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Literary Devices In 'The Warm And The Cold'

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In the poem “The Warm and the Cold”, Ted Hughes uses many different types of literary devices to convey his message. The main devices used are similes, metaphors, personification, and imagery. Every stanza begins with the theme of cold, with the exception of the last stanza. After a stanza begins with the theme of freezing and frost. Hughes then compares warm, burrowed animals that are in their habitats to other warm things; such as “the badger in its bedding, like a loaf in the oven”. The main theme of the poem is how all forms of life adapt to cold weather. Even plants and nonliving things such as hills are described in the poem. Although the animals are perfectly adapting to the cold weather, the farmers compared in the last stanza seem to be suffering as they “turn in their sleep like oxen on spits”. This comparison makes a clear contribution to the theme that is present in most of Hughes’ poems; the theme of nature.

The first and most present literary device in the poem is imagery. In the three main stanzas, animals that are burrowed into their habitats are compared to other warm things. For example, “and the butterfly in its mummy like a viol in its case” first describes a butterfly cosily cocooned in its home, and then compares it to an instrument locked safely in a case, protected from all outside dangers. Many different animals described in the poem in order to emphasize how all animals have their warm, cosy homes to retreat to when they need to, such as in the

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