Roe-Deer by Ted Hughes, An Advancement of Learning by Seamus Heaney And The Arrival of The Bees Box by Sylvia Plath Essays

Roe-Deer by Ted Hughes, An Advancement of Learning by Seamus Heaney And The Arrival of The Bees Box by Sylvia Plath Essays Roe-Deer by Ted Hughes, An Advancement of Learning by Seamus Heaney And The Arrival of The Bees Box by Sylvia Plath Paper Roe-Deer by Ted Hughes, An Advancement of Learning by Seamus Heaney And The Arrival of The Bees Box by Sylvia Plath Paper Essay Topic: Poetry Seamus Heaney Poems The Poems of Ted Hughes In the poem Roe-Deer the poet describes the deer as a very secretive and supernatural animal, which, in my opinion has caused the poet to write about his experience. They planted their two or three years of secret deer hood Clear on my snow screen vision of the abnormal. The poet knows that he is not supposed to see the deer, as if they are usually hidden by a snow screen because they do not usually let themselves to be seen at all. He admires the deer and become a part of their secretive society. He says they have a secret deer hood and he suggests, I could think the deer were waiting for me. When the deer run off the poet is disappointed because he feels that they had come for him, when they hadnt. He wishes, The deer had come for me. When the deer disappear Into the boil of big flakes. On the last line of the poem he says that everything returned Back to the ordinary. When the poet sees the animals he feels that the deer are special Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal and is pleased that have come into his own private dimension. They had happened into my dimension The poet thinks about the deers secret lives. He envies them and wishes he could join their company. The poet senses that the deer inhabit a supernatural element, and that the snow makes everything seem abnormal. The snow enhances the poets Vision of the abnormal and when the poet returns back to the ordinary he is disappointed. He also writes about the deer living secret lives that humans dont know about, They planted their two or three years of secret deer hood. The poet regrets that he cannot communicate with the deer however much he wants to become apart of their deer hood. The deer had come for me. This is not true but the poet believes that it is. In the poem, An Advancement of Learning, the poet, Seamus Heaney, has a phobia of rats. The poem is about a person taking a walk and chooses to go under the bridge rather than over it. He notices an animal slime out of the water, it is a rat. The poet stares out the rat although he dislikes it he continues to stare. He describes the rat with its Back bunched and glistening, Ears plastered down on his knobbed skull, This makes the reader feel sick at the poets description of the animal. The poet describes the sighting as a battle, I established a dreaded Bridgehead He trained on me These lines are commonly associated with a war or battle so that is how we view his sighting. At the end of the poem the poet walks over the bridge, meaning he has lost this battle. After the experience with the rat the poet takes a different route rather than the route he usually takes. I took the embankment path (As always deferring The bridge). This is where the poet sees the rat, on the embankment path, so he walks over the bridge instead Then I walked over the bridge. He does this because he is so terrified by the rats that he couldnt stand to see another because it makes him sick feel sick, My throat sickened. So the only way to avoid them is to go over the bridge. The rat made the poet think about his past experiences with rats that lived in his house and yard. When his grey brothers scraped and fed Behind the hen-coop in our yard, On ceiling boards above my bed. The sighting is bringing back his almost forgotten childhood fear of the animal. Forgetting how I used to panic In the poem The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath we learn that the poet wants to be a bee keeper. She requests a box of bees, but when they arrive she is afraid of what they might do. This fear keeps her fascinated by the buzzing box and thinks of what she could do with the boxed bees. The box of bees cause of much anxiety because of the noise coming from the box, It is the noise that appals me most of all, The unintelligible syllables, Because of this noise the poet cant keep away from it, and is very curious about what is inside. And I cant keep away from it. There are no windows so I cant see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit. I put my eye to the grid. The poet thinks that she will starve them because she is too afraid to let them free, They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner. She the decides to set the bees free because she thinks that if they are hungry they will go for food; I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me They might ignore me immediately The poet relates the packing of the bees to the African slave trade, where black Africans were herded into a ship and packed together, squashed, so they could not move. With the swarmy feeling of African hands, Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering. She also relates the buzzing to an ancient Roman mob that speaks Latin, which needs to be appeased by a Caesar. Its like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together! I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. When there is a riot the Caesar at the time would calm the mobs down. She says this because she can hear a language spoken by the bees, the buzzing, but she cant calm them down because she does not speak that language. The poems Roe-Deer and An Advancement of Learning are total contrasts to each other, in Roe-Deer the poet admires the animal, and describes it as a supernatural creature. In An Advancement of Learning the poet has a lot of hate towards the rat and regards it as his enemy, but, in The Arrival of The Bee Box the poet has mixed feelings about the bees, she is afraid of the bees and decides to kill them, but she changes her mind and decides to set them free.

Pastoralism and Subsistence Methods

Pastoralism and Subsistence Methods Pastoralism is the ancient method of subsistence farming that substantially relies on the raising and tending of domestic animals. Pastoralism takes place or has taken place in most parts of the world, in climates that range from arid desert to arctic tundra and from forested lowlands to mountain pastures. The ways that pastoralists tend their flocks, then, vary widely depending on farmer flexibility, as well as the regional geographic, ecological, and social conditions. So, to a scientific researcher, pastoralism in its most basic meaning is simply stock keeping. But the study of pastoralists includes the effects stock keeping has on the societies, economies, and lifeways of the groups that keep stock and attach high cultural importance to the animals themselves. Stock Animal Origins Archaeological studies show that the earliest domesticated stock animals- sheep, goats, and pigs- were domesticated about the same time, about 10,000 years ago, in Western Asia. Cattle were first domesticated in the eastern Sahara desert about the same time, and other animals were domesticated later at different times in different areas. Animal domestication as a process still continues: ostriches, today an animal raised by pastoralists, were first domesticated in the mid-19th century. There are many different herded animals, which vary by the place of origin. Africa: cattle, donkeys, ostrichMiddle East: camels, sheep, goats, pigs, ducks, beesCentral Asia: camels, horses, cattle, sheepTibetan Plateau: yaksAndean Highlands: llama, alpaca, guinea pig, ducksCircumpolar arctic: reindeerSoutheast Asia, China, and India: camels, water buffalo, zebu, bantengNorth America: bees, turkeys Why Domesticate? Scholars believe that stock raising arose first when humans moved their domestic stock into drier lands distant from cultivated fields: but pastoralism was not and never has been a static process. Successful farmers adapt their processes to changing circumstances, such as environmental change, population density, and the spread of diseases. Social and technological developments such as road construction and transportation affect processes of production, storage, and distribution. There is a multitude of reasons that people raise stock. Live animals are kept for their blood, milk, and wool, for their dung as fuel and fertilizer, and as transportation and draft animals. They are also food storage, fed fodder that is inedible by humans to create human-edible food, and once slaughtered, they provide skins, sinew, fur, meat, hooves, and bones for a range of purposes from clothing to tools to house construction. Further, stock animals are units of exchange: they can be sold, given as gifts or bride-wealth, or sacrificed for feasting or the general community welfare. Variations on a Theme Thus, the term pastoralism includes many different animals in many different environments. In order to better study stock-tending, anthropologists have tried to categorize pastoralism in a number of ways. One way to look at pastoralism is a set of continuums following several threads: specialization, economy, technology and social changes, and mobility. Some farming systems are highly specialized- they only raise one type of animal- others are highly diversified systems which combine animal husbandry with crop production, hunting, foraging, fishing and trade into a single domestic economy. Some farmers raise animals solely for their own subsistence needs, others produce solely to be marketed to others. Some farmers are helped or hindered by technological or social changes such as the construction of road networks and reliable transportation; the presence of a temporary labor force can also affect pastoralist economies. Pastoralist people often adjust the size of their families to provide that labor force; or adjust the size of their stock to reflect their available labor. Transhumance and Nomads A major study area in pastoralism is another continuum, called transhumance  when human societies move their stock from place to place. At its most basic, some pastoralists move their herds seasonally from pasture to pasture; while others always keep them in a pen and provide them forage. Some are full-time nomads. Nomadism- when farmers move their stock far enough distances to require moving their own houses- is another continuum which is used to measure pastoralism. Semi-nomadic pastoralism is when farmers maintain a permanent home base where old people and tiny children and their caregivers live; full-time nomads move their entire family, clan, or even community as the demands of the animals require. Environmental Demands Pastoralists are found in a wide range of environments, including plains, desert, tundra, and mountains. In the Andes mountains of South America, for example, pastoralists move their flocks of llamas and alpacas between upland and lowland pastures, to escape extremes of temperature and precipitation. Some pastoralists are involved in trade networks: camels were used in the famous Silk Road to move a wide variety of goods across vast reaches of central Asia; llamas and alpacas played a crucial role in the Inca Road system. Identifying Pastoralism in Archaeological Sites Finding archaeological evidence for pastoralist activities is a bit tricky, and as you might guess, varies with the type of pastoralism being studied. Archaeological remains of structures such as pens on farmsteads and at way stations on roadways have been used effectively. The presence of game management equipment, such as horse bits, reins, shoes, and saddles are also clues. Animal fat residues- lipids and alkanoic acids of milk fat- are found on potsherds and provide evidence of dairying activities. Environmental aspects of archaeological sites have been used as supporting evidence, such as changes in pollen over time, which show what types of plants are growing in a region; and the presence of detritivores (mites or other insects that feed on animal dung). Animal skeletons provide a wealth of information: bit wear on teeth, wear on hooves from horseshoes, morphological changes on animal bodies, and domestic herd demography. Pastoralists tend to keep female animals only as long as they reproduce, so pastoralist sites typically have more young female animals than older ones. DNA studies have tracked degrees of genetic difference among herds and domestic lineages. Sources Chepstow from the West African Sahel. Journal of World Prehistory 23(2):43-77.Little MA. 2015. Chapter 24 - Pastoralism. Basics in Human Evolution. Boston: Academic Press. p 337-347.Montero RG, Mathieu J, and Singh C. 2009. Mountain Pastoralism 1500-2000: An Introduction. Nomadic Peoples 13:1-16.Nielsen AE. 2009. Pastoralism and the Non-Pastoral World in the Late Pre-Columbian History of the Southern Andes (10001535). Nomadic Peoples 13:17-35.