Entry 1 - Cao Mai Hương

Item 1: Poem

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Paraphrase

Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?

You are lovely and more moderate

Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May

And summer is far too short

At time the sun is so hot

Or often goes behind the clouds

And everything beautiful sometimes will lose its beauty

By misfortune or by nature’s planned out course

But your youth shall not fade

Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess

Nor will death claim you for his own

Because in my eternal verse you will live forever

So long as there are people on this earth

So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.

Rhetorical devices:

-          Metaphor: the summer -> the beauty: “but thy eternal summer shall not fade”

                              the sun -> “the eye of heaven”, sunbeam -> “his gold complexion”

      -      Pun: The word “ temperate” carries two important meanings. In the beloved muse’s case, it means calm, or moderation. However, when applied to summer’s day term, “temperate” means a mild, cool temperature.

-          Rhetorical question: The first sentence “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is meant to draw readers’ attention and provocation as a beginning sentence of the poem. It is also the author’s tend to give the main metaphor to the whole poem.

In this poem, the speaker compares his beloved to summer’s day, arguing that his beloved is better after listing negative things about summer. The interesting thing here is that the gender of his beloved is not explicit, which leads to the surprise at the end of poem:

“When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

With those three last sentences above, the speaker has transformed his beloved’s beauty into the form of poetry, which will live through time, and be preserved forever.

Item 2: Picture

Rhetorical device: 

- Metaphor: the railway in this picture could be considered as an achievement of a hard-working team. However, as we can see, the railway is built wrongly, which represents the dissagrement and inconsistency of how members within the team work with each others .

Message: To work effectively in a  team, it is neccessary that each individual listen, discuss, and understand each others in order to creat an unified and positive working atmosphere.

Item 3: Quotation

A joke is a very serious thing.

Winston Churchill

Rhetorical Device: Paradox

'Joke'  >< 'Serious thing'. 

The quotation might sound self- contradictory, however, in real life, it possibly would be true. Therefore, the message here is that we should think twice before express something, in case we say anything inappropriate.