<span>A figure of speech that is an extended comparison of relationships is called an analogy </span>
The free-verse structure is in line with the poem's message about the suffering of a human being that was deprived of freedom. It is as if the poet desperately (and in vain) tries to break all the cruel constraints that his father had suffered in the concentration camp. The verse is free, but the structure is still stanzaic - it is impossible to recover from the trauma, however hard one might try.
The free verse also brings a conversational tone to the poem, breaking it free of all artificial techniques, and giving the content primacy over the form (up to a point). The message is just too important.
Douglass didn't really have that much grief with his mother's death because it states he had the same emotion he would have with a stranger. A stranger to Douglass wouldn't mean that much and he wouldn't have grief. He wasn't that upset about his mother's death.
