Dust of Snow
The whole poem can be divided into two parts. The first four lines is one part, and the other four is another. Reading through the poem, I find it full of rhythm, and the unique structure, together with the simple images of the poet’s design, makes me impressed most. In the poem which is actually made up of one sentence, Robert Frost utilizes only few of illusions but creates a world of harmony, peace, and quietness. Common things such as a crow, a hemlock tree, flakes of snow are put together to describe the external world, while the verbal phrases like “shook down, has given, saved, had rued.” Show the inner world of the poet. In this way, it achieves the effect that both the objective scenes and the poet’s psychological activity are closely related with each other.
Additionally, when we take a close look at the whole poem, we may find that every line of the poem, in fact, creates a pulling-forward effect, because they arise syntactic expectations from the reader. Take line four for an instance, the verb “give” should take double objects but it has only one object of “my heart” without punctuation at the end of this line, thus making us expect another. As a result, we are driven forward to the next line. In this way, readers’ attention can be focused tightly on the poem.
The Kingsblood Royal
In the short passage, the author uses a figure of speech-metaphor to make the intended effect. Firstly, we all know that the dog is literally a kind of animal which is
often linked to humility and inferiority. However, the dog here refers to the black people who live in poverty, misery and oppression. The author compares black people to dogs to make the effect that black people are really treated as dogs without any dignity or freedom. Another example in this passage is “kennel”, which is not actually related with the real living places of dogs but refers to the living environment of those poor people. This kind of writing skill can show us vividly and clearly the miserable plight that black people have fallen into.
Secondly, the sentence of “we will get a nice bone and a kind word” describes a common scene in which a dog fawns on its master and then gets the benefits. This is another kind of metaphor, which indicates the life of black people is just like that of a dog’s. Only if they obey all the rules and beg for what they want, can they relatively live better.
