Question

500 words or less identify three poetic devices used by Walt Whitman "Song of the open road"

Answer 1

Answer:

Three three poetic devices used in Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" are alliteration, personification, anaphora.

Explanation:

Poetic devices are the literary techniques and rhetorical devices used by writers to make their work more appealing or better. Such devices may include irony, metaphor, simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, etc.

Walt Whitman's poem "Song of the Open Road" is a narrative poem with 15 parts or sections mostly about life, the lessons we learn from it, the joys and the hurts. It covers every aspect of life, the journey through life, and the lessons one can get from them.

Whitman used a number of poetic devices in his poem, some of which are personification, anaphora, imagery, symbolism, alliteration, etc.

1. Personification:

Personification is the giving of human or living characteristics to non-human or abstract ideas. This is seen in the lines-

"You air that serves me with breath to speak!

You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!

You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!

You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!"

Whitman personifies inanimate objects like the air, stones, light, etc. making them seem like they are alive on their own and capable of doing things like a living human does.

2. Alliteration:

Alliteration is the use of the same consonant sounds in succession.

".... happiness, here is happiness"

"Stately, solemn, sad,..."

In these two lines, we find alliteration in the use of the “h” in  “happiness, here, happiness” and the “s” in “stately, solemn, sad”.

3. Anaphora:

This is the use of the same word or expression at the beginning of the lines.

"Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,

Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,

Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,

Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,

Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,"

The lines in this part of the poem all start with the word "journeyers", making it an anaphoric term.

Thus, we can see that Whitman used multiple poetic devices to talk of life’s journeys and the different aspects of it.