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All My Pretty Ones - Term Papers

All My Pretty Ones

"All My Pretty Ones" by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton, known for her controversial and dramatic poems, wrote "All My Pretty Ones." While she was hospitalized for depression, her psychiatrist advised her to write poetry. As therapy, Sexton's poetry started off being careful and formal, and she continued to write poetry after completing of therapy. She used poetry as an outlet to live with her depression and to escape from her suicidal thoughts (Petty). Sexton had to deal with three deaths in the family: those of her mother, her father, and her father-in-law (Colton). Some think that her ongoing grief from so many deaths led to her depression. "All My Pretty Ones" illustrates a story ...

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the various items she encounters bring about mixed feelings.
The attitude of "All My Pretty Ones" alters because of the shift in events. Since the events vary from stanza to stanza, the tone of the poem adjusts along with each event. In the first stanza, the speaker grieves over the deaths of her parents. Experiencing the loss of both parents causes the speaker to be mournful. She comes across all of the items that her father has left behind. The first stanza tells of the speaker's final decision to throw away her father's belongings after his death, so as to free her father from "the tangles of his now past life" (Barth). Then, she encounters a photo album. As she goes through the album, she sees many unfamiliar faces. In the second stanza, the speaker realizes that she will never know any of the unfamiliar people in her father's photographs. She will "never know what these faces are all about" because the one person who could have told her is now gone (Sexton). This ...

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changes from reminiscent to forgiving and loving.
The second reason the attitude changes from stanza to stanza is that the speaker experiences the five stages of grief: isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance/forgiveness (Kubler-Ross). In the first stanza, the speaker experiences the first stage of grief: denial and isolation. The speaker starts by calling the tragedy a "jinx" and claiming her mother to be in a "cold slumber" instead of facing the matter and calling it death. She then says that they have left her "here to shuffle and disencumber" (Sexton 4), meaning that she is now on this earth alone and isolated. The second stanza may show that the speaker feels ...

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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 3/15/2011 08:32:01 PM
Submitted By: barnchick323
Category: Poetry & Poets
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1480
Pages: 6

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