Cloony the Unfunny Clown
“That is not what I meant- I’m funny just by accident”. Cloony the clown always tries to act funny, as clowns should, but no one thinks he is funny. He tries to express his dreary feelings to the world, but when he tries acting serious the world laughs at him. The author Shel Silverstein, uses various literary techniques to enhance the poem including alliteration, assonance, meter, rhyme, rhyme scheme, and irony. The authors use of these techniques gives the reader a better understanding of the poem and creates a nice flow throughout the poem. Often found in many different poems, alliteration and assonance are perhaps the most common literary techniques used within poems.
One of the most used literary devices within this poem include alliteration and assonance. “He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall”, this shows one of the many examples of assonance found in this poem. Here the author used the sound -y for floppy, sloppy, and skinny. “I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown who worked in a circus that came through town”. This line displays an example of alliteration in the poem, the author uses the letter ‘C’ frequently in the sentence. The author uses assonance
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The whole poem is built off of irony because the poem presents a clown who cannot make people laugh. The typical image of a clown holds that they are funny, whereas in this poem the topic involves a clown who can’t make people laugh. Ordinarily, if clowns happened to be serious to people, the people would seem sad. Yet occurring in this poem there happens to be the opposite. Whenever he tries to act funny nobody laughs, and whenever he tries to show seriousness everyone laughs. The author does this so the poem seems more intriguing to the readers because of how different it is. In addition to irony, other important techniques such as rhyme and meter, also enhances many areas of the
The first aspect of language, which he uses is metaphor in the beginning of the poem when he is describing the dwarf sitting outside the church. He uses metaphor as he says, “The dwarf with his hands on backwards Sat, slumped like a half – filled sack On tiny twisted legs from which Sawdust might run.” The metaphor here of the dwarf sitting like a ‘half filled sack’ is describing the dwarf and how he has a deformed body. He is being compared to looking like a sack, which is slumped and half empty. This is effective as it seems as though the dwarf cannot help himself
The alliteration used is to emphasize rhythm in the poem. On the other hand, the poet also depicts a certain rhyme scheme across each stanza. For example, the first stanza has a rhyme scheme of this manner a, b, c, d, e, a. With this, the rhyme scheme depicted is an irregular manner. Hence, the poem does not have a regular rhythm. Moreover, the poet uses a specific deign of consonance, which is present in the poem (Ahmed & Ayesha, p. 11). The poet also uses the assonance style depicted in the seventh stanza, “Seven whole days I have not seen my beloved.” The letter ‘o’ has been repeated to create rhythm and to show despair in the poem. On the second last line of the seventh stanza, the poet uses the style of consonance, “If I hug her, she’ll drive illness from me. By this, the letter ‘l’ is repeated across the line. The poet’s aim of using this style of Consonance is to establish rhythm in the poem and add aural
In the short story, “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe uses two types of irony, dramatic and verbal. Dramatic irony is when the reader perceives something that a character in the story does not. Poe uses this type of irony in the character Fortunato. Verbal irony is when the character says one thing and means something else. This type of irony can be recognized in the statements that the characters, Fortunato and Montresor, say to one another.
In the poem the teacher points out mistakes such as the student’s thinking, his style of writing the paper and his grammar errors. The teacher said, “there are spots/where your thinking becomes, for me, / alarmingly opaque, and you syntax/seems to jump backwards through unnecessary hoops,” (6-9). This instance shows the error the teacher found in the paper about how the student’s thinking was not straight and would jump backwards and forward throughout the poem. Another error that the teacher finds is when the teacher tells the student that he should have wrote the paper differently or said something else. The teacher said, “I’d have said it differently, / or rather, said something else” (17-18). This instance shows that the teacher is not happy about the way the student has written he paper and tells him that he should have wrote it differently. Another instance where the teacher finds mistake in the paper is when the teacher fixes the students semicolons mistake in the paper. The teacher says, “Please notice how I’ve repaired your/ use of semicolons.”(28).This instance shows that the teacher found a mistake of semicolons, which the student did not use correctly in the paper. However, even after finding all these mistakes the teacher gives A- as an overall grade to the student. This is an example of an irony that shows that the teacher not only gave negative comments to the student, but after giving negative comments
This can be seen in the fourth line, “very prickly, a penalty” as if words were a “black art” of mystery. In setting a secretive tone, the speaker makes it sound as if one needs to be careful with what they say. Another example of alliteration can be seen in the tenth line, where the speaker states, “strengths or squinched,” identifying those words as “peculiar.” Not only that, but the speaker would “squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well” in the “silent, startled” September. In the love for blackberries, the speaker also is displaying their love for learning and life with the use of the
The use of alliteration, tone, mood, theme and other elements that construct a well balanced poem are in this piece of literature.
She uses this technique about four to five times during her short story. I do believe that by including humor, she wants us to feel that this story is beautiful. It makes it beautiful because while you are reading a very dark and serious topic, it makes us laugh and feel a little better about it. I do think that using humor in this short story made the story beautiful and more persuasive. By adding humor, she makes us think about it more than just read and skip through it.
To begin, the poem, “Eve’s Apology,” uses many different poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, rhyme scheme, and simile. The author uses a great number of alliteration, which is the repetition of constant sounds generally at the beginnings of words. Alliteration can be seen in the words “what” and “weakness” in line 3. Some more examples of alliteration throughout the poem are “subtle serpent’s” (23), “he had him” (24), and “with words which” (30). Assonance, the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds, is another poetic device that the author uses greatly. Some examples of assonance are found in lines 10 “ The ‘p...
Countless literary devices are used to make publishable literature. One most used devices is irony. Irony is defined as a situation or statement characterized by a significant difference between what is expected or what is understood and what actually happens or is meant. Two famous pieces of literature that use this device are The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Edgar Allen Poe’s alliteration and repetition of words support the poem’s flow and musicality. Poe begins with the alliteration of the m sound in “merriment” and “melody” (3). The soft m sound, also known as a liquid consonant, helps to keep a quick and continuous pace for the poem. Similarly, the alliteration of the s sounds in sledges, silver, stars, and seem, emphasize the calming sounds of the bells (1-2, 6-7). The s sound helps express the soothing and comforting effects of the bells, essentially contributing to the merry tone of the poem. Furthermore, the alliteration of t...
The clown contributes towards the humourous entertainment of this play through his numerous puns and jokes. He is a source of laughter, not because we are humoured by his "foolery"; for he proves to be no fool at all; but rather because he amuses us with his brilliant wit. Having mastered the art of jesting, Feste is sensitive of his profession, always aware of the circumstances he is in and the appropriateness of this folly.
Irony is an effective way for a poem, playwright or author to lighten an otherwise dark or cryptic story while simultaneously putting emphasis the story’s dark elements; in its obvious absence, the darkness of the story becomes more apparent. This is effective in many poems, such “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, which is about the death of a childhood lover. The persona, assumed to be male, highlights the youth of the his lover, Annabel Lee, referring to her as “this maiden” (Poe line 3) and “a child” (line 7) to underline the fact that she died too young and too soon. He blames this on the angels, who “coveted” (line 12) them and their love. Poe uses irony to contrast, and, therefore, puts emphasis on, the negative circumstances surrounding Annabel Lee’s death by retelling the events in an idyllic tone. Poe’s irony is successful due to his employment of diction and rhyme, which cause the poem to emulate the sing-song style of a nursery rhyme.
In the beginning of the story, the irony present can be obviously seen. The young man is constantly reminding the reader that he is sane, saying, “You fancy me mad… You should have seen how wisely I was proceeding” (Poe p. 619). This is ironic, because his insanity is clearly present due to the fact that his only reason for wanting to kill the old man is the way the man’s eye stares at the narrator in the dark. His paranoia from the way the old man’s eye looks at him has started to drive him insane, causing him to have dark thoughts of murdering him. The narrator’s reasons for why he is not insane for wanting to murder the old man are guided by paranoia and madness, which is ironic because he is doing the exact opposite of what he is trying to do. He further proves his madness by giving reasons to why he is not mad. Witherington states that the narrator’s arguments for why he is not mad “fall apart with every ‘reason’ he gives the listener” (p. 471). The young man does not ...
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...