Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The action of the poem "Those Winter Sundays" is told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.
Form and Meter
The poems are written in blank verse.
Metaphors and Similes
The father is used in the poem "Those Winter Sundays" as a metaphor for wiseness and bravery.
Alliteration and Assonance
We find an alliteration in the poem "The Prisoners" in the line "Guards frisked up, marked our wrists".
Irony
We find an ironic element in "The Whipping" when the narrator describes an old woman beating a young boy and claiming she is much more righteous when compared to him. This is ironic because the narrator then goes on to point how the old woman did wrong deeds all her life in comparison with the young child who did nothing wrong.
Genre
The poems are either meditative or narrative ones.
Setting
The action in "Witch Doctor" takes place inside the main character's house during the middle of the night.
Tone
The tone in "Witch Doctor" is a disturbing and violent one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
In the poem "The Whipping" the protagonist is the young boy and the antagonist is the old woman.
Major Conflict
The main conflict in "Witch Doctor" is between isolation and the need to socialize with others.
Climax
The poem "The Whipping" reaches its climax when the people watching the old woman beating the young boy stand up and stop her.
Foreshadowing
In the first lines of the poem "The Prisoners" the narrator describes just how familiar the guards became with their weapons. This foreshadows the later instances in which the guards will use those weapons to take advantage of and abuse the prisoners.
Understatement
Towards the middle of the poem "The Ballad Of Nat Turner", the narrator claims that he desires nothing more but dies. This is proven to be an understatement because he later describes all he has done to make sure he continues living.
Allusions
One of the main allusions in the poem "The Prisoners" is that those who end up being put in a powerful position will always end up abusing it and taking advantage of those they were supposed to keep in line.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The term "lung" is used in the poem "The Ballad Of Nat Turner" as a reference made to the essential things a person needs in order to survive.
Personification
We have a personification in the line "hands that ached from labor" in the poem "Those Winter Sundays".
Hyperbole
We have a hyperbole in the poem "The Ballad Of Nat Turner" in the line "from curfew joys in the dismal nights".
Onomatopoeia
We have an onomatopoeia in the poem "The Prisoners" in the line "the shackles sang out our pain".
