In Those Years

In Those Years Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

first-person speaker

Form and Meter

A sort of sonnet with one nine-line stanza and one five-line stanza, both in free verse with heavy enjambment

Metaphors and Similes

"The dark birds of history" are a metaphor for structural forces that affect many lives, with the "beaks and pinions" of these birds as their damaging effects.

Alliteration and Assonance

"we were trying to live a personal life," alliteration of "w" and "l"

Irony

The second stanza has a sonnet's "turn": whereas the first stanza narrates an obsession with the personal, the second stanza shows its larger effects. This can be considered a form of verbal irony.

Genre

lyric poem

Setting

Tone

mournful, self-criticial

Protagonist and Antagonist

Major Conflict

Climax

Foreshadowing

Understatement

Allusions

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Personification

Hyperbole

Onomatopoeia

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