'He treated only one subject - himself.' How applicable is this to the Essay

'He treated only one subject - himself.' How applicable is this to the work of Wordsworth - Essay Example Considered one of William Wordsworth's most important poems, The Prelude occupied the poet throughout his life. Wordsworth revised the poem intermittently but he did not publish it during his lifetime. The Prelude is autobiographical and essential to understand Wordsworth' life and poetry. The Prelude's fourteen books collect Wordsworth's meditations on his life, his poetic vocation and its evolution, and some historic critics claim it contains the poet's thoughts on his contemporary political context, such as his views on the French Revolution. However can we really insist that Wordsworth only wrote about himself And if we do, could we argue that other talented poets or authors have not done the same Wordsworth portrayed himself as a gifted man as he could dedicate himself to his poetry. In that sense we find that freedom in his work as he freely talks about all the subjects that he believed were crucial at that time. We would be wrong to see The Prelude as a one subject poem: the a uthor. It is mainly an epic debate of the themes of man and nature, a meditation of the mind. We can note, even from the titles of the fourteen books, -"Childhood and school-time", "Residence at Cambridge", "Summer Vacation", "Cambridge and the Alps", "Residence in London", "Residence in France", that this long poem is purely autobiographical. It would be a mistake. Using himself as a character, applying a personification, is only the method which Wordsworth chose to explore the themes of man and nature, and depict the "life of a nineteenth century man" Wordsworth is also referring to his own evolution, recognizing he has lost his childhood's imagination and replaced it with the wisdom that comes with age. The narrator is the poet himself and the subject of the poem is the poet. However, this is a timeless theme, the loss of innocence, the passage from childhood to being adult. This newfound wisdom allows him to see the "still, sad music of humanity" because he can achieve a more meaningful and realistic understanding of nature. This poem brings together two of what were Wordsworth's most profound concerns: nature and the self. Furthermore, Wordsworth needs to depict himself in his poems as he's presenting complex notions which can only be argued by living experiences. In "Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth wrote "the picture of the mind revives again" presenting one of his most important ideas: the memory is the instrument of the associative or transformative power. He sees a landscape through his mental picture of the same landscape, but five years earlier. How would it be possible to develop such a theory if he had not experienced it himself And what better means of persuading the reader of the true nature of this theory than depicting a personal experience - therefore personifying himself - which can bind every human being For Wordsworth, poetry was more than just a form of creative expression. He regarded it as a learning tool he could use to educate his readers on significance of history. Wordsworth believed that history not only shaped the world in which man lived, but also mankind itself. Wordsworth did not allow the repetition of history's mistakes to turn him into a jaded cynic. He productively used what he had seen, experienced and red and transformed it into poetry which was not only eloquent, but educational. With "The Prelude," he was speaking directly to his readers, in

Paper of fact how the death penalty costs more than life in prison Essay

Paper of fact how the death penalty costs more than life in prison - Essay Example Thre had been 550 executions carried out since the reinstitution of the death penalty (Radelet and Borg 43). The death penalty is considered to be a method of deterrence, the primary reason for the argument for the death penalty in the 1970s centered on this debate. However, this has been denounced as a viable excuse for the death penalty as it is rarely considered as part of the cost/benefit internal discussion of an offender during the commission of a crime that would warrant a death penalty verdict. According to Radelet and Akers, as related in Radelet and Borg, â€Å" in a recent survey of current and former presidents of three professional associations of criminologists (the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association), 85% of the experts agreed that the empirical research on deterrence has shown that the death penalty never has been, is not, and never could be superior to long prison sentences as a deterrent to criminal violence† (45). Therefore, deterrence is not a viable argument for the death penalty. The second argument for the death penalty is incapacitation. ... life in prison went on to commit a murder later on, and ironically, this figure turned out to be the same percentage of those 630 offenders who were discovered to be innocent of the crimes for which they had been originally sentenced to death (46). One way in which the death penalty provides context is in consideration of the nature of law and race relations. The statistics show that since the new laws have been put into place, the death penalty is far more likely to be put into place by an average of three to four times more often when the victim is white. There is a less bias when the offender is concerned, but more often it is within the racial nature of the victim (Radelet and Borg 48). The nature of law, unfortunately, has shown that race is a defining factor in the treatment of an offender, whether it be through their own race or through that of their victim. Because law is subjectively applied, race has an effect in the decisions of the judicial branch of government. In additi on, it has been very rare that anyone of any means has been sentenced to death, making the death sentence relative to the poverty of the offender (Geraghty 209). However, the best argument that has come into existence, one that covers a vast number of issues in regard to the use of the death penalty as a punitive measure, is that concerning the financial costs of the issue. One of the reasons that is often given, by a factor of 11%, in support of the death penalty is because there is a belief that a death sentence is cheaper than supporting a life sentence of incarceration. However, the estimates in 1988 for the overall costs of an execution were 3.2 million, with it costing a mere 600,000 for life in prison (Radelet and Borg 50). While these figures are more than likely very different 20