Nicstylsha Mays
Mrs. Mary Patrick
ENGL 2020 L01
October 8, 2013 When I first enrolled in this class, I was lost. I had no idea what to expect from the class. However, now that I have been active in the class for a third of the semester, I must say that my mind has been changed. As I read the following works: “We Are Seven”, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Indian Woman’s Death Song”, “Manfred”, and “The Lamb”, I have learned that no matter what time period is read, there are still many aspects of literature that can be related to present day life. I will also be discussing “The Tyger” in this essay as in corresponds with “The Lamb”. I thought that I would be reading these things just to read them. I did not think that I would be able to relate the works to anything that was going on in my life. But, I was wrong! I believe that “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Manfred” can be connected with each other in the sense that both of the narrators in these works seem to be having a battle with themselves as a person. In “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, the Mariner was cursed because of a decision he made to kill the Albatross. But, I believe that he also has a sense of guilt for what he did. “Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks. Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross. About my neck was hung.” I think at this point in the story he felt a bit of regret for what he did. In “Manfred”, the narrator was battling things he had been through growing up and he was channeling these negative energies upon the people he loved. He did not want the female character to marry his son so he had his so killed. He wanted her to himself. This suggests that perhaps he had been through some turmoil in his earlier years that lead to his behaviors.
The other three works, “We Are Seven, “Indian Woman’s Death Song”, and “The Lamb”, I believe, relate the most to me as a person. As I was growing up, I faced a lot of challenges and obstacles. But before I reached that point in my life, I believed that life was a fairy tale. When I was a child, I had no worries, no cares. I just lived life as it came. The narrator in “The Lamb”, as I discussed in my essay for the test, seemed to be a young child. The child did not have anything to worry about at that point in their life; everything was so sweet and innocent. This is how I was as a child. “He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child. I a child & thou a lamb, we are called by his name.” This is the one of the points in the poem where you can distinguish the age of the narrator, which registers as a child.
Once I lost my mother, everything changed. I was moved from home to home and had many different families within my family. Meaning people that I did not see on a regular basis growing up were the people that I was staying with for 7 years of my life. At this point, I was more like the narrators in “We Are Seven”, and “The Tyger”, because I had reached a point where I now had cares and worried. I can relate to the narrator in “We Are Seven” because she described that she had seven siblings dead or alive. Well, I have 15 siblings, but only 5 of them are actually related to me by blood. But when I am asked how many sibling I have, I am sure to include all of them. I relate to the narrator in “The Tyger” because everything had changed. I now was able to see the ‘black and white’ in life. Everything was not all positive at this point. This is the moment in my life when I was vulnerable and where I had my first real adult feelings of hurt and abandonment. The narrator in “The Tyger” was not like the narrator in “The Lamb” because he/she was now speaking about things that no child would know about. The way in which the phrases of the poem were spoken was intellectual and far too advanced for a child as well.
For a long time, I had believed that God did not love me. I felt that