At the last analysis of Seize the Day, I especially discussed two rhetorical devices: personification and metaphor. Then, after varied amazing adaptations, I found out the theme is also a good topic to discuss.
The poem is about passing time. The poem is written in chronological order, and because of the performance of Aaron, David, Jacob's group, they speed up reading the poem to show how the time is passing quickly, so people should seize the day. It is reasonable to feel the passing time in the poem because the poet wrote a day in the short duration from morning to the night. She picked few major events people do to represent certain times. For example, the third stanza, taking shower, represent the new beginning of a day. We might take a long time to shower, but for the showering in the poem, only two sentences expressed the event, which is short. For the day, the major event happened is working. She did not describe the work. Instead, she asked us to love work and enjoy the play. For the night, reading a poem is the major event. She put so few words in the description of things that we did, so it causes an illusion that the time is passing quickly, and we should seize the day.
The poem is about nature and love. Even though the poet wrote the poem in chronological order, she put a lot of description in the poem that it is not relevant with time, such as nature and love. In the first stanza, when she described a new beginning of the day, she did not mention how people do in the morning. She used the sense of hearing, the birds' singing, to imply it is a nice morning. Then, in the fifth stanza, she emphasized that nature plays an extremely important role in people's lives. Especially in the first sentence, "be surprised by nature that shares your world of giant steps," she clearly pointed out nature is way more splendid than we expect, and because nature is beyond our imagination, we will be surprised. Then, she provided details about how beautiful nature is. She told the readers to love nature. Therefore, love is another topic. Love is shown in so many aspects. Love is one of the aspects, and loving work, loving living is another aspect. In stanza six and seven, she did not write how hard people should work and how hard people should live, but she pointed out what jobs people have, they should love and enjoy and concentrate on it. The reason is that people are spending time on it. If people do not want to waste lives on it, they should better to love and concentrate on their jobs. "Without love/ your spirit will be a flower/ picked without purpose/ and thrown on the ground/ to be trampled by anyone." From the sentence above, the poet clearly demonstrated that people living without love is unworthy, and once it is unworthy, the others will not respect them and disguise their lives even more than they feel about their lives. Therefore, because of these many "small revelations", we should seize the day and enjoy every moment with love. Sometimes, people should treat lives with slow speed and with detailed observation.
The poem is about appreciation and tolerance. In the last stanza, the poet wrote, "you must imagine and learn to embrace each and every day." The word "embrace" represent tolerance. Particularly, the night and good sleep will release "the fires of worry and anger". It shows that the lives are not always happy and lucky; sometimes there are so many negative feelings that trouble people all the time. Therefore, as the poet wrote, she hoped the good sleep, nature would heal people's anger and worries. Therefore, people should not only loving nature but also know how to use nature and the love to embrace all the troubles.
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