Literary Analysis: Hardened Strength

Hardened Strength Michele Angelo Osmil

You took me to a journey we both tread And you gave me my moments, worst and best.

Left me to be destroyed on my death bed.

I would stay but I should leave for the best.

The darkness crawls ground me in my sleep.

I'd drown myself in sorrow and regret; Emotions turn to cliffs that feel so steep.

This pain is an unleashed fire, yet I'm set.

I am a soldier, dying yet I stand.

I'll still walk on this road of shattered glass.

Still, if it all runs out, Time's grains of sand I'd love you and the pain would pass.

No matter how hard the pain will strike me, I will still love you and set my heart free

The sonnet, Hardened Strength (2016-2017) by Michael Angelo Osmil reveals that love could be your own despondency. It doesn’t only bring the best but love could be your biggest sorrow. As complete individuals we have different feelings and express different emotions,

therefore loving hysterically could be a sign of loyalty or a sign of doubt. But what if you can’t handle the feeling of being a soldier? Because being in love is like entering a battlefield wherein you fight and strive with every will you get while walking in shattered glass drowning in sorrow.

This sonnet expresses different passion since a person’s desire for love is different since we express love uniquely. Yet the sonnet revealed two options whether to still love or to lose love.

The speaker is fully aware that he’s not the “choice” but hope is the reason that he gave love chances. He has fallen in uncertainty, he is drowning in suffocation because of love yet he stands. With every mistake, floss, bad times and suffering. He chooses to set his heart free and let all of this go and love her, but reality slaps him that if only they live in some dream that they would be together, he would be full of joy. Yet, setting his heart free was the only choice since love can’t be gotten or received forcefully.

The sonnet is about the speaker loving the subject even if he feels numb, sorrow and deep emotions that he didn’t identify it as love anymore yet he ended up loving the subject even if he (the speaker) is passing all those circumstances. Yet there’s a possibility that the speaker would love someone else but his heart will evolve only for his first true love. It gives a unique feeling, a feeling of mixed emotions. A matter of choosing to love or to love freely. As individuals, we have the freedom to express love freely yet in the sonnet, setting your heart free is loving someone else. Choosing where you would go can affect another person’s life because all of us want to be loved and loved back. This sonnet is an iambic pentameter with an ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme, including sorrow, hope and power.

Sorrow. Love is not what we expected it to be. It’s not just running around the field, going to Disneyland and feeling butterflies in your stomach all the time. Its driving thoughts until

you discover a universe that both of you mend. Fights you never expect to happen and boundaries built by your thoughts. Eventually, love breaks most especially if it's “puppy love”, but even though it's real it has so many weaknesses since it holds gratitude and warmth. In the process of loving we fight as if were in an endless battle in the process of getting hurt. Not giving up is the reason why loving hurts because we keep on holding on even if the time isn’t yours.

Hope. Admiring and having crushes are normal even at what age you are. Liking a person is so far from love because love has a limited time. Love doesn’t have so much more effort than love. When you love, you build the future together, you fight for it and you express it as if it is the world. But the world doesn’t contain every desire you require and you end up “hoping”.

Thinking that you would call that person “my love” if you had a chance. If that person can feel and see how passionate you are you would be loved.

Power. Love is Power. It holds every content a person desires. Holds happiness, companionship, weaknesses and strengths, acceptance, faith and so much more. It could turn a person into a depressed reckless monster or a goofy adventurous lad or lass. By love they would do anything for it as if it’s their life. Love is what a person wants therefore it’s what they're fighting for. But loving is powerful yet it’s too toxic. Eventually you’ll be full of love and you’ll get tired of all the drama or of that person. Because sometimes, letting go is also a process of growing. It’s a benefit for both men and women, it’s to let them improve. If your love is toxic, the right time will come or the right person will.

A man that loves a woman so deeply that even if he’s already in pain, he still loves his woman. An example of “love is blind” there’s a Filipino movie directed by Jason Paul Laxamana which talks about a woman who uses a magic potion that makes her crush see her as exceptionally beautiful. The story showed that you can be quite desperate for love. You’ll beg

for it that you’ll do anything just to please the person you love. This wasn’t mentioned in the sonnet since it’s the other way around. One sided relationship can affect the person that cares, making that person blind for his or her love. It mentioned he stood like Dr. Jose Rizal in a war that disappointed him since he was betrayed. Relevant to the sonnet but not the betrayal but the trust.

The speaker can be a teenager, an adult or an old person who has deep desires. Some people may say that you can only experience love when you're 21 or so because you are able to build a future together. Well, there’s no scientific explanation that you can only truly give love and experience it when you’re at the right age. Age doesn’t matter when it comes to this matter.

But giving true love is the one that counts because when you love truly, it’s not puppy love anymore. Age doesn’t matter if you’re a teenager but if you’re a child it does because it’s still the age of immaturity where you fantasize what love is but don’t really know what it’s for. Everyone deserves to get hurt but everyone deserves to be loved more.

“You took me to a journey we both tread.” It's expressed in an imaginary way since the speaker described his experience and adventure. Tread means walking in a specific way, that word acts as an example of setting and seeing a universe that only both of you can build and see.

It's seeing perspectives not only one sided but together. Seeing a universe. It expresses that you can see beyond what you see. You don’t only see the person you love physically but you feel him or her spiritually and emotionally. Spiritually, emotionally, if a person loves you, they read your soul and your emotions.

That line also says that you have shared “And you gave me my moments, worst and best.” In a relationship, we don’t know what to expect therefore we overthink the actions we receive. Irony, contrasting ideas because of the worst and best. Sharing emotions is a part of a relationship. In that line, a pacific feeling isn’t expressed because the word “moments” can bring “Left me to be destroyed on my death bed.”. Death bed is described as your last breath. In the times of sorrow, she left, he handled the pain but she never came back. Even though both of them suffocated, she never saw hope. It's compared to the feeling of dying. The line expressed that he was left alone while he was suffering or in times of grief. Relevant to what drowning really feels like, but the sonnet also expressed the feeling of being a patient lying at your deathbed wherein you stare at the gloomy walls in the hospital room. Deep down is a sign called help. He stated that line as a reminder that he was sick, sick because he was so blind because of love. It made his life blurry that he couldn't notice no one was there to help. An example of a metaphor wherein the deathbed was compared to a certain feeling or scenario.

“I would stay but I should leave for the best.” This example is the same as the line “And you gave me my moments worst and best” but It doesn't have the same perspective. The thought of this line means that in order for you to move on or for you to see another perspective, you should let go and move on. But that decision isn’t the one you want but it’s for the best. Relevant to a scenario when your parents choose a school for you. It’s your responsibility to go to school so in whatever or whatever school you may be; you should go there since you don’t have a chance. Same as this, it’s a matter of choosing to still love or to lose love. Either way you're losing both since when you’re still going to love, you’re going to expect. If you’re going to lose love, it’s like you don’t lose anything since if a person leaves you why do you still think they still love you? People derive sentences like pickup lines and they act like they are into you but they're

not. When you lose love and you love them so deeply it’s their loss because they didn’t take the chance of loyalty.

“The darkness crawls ground me in my sleep.” This line is like a dream or your fantasizing that darkness can move. This is an example of Imagery, personification and metaphor. Imagery, you imagine that you’re being haunted by your own fears and running from your problems and for short, negativity. Darkness is compared to negativity. As the line stated “darkness crawls round me”, it’s like comparing a word to an unexciting explanation in the line.

Darkness is given an action; darkness doesn’t move as it is still. Darkness. Darkness can be expressed like a person’s feeling and that feeling is negative. What if darkness became your friend? Reality, friends do haunt you as they turn you down. The feeling of this line is like being depressed or having anxiety that you would want to distance yourself from people. That the only thing that has been keeping you awake is the negativity floating around your head as if it has its own mind. In my sleep, we dream when we sleep. When you’re feeling down, sleeping makes you overthink since your head isn’t thinking about anything. Relevant to the first line going here.

He (the speaker) was full of joy since he had a person he loved so much. She (subject) left with all the burden carried by the speakers back. In every situation you pass through life, if it makes you traumatized it will haunt you. The speaker isn’t traumatized, not desperate for love but he’s full of love and it made him blind.

“Emotions turn to cliffs that feel so steep” Your own emotions are controlling you and pushing you as if they could, personification. You imagined as if you were there, imagery, if you’d let your emotions take over, you have imagined the impact that you would receive or get.

This line means your emotions dragging you down as if it’s a person. You're starting to doubt yourself because you're so broken and you're starting to have negative thoughts, eventually those

thoughts will be stuck in your head and hope isn’t an option anymore. You get gloomy and depressed, you feel haunted. Your emotions take over your body that you don’t allow yourself to think straight anymore. It’s like your suicidal. The only think you want to do is kill yourself so the pain would slip away. “Cliffs that feel so steep” It’s an experience of bad days and negativity that you receive. It’s like the feeling of what it’s like when all your sorrows are drowning you together. You imagined what it’s like to be dead because the only thing you can think about is how to vanish the feeling.

“This pain is an unleashed fire, yet I’m set” This line expressed that he felt fire that has been unleashed because of the sufferings that was kept inside. Thus he was prepared for all of it to happen. This is an example of Irony since he fantasized the pain of getting burned. This is an example of Irony “I am a soldier, dying yet I stand” This line speaks about himself suffering from a lot of pain, but still staying strong. Selfishness never got him that he never thought of thinking about himself. But, what if you are taking care of yourself? A soldier. A soldier fights for their country and to prove to them that they’re bringing and protecting the lives of his or her country. Just like what Catriona Grey said “As a Miss Philippines, I’ve always felt the love of the Filipino people and I think I brought half of my country here tonight and so I could name the song ‘Raise your flag’ because I stand here not as one but as a hundred and four million Filipinos.”. Loving is like being a soldier, you fantasized (imagery) what’s the feeling of being the one who is fighting for your country. Instead of fighting for your country, you fight for love.

“I’ll still walk on this road of shattered glass” This is a scenario where you’re in a maze finding the person you love. In the process of you chasing her, every step you take it feels like “walk on this road of shattered glass”. Road and shattered glass is like compared to one another.

Shattered glass is an expression of sorrow and hope. In everything we do, we don’t get it directly and we go through a process of getting hurt. Since in this sonnet, the woman no longer loves him, he is stuck in an unending maze wherein he searches for nothing.

“Still, if it all runs out, Time gains of sand” The line says that when everything runs out, the time that was gained will turn into sand related to an hourglass. The subject may be feeling a lot of pain but as time goes by, pain will eventually go away but scar is still there. The love of the subject is so strong that it makes him endure pain. If you love that person whole heartedly, no matter the pain and suffering you would experience as lovers, just like an hourglass, your love towards each other would be the same no matter the ups and downs you would encounter.

The speaker is trying to explain that love can turn you blind as the sonnet stated “I’d love you and the pain would pass”. He can’t feel the weight he’s carrying even if he’s suffering. Your actions reflect the emotions you are carrying because overthinking is what a person does.

“No matter how hard the pain will strike me. I will still love you and set my heart free.”

This line is self-expressed. It means that even though you are carrying you’ll still be devoted to the person that stole your heart. Even though there’s no hope, even though she gave a reason for him to leave her, he ended up chasing her. “I will still love you and set my heart free.”. It expressed that if he finds another, if there’s a possibility that he’ll find another man, his heart will always be with the women he loved truly.

This is a story that helps you understand what kind of behavior or attitude this person is.

The story can be adaptable, young or old. It is to let people be aware that no matter how many

trials that destiny hits on you, even how many obtuse arguments you endured with your partner.

Hard times test people’s patience, it helps people grow and develop, eventually be independent.

The sonnet is understandable since its thought can be understood directly. It’s not that unique because the concept of the sonnet is common but the flow and the way it's expressed is unique.

No matter how hand your relationship is all set and done, it's normal to feel pain, to feel burden.

When everything you feel has been left out your heart is now free from the pain and suffering.