The Lanyard Literary Devices

The Lanyard written by Billing Collins underlines the childhood of the author and with the help of literary devices such as repetition which puts the emphasis on ideology of quantity versus quality. Collins is also making use of time and flashbacks to compare and contrast the adulthood and childhood and realizing how much he could have done and how much he did. The poem talks about the Collins’s childhood and how his mother would always take care of him, give him everything she could and in return she got the lanyard. No matter what his mother did for him, he will always give her the lanyard which he made with help from counselor as he says in humorous tone, “…and here is your lanyard, I replied, which I made with a little help from a counselor”(stanza 5).
The author

makes use of time and flashbacks to take the reader throughout his story. At the beginning of the poem he starts at the present time and describes his situation as he is going around the room. When he finds the “L” section of the dictionary, he remembers his childhood and readers will experience a flashback. Throughout the rest of the stanzas he tells his childhood story of lanyard and expresses appreciation to his mother. The flashback lasts until the end of sixth stanza, where he brings the readers back to current time by saying “…and here, I wish to say to her now…” (Stanza 6) Once he ends the flashback, he expresses his final thoughts about his childhood.
Another literary device beautifully used by author is repetition.

There are couple instances of repetition used to emphasize the meaning in the poem and establish self-characterization. In the poem author tells us the story about how his mother was giving everything for him, starting from life to clothes, strength and hope until accomplished individual. Author emphasizes his mother’s love to him by repeating the hard work, sacrifices and time spent for him by his mother over three stanzas. Throughout the poem the author also repeats the word lanyard, while one might think that the reason behind it is because poem is about lanyard, there is a deeper meaning beyond that. In return to all the hard work his mother did, he gave her back one thing, a lanyard. The lanyard was highly appreciated by his mother and even though now he releases how little he gave her back, they were still even. The meaning for the repetition of lanyard is to put emphasize on quantity over the quality. While his mother gave a lots of things, it took only one thing from him to be even with his mother. Author wants to underline that it does not matter how much you give them back, it matters that you do and do it from your

heart.
Last form of repetition is tied with visual imagery, whereas the repetition of words and setting make reader to visualize the situation. In the first stanza, author repeats the word blue in different formats. First he states “blue walls”, then he states “underwater” which is also a representation of the blue color. In the first stanza author self-characterizes him by using color imagery. The blue color is representation of calmness, peace and truth. It expresses honesty, integrity and loyalty. While it has its positive representations, it also has its negative such as depressed and sad. These representations are the emotions of the author as he goes back to his childhood memories and serves as indirect characterization of himself. All in all, author uses some of the most carefully crafted literary devices to construct and present his poem in a way that will take the reader with him and keep them interested.