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How Does Williams Use Alliteration In The Beach

Decent Essays

In the first stanza of the poem, Williams paints a picture of a sea. However, Williams’ beach is not a stereotypical Hawaiian paradise, with ladies tanning in the hot sun, children splashing in the warm water, and floral towels lined up in rows along the soft white sand. Instead, Williams places himself in a beach in Labrador, as suggested by the title. He describes a setting where jagged rocks cast dark shadows in the cold water. Grey waves break against cliffs with crushing force and ice begins to top it’s bottomless pool. Williams uses this scene because it breaks the connotation of a regular beach. He almost shocks people with the image. He makes the reader feel small and insignificant, compared to the magnitude of the sea. He uses alliteration in the third and fourth line, when he writes “about which wash the waters of the world”, to further evoke these feelings. He brings attention to this sentence because the immense size of the ocean, coming from all around the earth. However, although this would typically be considered an ugly scene, Williams describes it as not only not ugly, but even beautiful and surreal. …show more content…

He depicts his body floating in the waves. The words “straining” and “pallors” (in lines 6 and 11 respectively) show that he describes himself as weak and frail. This contrasts to the strong ocean, which seems to almost drown the body. He emphasizes the idea of helplessness and fragility in a place where such power is seen. He depersonalizes himself, speaking about his body almost as if he isn’t in it, but observing it from above. He uses phrases like “this body” (in line 5), “it’s pallors” (line 6), “this straining mind” (line 10-11), and “these limbs” (lines 11-12). This anomalous self awareness adds to the almost whimsical and dreamlike scene that Williams portrays in the

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