Connotation/Denotation Literal/Figurative(Symbolic) Poetry Connotation/Denotation Literal/Figurative(Symbolic)

Denotation basic meaning: the most specific or literal meaning of a word, as opposed to its figurative senses or connotations Connotation the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes something suggested by a word or thing

Literal/Figurative:

Literal The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a hooved (ungulate) mammal, a subspecies of the family Equities.

Figurative Power Grace Beauty Nobility Strength Freedom

As a Celtic symbol,the Horse was associated with war As a Celtic symbol,the Horse was associated with war. The Greco-Romans also associated the Horse with the spoils of war and attributed it to symbolism such as power, victory, honor, domination and virility. In Hindu Brihadaranyaka, the Horse is linked to Varuna and as such, is equated to the cosmos. Additionally, a white horse is believed to be the last incarnation of Vishnu. Buddha is said to have left this physical plane riding a white horse. Also in Buddhism a winged horse is often depicted carrying the Book of Law. As one of the symbols in the Chinese zodiac, the horse in Chinese culture is equated with Gemini, and represents practicality, love, endurance, devotion and stability. As a Native American symbol, the Horse symbol meanings combine the grounded power of the earth with the whispers of wisdom found in the spirit winds. The Horse has long been honored has helper, messenger, and harbinger of spirit knowledge to the Native American. Considered wild and an emblem of freedom, the Native American sees many potentialities in the symbolic nature of this noble creature. Another aspect of Native American symbol meanings of the horse comes with the understanding that the wild freedom of the Horse can be harnessed and used to the benefit of the tribe. This understanding comes only when man and beast enter a silent contract – acknowledging mutual respect and awareness of responsibility to each other.

What does this image “connote?”

Figurative Language Imagery An image is a word or phrase which create a picture in your head. I’m just a bug on the windshield of life. Harder than trying to shave a wolverine in a phone booth. He could throw a pork chop past a wolf.

Similes and Metaphors Simile: a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like as. He’s as dumb as a: Stump Bag of hammers Doorknob Fill in your own.

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them IE: She’s drowning in money “She's as fierce as a tiger,” is a simile but “She's a tiger when she's angry.” is a metaphor.

Invictus William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1902) Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

“Invictus” is Latin for unconquerable, invincible, undefeated. After contracting tuberculosis of the bone in his youth, Henley suffered a tubercular infection when he was in his early twenties that resulted in amputation of a leg below the knee. When physicians informed him that he must undergo a similar operation on the other leg, he enlisted the services of Dr. Joseph Lister (1827-1912), the developer of antiseptic medicine. He saved the leg. During Henley's twenty-month ordeal between 1873 and 1875 at the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary in Scotland, he wrote “Invictus” and other poems. Years later, his friend Robert Louis Stevenson based the character Long John Silver (a peg-legged pirate in the Stevenson novel Treasure Island) on Henley. 

Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole,  I thank whatever gods may be  For my unconquerable soul.  Night is a metaphor for suffering of any kind. It is also part of a simile and a hyperbole in which the speaker compares the darkness of his suffering to the blackness of a hellish pit stretching from the north pole to the south pole. In line 4, unconquerable establishes the theme and a link with the title (Latin for unconquerable).

Invictus In the fell clutch of circumstance      5     I have not winced nor cried aloud.  Under the bludgeonings of chance  My head is bloody, but unbowed.  This stanza begins with another metaphor, comparing circumstance to a creature with a deadly grip (fell clutch). Alliteration occurs in clutch, circumstance, and cried, in not and nor, and in bludgeonings, bloody, but, and unbowed.

Invictus Beyond this place of wrath and tears  Looms but the Horror of the shade,   10 And yet the menace of the years  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.  In line 10, shade is a metaphor for death. In this same line, horror suggests that the speaker believes in an afterlife in spite of the seemingly agnostic third line of the first stanza. If there were no afterlife, there could be no horror after death. Menace of the years is a metaphor for advancing age. 

Invictus It matters not how strait the gate,  How charged with punishments the scroll,  I am the master of my fate:   15 I am the captain of my soul. Here, strait means narrow, restricted. To escape from “the fell clutch of circumstance” and “bludgeonings of chance,” the speaker must pass through a narrow gate. He believes he can do so—in spite of the punishments that fate has allotted him—because his iron will refuses to bend.