Parallelism refers to the repetition of a chosen grammatical form within a sentence. It uses words, phrases or clauses that are grammatically similar or identical in structure, sound, meaning, or meter, with the purpose of showing that the stated ideas are equally important and to give a natural flow to the piece of writing.
The passage uses this literary device because some phrases and clauses have the same grammatical structure, such as <em>We </em><u><em>measured it</em></u><em> and </em><u><em>broke it </em></u><em>up; We were </em><u><em>born on it, we got killed on it, died on it</em></u>; and <em>being</em><u><em> born on it, working it, dying on it.</em></u>
