The Railway Train

Author’s Note: I decided to use the poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson because it used a lot of descriptive language. I liked how the author incorporated figurative language in the poem.

The poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson is great poem to look at if you’re looking for figurative language. The author used figurative language correctly. She described how the train moved as well as where it went, also adding some figurative language to describe the scene.

Emily Dickinson used a lot of personification to describe the train. When the author is talking about how the train “lap up the miles and lick the valleys up,” She is describing how fast the train is really going. It can put an image in the reader’s mind of the train speeding through the mountains and valleys. The tone of the poem would probably be a sort of childlike wonder and enthusiasm; imagining this train in the scenes that the author describes puts a good image of it in the reader’s head.

The author also uses similes. It describes how the train was docile and omnipotent when it advanced to its final stop. It describes how the train is all-powerful and obedient or submissive. The use of words like those affect the tone in a way that makes it sound almost magical.

The overall impact of the figurative language has on the meaning of the piece and of the train is that it sets the mood. It makes you wonder more about this train like where it’s going or what it looks like. The tone is almost mysterious, almost as if the author wants you to wonder those questions. As a reader, I thought of those questions when I was reading the piece.

Overall, I think that Emily Dickinson did a great job of using figurative language to describe what she wanted to put in the reader’s heads. If you show this to another person and ask what they thought of the piece, they would probably be thinking the same questions that other readers thought of while reading this poem. 

Homework: Good or Bad?

Author's Note: When I ask people, "Do you think that homework is beneficial to your learning?" their automatic reply is "No!" But have you ever actually thought it through? The cons about homework are widely unknown, while the pros, well, nobody ever thinks about the pros. That's why I'm writing this essay. I'm not with homework, or against it, and I'm not here to list the pros and cons about it. But ask yourself this question, and think it through thoroughly: Is homework really necessary?

There is a huge difference between working at home, and homework. Homework is a piece of paper with questions on it, assigned to the student by the teacher. This may help students, but it is really motivating them? Working at home is work that students do without being reminded by parents and other adults. If students realize how different their learning experience was without homework, they would actually do extra work without constantly being reminded by a teacher. Outside of class, students, especially as they get older, want to have a social life. They are not motivated enough to do their homework, so they resort to watching TV or being with friends or playing video games. If doing extra work outside of class was more interesting, I'm sure that more students would be more motivated. Not every student in each school has the right motivation at home. Some students may have family problems at home, they have to deal with that and a high amount of homework while the teachers have no idea what's happening. Some students are bullied. It's hard for kids to keep up with homework and any other huge problems they may have. 

Students are so against homework, that they don't even think about their answer when someone asks them if homework is helpful. Most people just laugh and say no. But if it was more fun, would their answer be more thought out? In some schools, the teachers can't assign their own homework. They have to assign the homework that goes with the curriculum. But if teachers could make their own assignments, maybe only for the kids that need the extra help, would students feel differently about homework? A lot of students have after school activities that they go to. Some have clubs, or sport events, or things for church, or things like Student Council going on. Students can't finish their homework if they have drama club, an orthodontist appointment, then two volleyball practices, then dinner. Even the thought of having homework during these activities makes life stressful for everyone. Some students get home most of the days of the week at 8:00-9:30. They will be tired, and they will be stressed because they have an essay due the next day.

I did a survey about this topic. I asked a bunch of my peers what they thought about it. All of them have different opinions, and it's interesting to see what they said. One said that they kind of liked homework because it helped review the things that they learned during school, but they never had time to do it because of all of the after-school events they had going on. Being a student, I know that as you get older, the work in school is harder. I understand that it's hard to finish things that you don't have the time to do. One person said that they have seen students who only have so long to finish an assignment, but don't have time to do it so they get in trouble for it. Is it necessary to punish students who just don't have the time? So why do teachers set the expectations so high? So you can actually learn. If you didn't have an essay to write, or a math worksheet to finish, or a presentation on the Revolutionary War to do outside of class, you wouldn't learn much. So if students wanted to learn, but they didn't have time to do homework on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because of an after school activity, why should they be pressured to do so? One of my peers told me that they feel like they are rushed after school, and they don't like to be rushed about everything after school every day.

Kids also have trouble keeping a good attitude in school because of homework. The more pointless, long, time-consuming assignments they get, the less excited they are to learn. Most kids used to love going to school when all they had to do was color in sheets of paper and cut little pieces of paper out and glue them to something. Students would like school much better if assignments were less boring. It is hard, once you get older, to make the assignments less boring because it's so much more complicated than before. But the reason that you have to do it is because you have to do good in your future, and that's a thing that a lot of students overlook.

When people say that they don't like homework, it's because they feel pressured to do things, and more and more homework keeps piling up on them, and it isn't good for people when they're so stressed out. Their learning won't be as good because they don't have a good attitude because of the homework assignments. A lot of my peers, more than I expected, didn't really mind doing the homework, but they just didn't have enough time to do it. It wasn't hard, it was just time-consuming. So is homework really beneficial to a student's learning? Maybe not homework. If a student doesn't understand something, or is struggling to keep up with the pace of learning, they should be able to do work by themselves, not being pressured to finish an assignment at a certain date: That's the difference between homework and working at home.