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How Beastly The Bourgeois, By D. H. Lawrence

Decent Essays

In the poem, “How Beastly the Bourgeois is” written by D.H. Lawrence. The author uses a speaker who describes his disgust of the Bourgeois (the character) in the poem. Lawrence has the speaker use figurative language and rhetorical devices to express the disgust the speaker has of Bourgeois. Lawrence uses repetition, scientific diction, rhetorical questions, simile, defamiliarization, anaphora and a conceit to show the disgust towards the character in the poem. The ways the author uses literary works describes the Bourgeois using satire so it decreases the characters pride and presumption. Satire is when you use sarcasm, humor, or exaggeration to criticizes people's lives, in the way they work, how they look, and how they speak or live to make …show more content…

Similes are a type figurative language, which compares to things using “like” or “as”. The speaker states, “watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.”(Line 13). The author uses this simile to show the speakers distaste and disgust for the Bourgeois because whenever he is faced with difficulty he gives up and turns away from the problem. This is unattractive and unappealing in anyone but especially of any higher class citizen. Another literary device D.H. Lawrence uses in the poem is defamiliarization. The speaker goes on to say “Tramping his thirty miles a day after partridges, or a little rubber ball?”(Line 3). This is defamiliarization used by the author because he could have wrote something easy as saying a golf ball or after a game of golf. Instead he used defamiliarization to show that these are two hobbies for upper class citizens and not everyone can play them. The speaker shows disgust because he describes the Bourgeois as having all the time on his hands and not working instead he is doing things that aren’t as important. It is distasteful that people are working for their money and he gets all of it handed to him. As the poem goes on Lawrence begins to use Anaphora to describe the speaker's dislike for the Bourgeois. The speaker goes on to say, “Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another man’s need, let him come home to a bit of …show more content…

A conceit is an extended metaphor. The conceit begins when the speaker uses the metaphor, “Nicely groomed, like a mushroom standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable”(Line 21). The speaker begins by saying that the character is handsome and great looking but by comparing him to a mushroom makes the Bourgeois gross because he is talking about a poisonous mushroom that people may think looks good on the outside but on the inside it is rotten. Then Lawrence continues to add to the metaphor by having the speaker state, “and like a fungus, living on the remains of bygone life sucking his life out of the dead leaves” (Lines 23/24). Lawrence extends the metaphor and compares the Bourgeois to fungus. The speaker believes he is disgusting because fungi hold bacteria and also suck life out of dead leaves. Sucking life out of dead leaves compares to the Bourgeois being lazy and not working to earn his own money, instead he is taking the money from either his dead parents or relatives. The author then extends the metaphor even longer by having the speaker announce, “he’s stale, he’s been there too long” (Line 25). Lawrence compares him to something that is hard or gross to eat which shows the reader that the man is disgusting because any human wants to eat something stale or distasteful. The bourgeois is also compared to a fungi which is disgusting because it is parasitic. The quote, “just

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