Can You Hear The Joy Poem Analysis

Can You Hear the Joy? “I am amazed that people can think they know the song- and not know it is a prayer for peace, but we are so bombarded by sound and our attention spans are so short that we now listen only to catchy beginnings,” said Noel Regney, author of the Christmas classic, Do You Hear What I Hear? in a 1985 interview. Regney wrote this song along with his wife, Gloria Shayne, desperately during the brutal peak of the Cold War in October 1962. With the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a confrontation over the Soviet Union installing missiles capable of obliterating most of the United States in Cuba, looming above their heads, the author used the poetic devices of repetition, parallelism, and personification to emphasize the importance

First, he wrote (1:1), “Said the night wind to the little lamb.” Although the night wind cannot speak, Regney used this poetic device to show how ALL of creation, living and nonliving, should worship Jesus Christ because He created all of it. Moreover, the author also wrote (1:5), “A star, a star, dancing in the night.” Noel Regney gave a star, which is an inanimate object, the human ability of dancing because this represents how the Star of Bethlehem was bigger and brighter than all of the other stars and how it led the three wise men to Jesus. Also, because dancing is usually associated with happiness and joy, the author uses the dancing of the star to reflect the jubilation, festivity, gaiety, and excitement experienced by the people when they heard that their Savior had been born. Finally, the author wrote (2:1), “Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,” Which further supports the first evidence by portraying that, although lambs cannot speak, Jesus Christ is worthy of worship from ALL of creation, and how everybody should celebrate His birth. Personification was used very effectively throughout this Christmas carol to enhance the theme of this