Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The author is the speaker / narrator and tells the story from the point of view of the poem's main character, or from his perspective as the storyteller. For example, in "The Pig" the story is explained from Piggy's perspective, but in "Mike Teevee" the speaker tells the story from his own point of view.
Form and Meter
Iambic pentameter
Metaphors and Similes
Watching too much television can make your eyeballs pop out. This is a metaphor for the television screen being damaging to the eyes when it is watched too much.
Alliteration and Assonance
N/A
Irony
In "The Pig", Farmer Bland is intending to use Piggy as the source of bacon, pork, and sausages but Piggy turns the tables and consumes Farmer Bland instead.
Genre
Children's Poetry
Setting
There are no specific settings mentioned in the poems.
Tone
The tone is jocular, although the subject matter is often rather brutal.
Protagonist and Antagonist
In "The Pig" the protagonist is Piggy and the antagonist is Farmer Bland.
Major Conflict
There is conflict between the narrator as a little boy and his mother in "The Tummy Beast" as he insists that there is a voraciously hungry beast living in his stomach, and she thinks that he is just making up stories to get extra food.
Climax
In "The Tummy Beast" the beast makes a horrible noise and demands food backing up the boy's story and causing his mother to pass out cold.
Foreshadowing
Piggy's realization in "The Pig" causes him to defend his own life by eating Farmer Bland.
Understatement
The poet very rarely uses understatement; almost every poem leans towards the wildly hyperbolic rather than the understated.
Allusions
"Mike TeaVee" alludes to the growing concern of parents and educators at the time that the poem was written about the amount of television kids were watching and the possibility that it might have a detrimental effect on their brain and also the way in which they were learning.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The rumbling stomach in "The Tummy Beast" is personified in that a hungry tummy cannot really shout at someone, therefore it is personified as if it has a mind of its own.
Hyperbole
The boy in "The Tummy Beast" is thought by his mother to be completely exaggerating the degree of his own hunger.
Onomatopoeia
The words "grumble" and "rumble" sound exactly like the noise they are describing.
