Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote this poem in a three stanza format which is a little peculiar due to the fact that the poem is vague and lacks detail. IN a normal tale, one would explain the reasoning behind his or her suffering to let the reader know what they are going through so they can understand the pain and suffering they are feeling. Paul Laurence Dunbar, however, does the opposite. He isn't telling us very much not because he is embarrassed, he is letting us use our imaginations to put something in our lives into the text.

In this poem and poems alike word choice is huge in pulling the reader in and developing how the poem will make the reader feel. In "The Debt" there are words used that are out of the ordinary from normal everyday