Death is the ultimate unknown, will it bring sorrow or a feeling of fulfillment? This quandary of humanity is explored thoroughly in the poem “An Echo Sonnet” by Robert Plack. It details a speaker conflicted about his interest to continue living, since both options present a mystery in what they will bring to him. This internal dilemma is constructed through multiple literary devices that function to connect emotions of despair to the poem’s focus.. Specifically, the poem’s _________, ________, ________, and __________ work to express the aimlessness of the speaker by emphasizing the emotions the speaker has when he decides whether or not life will ever bring him happiness. Aimlessness leads to contradiction. Imagery is used to express this contradiction. The imagery in line 5, “Leaf blooms, burns red…,” is the most vivid example of this emotional contradiction. Because of the speaker’s lack of …show more content…
In the poem’s beginning, scenes of vibrant colors are immediately contrasted with death or decay, “leaf blooms [then] burns red”. This opposition between two completely polar ideas, constructs a sentiment of conflict in their work as a whole. In fact, the juxtaposition relates the speaker’s internal conflict. Without these sentiments, the poem would not be able to fully develop its focus on the speaker’s internal dilemma, as the juxtaposition directly works to jar the reader with conflict. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the specific concepts of life and death supports the poem’s theme about risk taking. Because the juxtaposition portrays death as concluding yet forceful and life as confusing and random, the poem successfully relates the importance of not faltering, as it is obvious life presents more opportunities than death can. Supporting the poem’s theme and effectively expressing the speaker’s personal conflict, juxtaposition plays a key role in the work’s