To An Athlete Dying Young Figurative Language

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To begin, the poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young” was created by E.A. Housman. E.A Housman was an English scholar and a poet who is best known for his cycle of poems. “To an Athlete Dying Young” is about a great athlete who has just passed away. The townspeople are very sorrow and bring him to his grave. The author is trying to persuade the audience that the athlete dying was not so bad, because he died at his highest achievement. Likewise, this can be proven with figurative language which were added into the poem. To conclude, imagery and personification make the meaning of the poem.
First off, the poem starts with imagery which can be found in the first stanza. Imagery is when the author puts visual images in your head. In the first stanza, it states “We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.” This is an example of imagery because, the author is trying to create an image of a team carrying an athlete down a market with everyone cheering. However, many this is one of many interpretations of that stanza. As a result, this evidence supports the claim because it is showing that the athlete is at his highest point right now in his career. …show more content…

Personification is when you give human characteristics to something unhuman. Examples of personification in stanza 4 are, “Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.”. This is an example of personification because the night does not have eyes, the earth does not have ears and records cannot cut. This stanza means that the athlete can’t see his career go down. Also, it states that silence is no worse than cheers, meaning being quiet in for a funeral is no worse than cheering for the athlete. All in all, this evidence supports the claim because it shows that the athlete passing away was not as bad as it

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