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Ispahan Carpet By Elizabeth Burge

Decent Essays

Ispahan Carpet “Ispahan Carpet” is a poem written by Elizabeth Burge. The poem narrates from the point of view of a tourist visiting a production sight of handmade carpets while talking about the abuse of child labor in the production process. The poem mainly discusses poverty, and child labor. Throughout the poem Burge uses imagery to describe the horrendous condition of the workplace and to create a dark atmosphere, Burge also uses figurative language to describe the mistreatment of the child workers, while the poem’s structure shows and describes the ghastly cycle of poverty and imprisonment of children. Overall the effect of Burge’s use of the literary devices shows the readers the dark sides in the undeveloped world and how children with …show more content…

Towards the beginning of the poem the poet starts describing the interior environment of the workplace, the poet mentions the “rough timber” machines, which are the equipment weavers use to weave carpets. By using the diction “rough timber” (1) the poet suggests the oldness of the machines that are no longer used in modern days as they are replaced by automatic machines thus suggesting the underdevelopment of the world the children live in. The poet talks about a “silent, sallow, dark-eyed Persian family” (2) portraying the sick, and unhealthy child workers. The auditory imagery of the children is “silent” (2) and that shows the reader how the children have been ripped away from their freedom. The image of the “blackened pots and jars in the cavernous hearth” helps the reader visualize how small and restricting the workplace is, like the pots and jars that are used as containers. The poet describes the jewels as “sensuous” which contrasts the overall dark and miserable atmosphere. Lastly the poet describes the depression the child weavers suffer from by saying that the child with “large eyes” looks “with a speaking darkness.” The image suggests the suffering of the children resulting in their …show more content…

The poem is composed of long lines, with no pauses. The long sentences represent the long hours of work the children have to do. The long lines also suggest the continuity of poverty and the long years of imprisonment to come for the children and how the cycle will continue for generations. The poet uses anaphora in the third stanza to represent the repetitive and tiresome work the children have to go through. The repetition of “one hundred” reflects how this number is unsettling, the poet is showing the reader that even though the number “one hundred to the square centimeter” may be a number to be proud of because it represents the efficiency of the child workers, the number shows the pain and confinement of the children behind the “traditional beauty” of the carpets. In the fourth stanza the poet uses an exclamation mark to show the unsettling thoughts the tourist had after seeing the state of the workplace and the question mark to represent the questions that occupy him/her after the

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