A Warning to Children Literary Elements

The poem A Warning to Children is narrated from a third person omniscient point of view.

Iambic Pentameter

There are no metaphors or similes in the poem.

In line 5, we have ‘’ You live, you think of things like this:” which can be considers as being an alliteration since the sound ‘’th’’ is repeated three times in the same line.

The way the author talks about the parcel is quite ironic because in the beginning, he seems to want the children to open the parcel. He describes it and then he talks about how a person can reach it. At the end of the poem however, the poet reveals that if one decides to open the parcel, that person will have to suffer dire consequences.

Poem

The setting is hard to determine since the poem takes place in a fantasy land. Because of this, it is impossible to determine a certain time frame and place where we can place the action of the poem.

Playful, cheerful, simple

The protagonists in the poem can be considered as being the children the poet addresses and the antagonists is more abstract and it can be considered as being the children’s curiosity, an impulse they cannot control.

The major conflict seems to be an internal one and is the result of the children’s desire to untie the parcel and the knowledge that by untying the parcel they will release something they will not understand.

The climax of the poem is a hypothetical one as there is no assurance that it happened. However, the poet talks about the moment the string is untied and the action represents the climax if the poem.

Since A warning to children is a poem, no statements that can be considered as foreshadowing other future events could be found.

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There is an allusion made to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the poem. The poet mentions the presence of a tree with a husky fruit in it and the tree and the fruit may be the same ones mentioned in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Just like in the Bible, the children believed that by discovering the secrets of the fruit, they will become better people. However, the opposite happened and the children were punished for their deeds by becoming enclosed in the parcel they were trying to untie.

There are no metonymies or synecdoche used in the poem.

In line 14, ‘’a husky fruit’’.

There are no structures that can be categorized as being hyperboles in the poem.

There are no words in the poem that could be considered as being onomatopoeia.