Anne Sexton: Poems Literary Elements

Anne Sexton: Poems Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The poems are related from a first-person subjective point of view.

Form and Meter

The poems are written in a modernist style and thus there is no form or meter.

Metaphors and Similes

In the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’, death is compared with a drug every person experiences once in his or her lifetime. Some people become addicted to it and they continue to search it. To comparison has the purpose of making the reader understand how some people have the desire to die even it if seems strange for other people.

Alliteration and Assonance

We find alliteration in the lines "Still-born, they don’t always die,/ but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet’’.

Irony

An ironic element is the way in which death is portrayed in the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’. In this poem, death is portrayed as being something positive as something everyone should aspire to and want to have.

Genre

Meditative poems

Setting

Because most of the poems are meditative poems, there is no setting.

Tone

Tragic, regretful, sad

Protagonist and Antagonist

In the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’, the protagonist is death and the antagonists are the people who want to escape it.

Major Conflict

In the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’ the major conflict is between the narrator’s desire to die and her attempts to rationalize her decisions and to try and convince herself not to do it.

Climax

The poem "Wanting to die’’ reaches its climax when the narrator commits suicide.

Foreshadowing

The poem entitled "Wanting to die’’ foreshadows the death that will take place in the poem entitled "All my pretty ones’’.

Understatement

At the beginning of the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’, suicide is presented in a rather positive manner. At the end of the poem, however, suicide is presented in a negative manner, as an event that hurts people and hurts those close to the person who decided to commit suicide.

Allusions

In the poem entitled "Wanting to die’’, the narrator alludes to the fact that she tried to kill herself at least twice but was unsuccessful.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The term "pictures’’ is used in the poem entitled "All my pretty ones’’ as a general term to make reference to the memories the narrator has of her family.

Personification

We find personification in the line "Death’s a sad bone’’.

Hyperbole

We find a hyperbole in the line "But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,/hold me.’’

Onomatopoeia

N/A

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