Linton Kwesi Johnson: Poetry Literary Elements

“Sonny’s Lettah” is told from the perspective of a first person narrator, namely Sonny who is also the main character in the poem.

The poem “Reality” has no form and meter since it is written in blank verse.

The main metaphor used in the poem “Reality” is the TV the narrator mentions multiple times. The TV has a great influence over the lives of the people and is described as being a mastermind. The TV is used here as a metaphor, representing the various ways through which a population can be controlled or manipulated.

We find an alliteration in the lines “Dis is di age af science an' teknalagy/ But some a wi check fi antiquity” in the poem “Reality”.

We find an ironic element at the end of the poem “Di Great Insohreckshan”. Up until that point, the narrator claimed there was no reason to be violent and to wish to harm another person. His ideas change at the end of the poem when he claims that sometimes lives have to be lost in order for a an idea to live and prosper.

The poem “Reality” is a meditative poem in which the narrator analyzes the way in which the technological advancements changed the way society works and functions.

The action in the poem “Di Great Insohreckshan” takes place in April 1981 in Brixton.

The tone used in “Sonny’s Lettah” is a violent and tragic one.

In “Di Great Insohreckshan” the protagonists are the rioters and the antagonists are the policemen trying to stop and control them.

The major conflict in the poem “Reality” is between the ruling political class and the working class.

“Sonny’s Lettah” reaches its climax when the main character reveals he was caught by the police after he tried to protect Jim, who was most likely his brother.

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In the first line of “Sonny’s Lettah”, the narrator tries to assure his mother nothing bad has happened. This is however and understatement as in the later lines Sonny writes to his mother about how Jim was arrested and how he killed a cop during a struggle.

One of the main ideas the narrator alludes in “Sonny’s Lettah” is the idea that police will always blame everyone but themselves if something bad were to happen in their presence. This is implied in the poem when the narrator reveals he and his brother will be blamed for everything that happened even though they were completely innocent and were in fact, the victim to police brutality.

The pronoun “we” is used in the poem “Di Great Insohreckshan” as a general term to make reference to those who decided to stand against the establishment and rebel against it.

In the poem “Poems of Shape and Motion” we have a personification in the line “the Earth shifted as I came”.

We have a hyperbole in the line “the strange combustion of my days” in the poem “Poems of Shape and Motion”.

We find on onomatopoeia in the line “One a dem hol awn to Jim” in the poem “Sonny’s Lettah”.