After the Pleasure Party: Lines Traced Under an Image of Amor Threatening Literary Elements

The poem is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who recalls the events from a first person subjective form of view.

The poem is written in a Iambic meter.

One of the most important simile is when the narrator compares his passion for the virgin with a prairie fire. The prairie fires are usually extremely destructive and can spread at a rapid peace. Through this description, the narrator wanted to highlight how he felt when faced with the virgin and with the sin she represented.

We find alliteration in the lines ‘Befit thee, far from strife/Of that which makes the sexual feud/And clogs the aspirant life—‘.

An ironic element is how the virgin is portrayed in a negative manner even though she is the one who is trying to maintain her virtue and be a good person.

Narrative poem

The place where the events take place is not mentioned but it is implied that the action takes place over the course of one night.

Desperate, begging

The narrator presents himself as being the protagonist and the virgin as being the antagonist.

The major conflict is between the narrator and the virgin. The reason for their conflict is the fact that the virgin refuses to sleep with the narrator, invoking her religious beliefs.

The poem reaches its climax when the narrator realizes that the virgin will not give in to his advantages and that he has no chance of convincing her to sleep with him.

The mentioning of the tree and the implication that the narrator feels tempted foreshadows the way in which he will try to convince the young girl to have sexual intercourse with him.

When the narrator compares the virgin to Cassiopeia, the Greek mythological queen made into a constellation as a punishment for her vanity, is an understatement because the reason why the virgin refused to sleep with the narrator was not because of her vanity, but because she wanted to remain true to her love for God.

In the poem, the narrator talks about the withering weeds destroyed rapidly by the prairie-fire inside his heart. The fire in this context is his desire for the virgin who refuses him and the weeds, it is implied here, are his moral thoughts and his religious beliefs that disappear in a minute when he sets his eyes on the beautiful virgin.

The term love is used here in a general way to make reference to sexual intercourse.

We find personification in the line ‘His softened glance how moistly fell!’

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The poem does not contain any onomatopoeia.