Shaquille O Neal's Ticking Away

694 Words2 Pages

To celebrate the praising of family heirlooms, and through the careful use of allusions, imagery, rhyming, personification, and hyperboles, the reader is able to understand the meaningfulness of items as they relate to family stories. These poetic devices cultivate two shifts pertaining to the tone and subject matter, the first occurring between the detailing of a pocket watch to a journey, and the second as the tone shifts from reminiscing to somber pertaining to sickness. The beginning of Ticking Away details an old clock and its importance to me. Present in these first four stanzas are the poetic elements of personification, rhyming, and allusion. Stanza 1 has personification present as it describes the watch being “trapped inside Victorian …show more content…

The audience gains the perspective of the importance of a family heirloom through the comparison to something as synonymous as a basketball to Shaquille. The personification and rhyming bring extended depth to the opening message of the importance of family knick knacks. Directly succeeding the subject shift after the detailing of the watch, the poem depicts a young immigrant's voyage to new life and illustrates the watch’s presence in their journey. The journey is detailed through the application of hyperboles and imagery. The imagery highlights the tribulations the watch has gone through and the stories tied to it. Stanza 15 sets up a dramatic scene as “when the train began to sway, when people lurched over the rail began to pray.” The imagery is present when the train sways and when people are lurched over the rail, further adding to the overall idea of this second part of the poem which is the stories intertwined with the …show more content…

The second shift splits the tone of the poem in half as it goes from a reminiscing tone to a somber tone which is due to a sickness. This second tone outlines the sadness and despair that affects a family that has a member suffering from dementia. The personification of Dementia and the rhyming of the last words of the stanzas contributes to the somber tone of the last few stanzas of the poem. Stanza’s 27 and 28 begin to outline the havoc that Dementia played on the history of the watch, “Its stories remembered in my Grandpa now sick, fleeting daily as Dementia begins to flick.” The personification here is the flicking as Dementia is a disease and not able to physically flick something. Moreover, the rhyming between sick and flick demonstrates to the reader that the sickness is what flicks his memories and with them the history of the watch. Both poetic elements add to the perspective of the ending, which is that heirlooms are the linkage between the memories and history of your family. After reading Ticking Away, the reader will gain three perspectives summed up into

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