Analysis of Two Robert Frost Poems, Desert Places and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Analysis of Two Robert Frost Poems, Desert Places and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost takes our imaginations to a journey through wintertime with his twopoems 'Desert Places' and 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'. Frostcomes from a New England background and these two poems reflect the beautifulscenery that is present in that part of the country. Even though these poems bothhave winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling ofdepressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They showhow the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending ontheir mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas anddiction but they are not simple poems.In the poem 'Desert Places' the speaker is a man who is traveling throughthe countryside on a beautiful winter eventing. He is completely surrounded withfeelings of loneliness. The speaker views a snow covered field as a desertedEnglish: Handwritten version of 'Happiness makes u...place. 'A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/ With no expre ssion, nothing toexpress'. Whiteness and blankness are two key ideas in this poem. The whitesybolizes open and empty spaces. The snow is a white blanket that covers upeverything living. The blankness sybolizes the emptyness that the speaker feels.To him there is nothing else around except for the unfeeling snow and his lonelythoughts.The speaker in this poem is jealous of the woods. 'The woods around ithave it - it is theirs.' The woods symbolizes people and society. They havesomething that belongs to them, something to feel a part of. The woods has itsplace in nature and it is also a part of a bigger picture. The speaker is so aloneinside that he feels that he is not a part of anything. Nature has...

The Legacy of World War I in Africa

The Legacy of World War I in Africa When World War I broke out, Europe had already colonized much of Africa, but the need for manpower and resources during the war led to the consolidation of colonial power and sowed the seeds for future resistance. Conquest, Conscription, and Resistance When the war began, the European powers already had colonial armies comprised of African soldiers, but conscription demands increased substantially during the war as did resistance to those demands. France conscripted more than a quarter of a million men, while Germany, Belgium, and Britain recruited tens of thousands more for their armies. Resistance to these demands was common. Some men attempted to emigrate within Africa to avoid conscription for armies who in some cases had only recently conquered them. In other regions, conscription demands fueled existing discontent leading to full-scale uprisings. During the war, France and Britain ended up fighting anti-colonial uprisings in the Sudan (near Darfur), Libya, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Malawi, and Egypt, as well as a brief insurrection on the part of Boers in South Africa sympathetic to the Germans. Â   Porters and their families: the forgotten casualties of World War I The British and German governments - and especially the white settler communities in East and South Africa - did not like the idea of encouraging African men to fight Europeans, so they mostly recruited African men as porters. These men were not considered to be veterans, since they did not fight themselves, but they died in scores all the same, especially in East Africa. Subject to harsh conditions, enemy fire, disease, and inadequate rations, at least 90,000 or 20 percent of porters died serving in the African fronts of World War I. Officials acknowledged that the actual number was probably higher. As a point of comparison, approximately 13 percent of mobilized forces died during the War. During the fighting, villages were also burned and food seized for the use of troops. The loss of manpower also affected the economic capacity of many villages, and when the final years of the war coincided with a drought in East Africa, many more men, women, and children died. To the Victors go the Spoils After the war, Germany lost all of its colonies, which in Africa meant it lost the states known today as Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, and Togo. The League of Nations considered these territories to be unprepared for independence and so divided them up between Britain, France, Belgium, and South Africa, who were supposed to prepare these Mandate territories for independence. In practice, these territories looked little different from colonies, but ideas about imperialism were starting to shift. In the case of Rwanda and Burundi the transfer was doubly tragic. Belgian colonial policies in those states set the stage for the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the lesser-known, related massacres in Burundi. The war also helped politicize populations, however, and when a Second World War came, the days of colonization in Africa would be numbered. Sources: Edward Paice, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson, 2007. Journal of African History. Special Issue: World War I and Africa, 19:1 (1978). PBS, World War I Casualty and Death Tables, (Accessed January 31, 2015).

France Debates Its Identity, but Some Ask Why Essay

France Debates Its Identity, but Some Ask Why - Essay Example Although Éric Besson’s ministry seems to connect with debate, he denies any connection between immigration and the debate. On the other hand, Jean-Luc MÃ ©lenchon writes that to be French is to have a French identity card and the rights that go with it. Additionally, French Muslims just like the Arabs react to the debate with resentment claiming discrimination to the French identity. More so, Yazid Sabeg, an Algerian-born businessman, says the French nation is more unified and that the organic sense of being French does exist. Additionally, Mr. Besson argues that Franco-French does not exist and that there is no race. He says that only a shared set of values that include liberty, equality, fraternity, and secularism exist in France (Erlanger Web). There seems to be immense concern on the France identity as portrayed by various French leaders. As such, I think the debate about French identity is worth discussing. I feel that this debate will clearly define the France identity and remove the dark thoughts of discrimination on race and religion. I also feel that very few people in the world understand secularism in the French