Miniver Cheevy Literary Elements

Unidentified third-person narrator telling Cheevy's story.

The poem is composed of eight quatrains. While no two consecutive lines have the exact same meter, the first and third lines of each stanza are written in iambic tetrameter (though the anaphora of Miniver's name creates a trochee). The rhyme scheme is ABAB and alternates between masculine and feminine rhymes.

Metaphors
-"Grew lean while he assailed the seasons" (Line 2): Cheevy's coming of age is portrayed as a war against the seasons that causes him to lose weight.
-"Miniver mourned the ripe renown / That made so many a name so fragrant" (Lines 13-14): All of Cheevy's fantasizing about the past comes down to longing for the fame that creates legends and causes them to be passed down in the first place.
-"Miniver scorned the gold he sought" (Line 25): The word "gold" stands in for the money that Cheevy needs to function in society.

Alliteration
-"...Cheevy, child of scorn" (Line 1): The "ch" sound repeats.
-"...he assailed the seasons" (Line 2): The "s" sound repeats.
-"Miniver mourned the ripe renown" (Line 13): The “m” and “r” sounds repeat.
-"Miniver loved the Medici" (Line 17): The "m" sound repeats.
-"He would have sinned incessantly" (Line 19): The "s" sound repeats.
-"Miniver cursed the commonplace" (Line 21): The hard "c" sound repeats. It shows up again in the word "khaki," which sonically links the word to the commonplace that Cheevy curses.
-"Miniver coughed, and called it fate" (Line 31): The hard "c" sound repeats.

Assonance:
-"That made so many a name so fragrant" (Line 14): The long "a" vowel repeats.
-"...now on the town" (Line 15): The "ow" sound repeats.

The entire poem is an exercise in irony as Cheevy’s romantic nostalgia for a bygone past is revealed as hypocritical and uninformed.

Narrative, Satire

America in the early part of the twentieth century.

Ironic, Pessimistic, Parodic

Protagonist: Miniver Cheevy. Antagonist: the times in which he lives

The conflict of the poem is between Cheevy’s romantic notions of the past and the ugly reality of modern life. The dramatic irony of Cheevy's alcoholism, revealed in the last stanza, further complicates the conflict to include Cheevy's failure to improve his circumstances.

The poem reaches its climax in the final stanza with the revelation of Cheevy’s alcoholism being either the cause or a symptom of his disappointing existence.

The first stanza foreshadows a great deal. The opening line introduces Cheevy as a "child of scorn," identifying his primary personality trait as being scornful and tracing his origins back to scorn. This foreshadows Cheevy's inability to function in the world. For example, later in the poem, he "[scorns] the gold he [seeks]" (Line 25). At the end of the first stanza, the narrator states that Cheevy has his reasons for ruing his birth. The narrator insinuates that he will provide these reasons for Cheevy's unhappiness, including the revelation given at the end of the poem about Cheevy's alcoholism.

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Miniver’s romantic notions of the past are revealed through historical and mythological allusions: the bright swords and prancing steeds of medieval knighthood, the kingdoms of Thebes and Camelot, Troy’s King Priam, the glory of Arthurian Romance, the Medici dynasty of the Italian Renaissance, and suits of armor.

Metonymy
-"Miniver scorned the gold he sought" (Line 25): Gold stands in for the money he needs to function in society.

Synecdoche
-“Miniver loved the Medici” (Line 17): The name "Medici" refers to several different members of this influential and corrupt family.

-"He mourned Romance, now on the town, / And Art, a vagrant" (Lines 15-16): The figures of Romance and Art are personified as outcasts in society.

-"Grew lean while he assailed the seasons" (Line 2): Cheevy's difficult childhood and coming-of-age is described as though he is waging a battle against time the way one of his beloved legendary knights would face an enemy.

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