The Death Of A Toad By Richard Wilbur Analysis

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Death is a scary and powerful event for everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are young or old. It is even dramatic for a small garden creature to perish. In Richard Wilbur’s “The Death of a Toad” a toad is killed in a violent turn of events and goes through a what the speaker perceives as a dramatic finish for the creature. Wilbur uses imagery in order to dramatize the toad’s passing. As “the power mower caught” the toad’s leg it uses a “hobbling hop” to get to the garden’s edge. It does not simply walk to the edge, but it hops there in suffering. Its death is not quick. In fact it is quite long and painful. The toad even has final thoughts of “cooling shores” and “lost Amphibia’s emperies.” Beyond what is even able to be directly observed is being filled in through the dramatic imagination of the speaker. The toad is supposedly moving on to a better place when he dies as if to justify his violent ending. Then when he actually is passing he does not just die and move on. He will now “watch, across the castrate street” as if he will live on past death and will watch over his home. This serves to show how his death is not his end. To the speaker the toad will live on. …show more content…

In, “A toad the power mower caught, Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got” three separate ideas are presented. As well in, “Of the ashen heartshaped leaves in a dim, Low, and a final glade” Wilbur separated the different parts of the sentence. This creates a greater emphasis on each part of the sentence. The choppiness lets the sentence contain many different ideas. Every action the toad takes now has greater meaning and has more of an impact on the reader. By having many different emphasized ideas close together with no transition the speaker creates a more dramatic tone for the death and is able to emphasize all the toad’s

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