Baseball is one of the greatest things in America’s pastime. Going to a baseball game is one of the things that people remember most about their childhood and is also something they still enjoy doing as adults. In Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat” he describes a baseball team not doing very good that day. But when a certain player comes up to bat the crowd has hope. In the poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, figurative language, including metaphor, personification, and simile, is used to enhance the reader's understanding of the meaning of the poem.
To begin with, a metaphor is being used in this poem to enhance the reader's understanding of the meaning of the poem. In the first stanza of the poem, the poet sets the scene for the reader by comparing dying to someone getting out at first base in a baseball game. In Thayer’s poem, he writes “And then Cooney died at first” (Thayer 3). In this quote, Thayer is comparing the baseball player Cooney, to someone dieing without using the words like or as. This is a metaphor because it is not using the words like or as, but is still comparing two things.
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In the seventh stanza of the poem Thayer uses personification and works to set the scene for the reader. Thayer writes in his poem “Five thousand tongues applauded…” (Thayer 26). This is personification because it represents people yelling and cheering. In this case, it is saying tongues are applauding but in real life, tongues can’t actually applaud on their own. So in conclusion, the tongues are not actually applauding, people are just cheering and yelling so that is what makes it personification. They are yelling and cheering because one of the better players is coming up to bat, so they hope he can score a run. So, in conclusion, the use of this personification is being used to enhance the reader’s understanding of the meaning of the