How Does Alfred Noyes Create Tension and Mood in the Highwayman?

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HOW DOES ALFRED NOYES CREATE TENSION AND MOOD IN THE HIGHWAYMAN? T he highwayman by Alfred Noyes tells a story about two people, The Highwayman and his love Bess, and how Bess kills herself for the Highwayman’s life when King Georges’ men come to kill the Highwayman who is a thief. The Highwayman does not know that he is about to be killed when he arrives to pick Bess up. Bess pulls the trigger of a nearby gun to warn the Highwayman, but it is too late because one of the redcoats shoots the Highwayman. In this essay, I shall try to show how the poet creates the mood and keeps the reader from the beginning of the poem right to its conclusion. I shall explore the poem’s imagery, the wide range of poetic devices the poet uses to create it, for example, rhythm, repetition words describing colour and movement, comparisons, alliteration and onomatopoeia, and explain how these help create different kinds of mood and tension in the poem. At the beginning of the poem, the mood is gloomy, mysterious and incomprehensible. The poet creates this by using metaphors such as, ‘the wind was a torrent of darkness’ and ‘the moon was a ghostly galleon. The poet describes colour when he says, ‘a coat of the claret velvet’ and he also describes colour when he says, ‘breeches of brown doe skin’. The poet uses repetition when he says, ‘The Highwayman came riding-riding-riding- The Highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.’ The poet also uses alliteration when he mentions, ‘he whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there’. This shows the words of alliteration in this stage of the poem. The words used are: whistled, window, who, waiting. The poet is using these words to improve on the structure of the poem. He makes the reader feel as if someone is actually whistling to you when you read the poem. Later on in the poem, when Tim the ostler
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