THE FERN HILL - PowerPoint Presentation

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THE FERN HILL

BY: Dylan ThomasSlide2

Biography

Dylan Thomas was born in the Uplands area of Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, on 27 October 1914.His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms. These rural sojourns and the contrast with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night". Appreciative critics have also noted the craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art", and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill". Slide3

summary

Fern Hill" is six stanza of praising and then lamenting days the speaker spent at Fern Hill as a youth. And this speaker is stoked about running through the countryside. Throughout the poem, he talks about how happy he was as a youngster and how oblivious he was that youth was passing. But at the end of the poem, the tone shifts dramatically from joy to sorrow an grief. What was a carefree bliss for the speaker turns out to be a fleeting joy that he ever can't recapture. Slide4

Thesis Statement

in his poem Dylan Thomas uses his life to compose the repetitions of the cycles of nature, so to him there seems to be no passage of time; from his adult vantage point, however, he reflected on his life throughout the story.Slide5

Theme

The poem theme is about the realization of life and maturity that appears after unexpected events. Mainly as the poet got older life got harder and was different from his childhood.

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language to create the tone and setting that portrays the theme

He

talks about The pastoral beauty of the countryside around the farm where he spent his childhood. He romances about the place where he came from, and one-part forlorn monologue of someone who can't let go of the past Dylan Thomas uses syllabic lines repetition, and rhyme to make his poem. Slide7

figurative language

“Now I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green”

And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light. Slide8

What does the poem mean

The

poem represents all the love and loss of his precious childhood. So the title is a place name, sure, but it's also a time in the speaker's life that was extremely precious to him which he can never

return.Slide9

Meaning behind the poem

Youth- You're only

young once, and all those other clichés

. For the speaker of "Fern Hill," youth is everything it should be—joyful, carefree, and oh so fleeting. And that's kind of the problem. It's easy for our speaker to feel the wonders of youth as everlasting, but all along he was doomed to be yanked irreversibly into adulthood, just like the rest of us.

time-Time in "Fern Hill" is almost like a character. Thomas personifies time throughout the poem, as something with immense power. At first, he's the guy who lets the speaker frolic, all happy-like among the meadows. But then time becomes the one who yanks our young and carefree speaker out of his graceful youth and into ugly adulthood