Death Of A Whale Poem Analysis

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The poem “Death of a Whale” by John Blight consists of 14 lines and there are close to 10 syllables in each line. It is a sonnet of both Italian and English style due to the rhyme scheme and some of the rhymes are near rhymes. It is a mix between those two schemes by starting with the rhyme scheme ‘abba’ as the Italian sonnet rhyme and it gradually changes to the English scheme of ‘effe gg’ but he had rearranged the pattern a little. The poem relates back to the title, which stimulates death, and creates a sense of sympathy and pity. This poem states how people pity when something small like a mouse dies, “When a mouse dies, there was sort of pity”. When something like a whale dies, it builds excitement and people would be interested and wanting to find out more and crowd around (“Yesterday, instead, the dead whale on the reef Drew an excited multitude to the jetty”). But when a child dies, everyone cries and feels sad and sorry for the child, “Sorry, we are, too, when a child dies”. Also, when a large number of people die, people do not feel…show more content…
There was use of onomatopoeia in line 11, “Pooh! Pooh!”. The short sounds of the words states a sense of disgust and the whole line “Pooh! Pooh! Spare us give us the death of a mouse” shows that people would rather have a mouse die than a whale, as it doesn’t stink as much, “Until the air, polluted, swings this way Like a door ajar from a slaughterhouse”. There are also rhetorical questions included in the poem such as “How must a whale die to wring a tear?” and “But at the immolation of a race, who cries?”. These two rhetorical questions are used to make the reader ask themselves the question as they read it. The question causes the reader to agree to the poet’s perspective in a way which creates stronger meaning, feeling, emotion and mood. In this poem, the poet has stated the fact of people’s attitudes towards death of different
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