Hurricane Hits England Literary Elements

The first stanza of the poem is in the third-person voice from the perspective of an omniscient speaker, who describes a woman. In the second stanza, the poem shifts to the first-person perspective of the woman herself. The speaker could be reasonably assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical: she struggles between longing for her homeland and living in an unfamiliar new place, and Grace Nichols is an immigrant from Guyana to England.

free verse

Metaphors:
In the first stanza, the storm is described through the metaphor "the howling ship of the wind." This compares the wind to a ship, like something that has traveled by sea to reach England's coast.
In the last stanza, the speaker welcomes the storm to break "the frozen lake in me" and shake "the very trees within me." The central conflict of the poem regards the idea of home and location. Through these metaphors, Nichols creates physical landscapes within the body of the speaker.

Simile:
Nichols describes the wind as being "like some dark ancestral spectre," suggesting that the storm is a relative haunting her from her past.
The destruction uproots "trees / falling heavy as whales," which emphasizes their massive, crushing weight, which could be both symbolic and literal.

There is alliteration present within the fifth stanza, "their crusted roots / their cratered graves," which aids the comparison between the lifelines of the trees and their deaths.

free-verse poem; immigrant poetry; postcolonial poetry

England

The central conflict of the poem is the speaker's conflicting sense of home, between her past homeland and her current place of residence.

In the third stanza, "old tongues" could be seen as a synecdoche, with "tongues" representing voices from the past.

In the first stanza, the storm is described with human emotions: it is “gathering rage” and “fearful and reassuring.” This loads the hurricane with emotional intimacy and significance for the narrator. The questions the speaker asks could be considered to be addressing the storm itself, expecting an answer like a person would. “Tell me why you visit,” she commands, suggesting the storm is like a traveler, family member, or ancestor. The storm is an “old tongue,” which personifies the wind as having a speaking voice. She asks further for the storm to explain its presence and destruction: “What is the meaning of trees / falling heavy as whales / their crusted roots / their cratered graves?” These posed questions put the speaker and the storm in dialogue with each other. Further, in this question, trees are given “graves,” as though they experience life and death akin to the human life cycle. The speaker’s epiphany is that the storm has “come to let me know that / the earth is the earth is the earth.” This gives the storm a clear purpose in its visit to the English coast, versus an uncontrollable act of nature, as well as a voice with a clear message.