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Theme Of The Woodspurge And The Cockroach

Decent Essays

Rossetti and Halligan both expressed the theme of personal reflection throughout the poems, The Woodspurge and The Cockroach. By using different language effects, the two poets easily convey this theme. The orderly structure of four verses per stanza and eight syllables for most verses in The Woodspurge, gives the reader a dull feeling as it is consistent. The rhyme at the end of each verse also gives a monotonous atmosphere and shows the thought Rossetti wants to convey, stages of grief, something that one won’t necessarily want to pay attention to, something that makes people mournful. The only verse that breaks the repetitive eight syllable rhythm is ‘the woodspurge flowered, three cups in one’. The sudden change shows that the appearance of the woodspurge made Rossetti realise something important. This may be the fact that his grief and sorrow cannot change his fate, like how the woodspurge will naturally and always have ‘three cups in one’. Even though a woodspurge only comes in the colour green, ‘flowered’ usually gives a feeling of something pretty blossoming, delivering a refreshed and colourful atmosphere, which contrasts from the previous dullness. This feeling might be …show more content…

‘At first’, ‘but soon’, after a while’ show the cockroach’s movement in chronological order. Even though in ‘he seemed quite satisfied to trace a path’, the ‘quite’ gives off an uneasy feeling, but the whole line creates a relaxed atmosphere, as if the cockroach is on familiar grounds. Always going on the ‘path between the wainscot and the door’, able to move around freely. ‘But soon he turned to jog in crooked rings’, uncertain as to where to go, getting bored of the situation. This shows that there are times where people can be unsettled, giving them many opportunities to do different things. Like an adolescent always finding something new, ‘circling the rusty table leg’, risk taking and

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