel crises there were no more armies because they were expensive can consumed a lot of energy. The writer calls armies "The Expensive ,energy gobbling monstrosities".
The writer further depites the nightmare life without fuel by informing that machines most be replaced by the humans bodies because of the fuel crises .People worked like machine and they had less free time. In fact they didn't need more free time because they couldn't enjoy T.V, movie and news book for a long time .work, Sleep and Eating had became the most important aspects of their life according to the writer the day had almost returned to the day of 18th century to the day before machine, industry, technology and the population of the world was going to be reduced from 5.5 billion to 1 billion because of hunger, diseases and starvation.
The writer concludes his essay by saying that now in such a situation the American could do nothing to prevent all this disaster, But if they would have started earlier ,it would have been easy.
Unchopping A Tree
This essay is a plea against deforestation. The essayist talk's about unchopping or joining a tree which has been cut down into small pieces. The writer tells us to unchop or join all the parts of the tree place the tree where it was standing before we cut it.
This essay is pseudo directive ,it has a meaning different from its surface meaning. The essay surface tells the thing but actually it want to suggest something else. In other word the apparent meaning of this essay is different from it's real meaning .On the surface level the essay talk's about unchopping a tree which has been cut down but inherently the essay are used against deforestation and please us to conserve nature.
In the essay the writer suggest that we should conserve the tree. We chop down the tree very easily but if we are asked to unchop or join all the parts of a chopped tree we can't accomplish that task. The writer by asking us to unchop a tree is making us realize how difficult it is to grow a tree. He suggest that we should not chop down a tree because it is impossible to unchop it again.
The essay is the persuasive essay in which the essayist speaks to us directly and pursuits us to conserve the nature. This essay is the defense of nature preservation.
Keeping things Whole
In the poem the poet pleads foe organicity and the wholeness of nature. He believes in the organic unity and is against the fragmentation. The poet argues for the wholeness against the fragmentation that goes on in life. He believes in the whole part and not in partiality.
As the poet says, wherever he is, what is missing there that means he doesn't want to fragment or part anything while moving. So in a field he becomes the absence of that field. Even when he parts the air while moving ,the air always moves in to fill the space where his body had been.
Human beings are always in the habit of lacking of the thing in nature as the different parts and one complete organic whole .They forget everything in the nature is related to every other thing .The poet suggest that we should rather support the wholeness of nature against it's fragmentation.
Unit 4::Humor
Concrete Cat
This poem is an example at a concrete poetry. In such types of poetry the meaning is conveyed through the visual arrangement of the words. The chief concern of this type of poem is with the physical appearances of the poem. The concrete poetry is also called as the visual poetry because in such poetry the words themselves forms a picture.
In the poem the poet portrait the image of the happy cat. The letter 'A' in the word ear has been capitalized to indicate the upright pointed ears of the cat. Similarly the 'Y' in the word eye suggest that the eyes of the cat are wide open and the U in the word mouth shows that the cat's tongue with the capitalized the poet denotes the picture of a happy cat. The poet's indication that the cat is happy and the content is suggested also by the happy bounding placed letters in the tail. I the tail, the spaces between the letters show white color and the letters themselves show black color of the cat's tail.
Moreover the happy cat has food indicated by the ward 'dish dish'. Similarly a dead mouse is indicated by the upside down letters of the word mouse. This means that the cat has already killed the mouse and it's dead body is lying flat. The cat also has the litter box to store the wastages. The ward 'stripe' has been used for many times to indicate a long band of color over cats body. There is a pun in the cat's middle stripe .Pun is the word with two possible meaning .The middle stripe can be read as the stripes over cats body and it can also be read as 'stripes' which indicate the stomach tissue of the cat.
Oops!! How's that Again
In this essay the essayist humorously examines our verbal error’s. The essayist illustrates different variety of verbal error’s problems, why they happen and also explains we laugh at them. The writer is mainly concerned with the psychological causes of the verbal miss steps.
The writer begins with numerous examples of verbal errors .He organizes those examples into four groups as Public blunder, Mistranslation, Bloopers, Spoonerism. Public blunder is the first type of verbal errors in which the speaker comments some verbal errors publicly. E.g.: A businessman Peter Belfour wished the happy married life of prince Charles with lady Jane .But the prince was engaged to Lady Diana .Lady Jane was his Ex-Girlfriend. The second group of verbal errors is mistranslation .While translating something from one language to another language .Some wrong translation may occur E.g.: The slogan “Come Alive With Pepsi” failed in German when it was translated as “Come Alive Out of Grave With Pepsi”.
Further the writer talks about Bloopers which are the embracing errors made on Radio and Television by different R.J and V.J .E.g.: The radio announcer Harry Vonzell Tntroduce the president Herbert Hoover as Hoobert Heever. Finaly spoonerism is the transportation of the sound of the word by accident .This type of verbal errors was introduced by William spooner who once chided his student like this: “You have Hissed all my mystery lecture”. Actually he wanted to say “you have missed all my history lecture”. The writer than draws our attentation to the causes of such verbal errors. According to him such mistake are funny but linguist and psychologist think them as important verbal errors and psychological behavior .A linguist Victoria framkin psychoanalyst says that such slips of tongue are clues to show how our brain stores and articulates language. The Psychoanalyst, Sigmmd Freud explained such error’s (Verbal errors) as the expression of the speaker inner thoughts.
Writer examine why we laugh at such verbal errors. According to him at such mistake we laugh because they are new and delightful to us. According to the Philosopher Henri Bergson people laugh if there is a break in normal action of everyday monotonous life. The slips of the tongue breaks the everybody sameness and monotones. According to essayist we delightfully laugh at the slips of tongue because they are revelation of the speaker in her desires.
We laugh at the charitable wish very kindly and not harshly .We kindly laugh when some nice inner wishes or rival through the verbal errors eg: when Geraldford said in the 1976 President debate that Poland was not under the soviet domination .It was the expression of charitable wish. In this way througout the essay the writer examines our verbal behaviors in a very delightful tone. Acc to him such verbal missteps shows as a new world of logic and possibility.
(You can find summary of other Unit in Next Post) 
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