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Personification In Haiti

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In Jennifer Rahim’s poem “Haiti,” imagery, metaphor, and personification help convey the author's take on Haiti's violent 2010 earthquake. Hati has been the subject of many horrible earthquakes such as the earthquakes referenced in this poem. The author’s use of imagery, metaphor, and personification help bring to life the terrible destruction and aftermath of the earthquake.
The first of three formal features that this poem deploys is a metaphor to help connect images to the five senses. The poem ends with the lines, “of the language forming / like a new world on your tongue,” which use sensory metaphor to portray an almost tactile, sensory imagery that conveys a feeling of the weight and complexity of language (23-24). In this vein, “a new …show more content…

It also shares a sense of hope that the city could be rebuilt by people. The clever use of metaphor is a very important and useful tool that the author uses to their advantage throughout the poem. For example, the author also leverages metaphor to describe the terrifying sound of an earthquake such as, “Full-throated syllables, up- / rising from deep down” (3-4). This use of metaphor draws the reader to the loud, thunderous noises that erupt from deep in the earth when earthquakes strike. Thus, the author makes clever use of metaphor in these instances for dramatic effect. . The second of the three formal features is personification, which in the first two lines is used to give the earth human characteristics such as speaking. The poem starts with, “For the earth has spoken,” which is personification as the earth cannot speak (1). This personification sets an ominous tone for the poem that helps showcase the power of the earth and the earthquake. The way the author uses personification in the first line gives a feeling of power or wrath similar to an angry judge in a courtroom sentencing a person (or in this case a city and its residents) to a tragic end. This use of personification is used …show more content…

In other pieces of the author’s works, she often gives the earth human attributes and emotion. In “Haiti”, the earth personification is of a powerful figure, with voice, anger, and female gender. . . The third and final formal feature is imagery which is used in this poem to portray the sadness and despair after an earthquake and evoke the same emotion from the reader. The author uses an extensive vocabulary to portray different scenes unfolding in greater detail to help evoke emotion. Towards the middle of the poem, the author writes, “it laid your cities prostrate,” as an example of how the author express imagery paired with an extensive vocabulary to portray scenes in the poem (13). Prostrate when paired with “laid your cities” is a more descriptive way to convey that it leveled cities - laying them out as if degraded on the ground. Another way that the author uses imagery is less about vocabulary and more

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