Translation and Faithful Mother Tongue Essay

Submitted By kokingwiz19
Words: 571
Pages: 3

Ezenwa Orji
Professor Tarra Gaines
English 1302
March 1st 2013
The effectiveness of Tone In Poetry.

The path for work of literature and poetry is set through a tone. It is usually responsible for the way one views and comprehends a poem. Tone makes all works of literature come alive and helps readers determine the intent of piece of poetry, the direction in which the poem might be headed and at the same time enables readers to understand the emotional state of the speaker. For example, a poem intended to express happiness or hope is likely to take a path of excitement and cheer using words that indicate such emotions. Tones interpret the true meaning in a piece. In general, tones set the mood for poetry. Analyzing Czelaws Milosz’s “My Faithful Mother Tongue” and James Arlington’s wright is “Lying in A Hammock”, we discover that one of the similarities between both poems is that, both deal with voice and identity. Despite this, each piece has a different tone. In Czeslaw Milosz “My faithful Mother tongue”, we are able to imagine and explore the speaker’s world in the 1983, being an immigrant on exile in postwar United States ; he was experiencing internal conflict and was not certain if he should be proud or ashamed of his origin. However, he utilizes the third stanza to acknowledge that without a background or origin to be identified with, he sees himself as nobody. The speaker uses the second stanza in the poem to acknowledge how home sick he is and how much he missed his country. He mentions how often he pays tribute to his origin in his own little way before he goes to bed, using metaphorical language to create an impression of adoration for the reader. In the words of the speaker, he says “Faithful mother tongue, I have been serving you. Every night, I used to set before you little bowls of colors So you could have your birch, your cricket, your finch As preserved in my memory.” (Line1-7).
The speaker’s sympathetic tone in the poem allows him to create an atmosphere of empathy Despite all this, he accepts that he is