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How does the poem 'After' create a striking feeling of the…
How does the poem 'After' create a striking feeling of the persona's loss of a loved one?
"a little time"
adjective 'little' repeated emphasises how short their time was
"great grief that desolates the soul"
alliteration shows the person's feelings - guttural sound is aggressive, ands emphasis to that part which shows how big the loss is for him.
"alone I move about a ruined heaven"
imagery and symbolism - 'heaven' = paradise, happiness; the word 'ruined' before it paints a picture of this paradise becoming undone. Effect is striking because it implies that the loss is what caused the 'heaven' to become 'ruined'
'ruined' has connotations of destruction, collapsing, something missing, something that is not whole anymore
structure ABBA
back and forth repetition (chiasmus) eg. 'a little time to kiss... and no more kissing after'; shows how in one moment he has something, but it is then suddenly taken away
preserved throughout the poem, except in stanza 3, where he becomes a ghost - turning point in the poem
break in expectation for stanza 6
a feeling of shock for the reader as it is a break from the pattern established in stanza 1-5. Since this stanza is completely different, it might represent how the world has become completely foreign and alien for the persona after his loss.
contrast between 'a little' and 'long, long' shows us that the time he spent in his relationship seemed very short compared to how long he will spend grieving
'weep in' and sleep in' form a more extended rhyme than in the other stanzas, representing how long his grief will last - contrast to the shorter rhymes in st. 1 -5 which represent the shortness of the relationship.
'sleep in' also implies a sense of hopelessness and how he has nothing to look forward to.
repetition of 'no more'
emphasises the sudden stopping/ end of the relationship; firmly places these memories in the past, and repetition emphasises that the persona will never have those again.
assonance and consonance
'a little time' (alliteration of 't') make the phrase shorter to say, contrast with the longer 'o' sounds in 'long, long', which emphasises how the passage of time seemed to the persona
'like a ghost'
simile comparing him to a ghost symbolises how he is a used shell of his former self; something has been taken away and what is left is not truly alive
'golden dreams/ no more dreaming'
'golden dreams' = visual imagery - the sun, beautiful landscape. Switch to the 'no more any dreaming' = chiasmus; shows how you can have something good for a little time, but it can suddenly be taken away. Can also contrast 'golden dreams' with 'ruined heaven'
switching tenses from past to present
represents how he persona wants to keep reliving his memories, but is forced back into the present every time
'short, sharp time to pray'
sibilance of 'sh' sound makes the phrase seem short and sharp; time to pray is running out. 'Short' implies a sense of quickness and desperation, and 'sharp' implies something painful, so we get the impression that the persona tried hard to pray for the relationship, but was ultimately unsuccessful.