Syntax In The Ballad Of The Landlord

Discuss the tone of the piece and explain how it is established.

When literature is read it is easy to believe that the way it makes you feel is open to interpretation but it really is not. Tone is very important and used to make the reader understand the piece of literature in the way the writer intended. Tone is achieved by the pool of devices writers use to manipulate the reader 's thoughts, and in the case of the poem The Ballad Of The Landlord, by Langston Hughes it makes no exception. The use of repetition, syntax and imagery are used to establish the purposeful tone of frustration and anger.

Repetition is used to emphasize on a certain aspect or idea and in Hughes’s poem, The Ballad Of The Landlord, repetition is used to portray the tone of frustration. For instance, in the first stanza, line one it says, “Landlord, landlord”, he then proceeds to complain to his

In the Ballad Of The Landlord syntax is used to show the protagonist growing impatient and eventually cracking. In stanza three line one it says “Ten bucks you say I owe you?”, the next stanza also consists of question marks, after the question marks the stanza following ends with exclamation points, “um-huh! You talking high and mighty.”, the end punctuation changes from question marks to exclamation points, the change in punctuation flows with the change of his emotion. The man starts out by questioning his landlord with rhetorical questions, and after what seems to be no response the question marks become exclamation points, the syntax shows how the man was trying hard to stay composed but he got sick of repeating himself and lost his temper with his landlord, this adds a tone of frustration that turns to anger. As the poem progresses the syntax shows how the man 's tone is changing from frustrated to angry due to the fact that his landlord doesn 't listen to