Figurative Language In The Writer By Richard Wilbur

“The Writer”, written by Richard Wilbur, is a poem that requires thorough reading before you can understand the real plot. The surface plot of “The Writer” is about a father who hears his daughter furiously typing at a typewriter. He then has a flashback to an incident with a trapped starling and watching it as it fails countless times until it finally succeeds in escaping. The real plot uses the same elements but is artfully hidden in the poem structure, word usage, figurative language, tone and imagery. Richard Wilbur’s use of figurative language help add to the effectiveness of key points: “From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys / Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.” (5-6) By comparing his daughter’s aggressive typing to a hauled chain through this simile; he vividly appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing. He also hints at the intensity of his daughter’s subject through her typing, revealing a portion of the true plot. Richard a powerful simile again while describing the dazed starling: “Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove / To the hard floor or the desk-top,” (23-24). The imagery of a dazed starling battering against a window and fall heavily to the floor or desktop, appeal to the reader’s sense of sight and emphasizes the starling’s,

Richard opens “The Writer” with vocabulary describing his house as a ship. “In her room at the prow of the house” (1) “Like a chain hauled over a gunwale” (6). This selection of vocabulary compares their state of living to that of a ship sailing along the sea of life after an impacting event. By putting his daughter at the prow it can be assumed that she is sailing and the hauled chain over a gunwale could be her lifting the anchor to set sail. The entirety of the opening shows his daughter moving on from something traumatizing and almost gives away the whole plot’s real