To Be Of Use Literary Devices

To Be of Use In the poem "To Be of Use," Marge Piercy centers the poem on hard work and perseverance. One should embrace the challenges of life as lessons and opportunities to improve. Many people see work as an obligation or rather, a burden but Marge Piercy uses many literary devices to convince one otherwise. In the poem "To Be of Use," Marge Piercy uses strong metaphors and vivid imagery to encourage us to embrace the challenges on the journey to success and not just the result, good or bad.
To begin, the poet uses metaphors to help exhibit the characteristics one needs to have to achieve. She shows this when she compares humans to seals: "The people I love the best / jump into work head first / the black sleek heads of seals / bouncing

The lines, "I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart / who pull like a water buffalo, with massive patience / who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward." (8-10). The imagery of the ox and buffalo pulling through difficult terrain is showing the characteristics needed to ultimately succeed. “People who harness themselves,” implies that an individual is responsible for their own success and development, tying in with the previous quote about the general parlors. Even though they are a higher rank, with no actual participation they don’t get any experience. Another part is “straining through mud and muck,” it suggests that the path to success is not always smooth, however you build endurance and get used to it. Marge Piercy uses another comparison, mud to work, to demonstrate how long-term hard work is meaningful. "Botched it smears the hand, crumbles to dust / but the thing worth doing well done / has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident," (18-20). Mud is dirty, sticky, and hard to work with, but it can be made into pottery. If you fail it turns to dust, add some water and then the dust turns back into mud. There is no absolute failure as long as you don’t give up, there is a chance to change the failure to a success. When you decide you have failed and given up on it, that's when it really has. The next lines, “but the thing worth doing well done / has a shape that satisfies.” This shows how you can shape your results using perseverance and determination. Through these imagery, the poet proves that failure is not absolute, improvements can be made, so risks should be