Interrogations at Noon Literary Elements

The poem "Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain’’ is told from the perspective of a third person objective point of view.

The poem ‘’Insomnia’’ is written in an iambic pentameter.

The major metaphor used in the poem ‘’The End of the World’’ is the river which is used here as a metaphor for death. This is suggested by the association between the river and a person reaching the ‘’end’’.

We find an alliteration in the line "Small with a curved back, he dragged his leg when walking’’ in the poem ‘’ Homage to Soren Kierkegaard’’.

An ironic element is presented in the poem ‘’Insomnia’’ in which the narrator addresses an unnamed man who lives alone in a large house. During a quiet night, the house spokes to the owner and reveals to him that ironically, the things for which he worked all his life and spent his time trying to acquire, have no real value.

The poem "Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain’’ is a meditative poem on the value of art.

The action in the poem ‘’Prayer’’ takes place at sunset in an unnamed street.

The tone in the poem ‘’Finding a Box of Family Letters’’ is depressing and filled with regrets.

Because most of the poems are meditative poems, there is no antagonist and protagonist. Instead, the poems present the narrator’s ideas and feelings when it comes to a particular subject.

The major conflict in ‘’Finding a Box of Family Letters’’ is between the desire to move on when a person dies and the need to remember them and think about the ways in which the dead influenced those who are still alive.

The poem "Homage to Soren Kierkegaard’’ reaches its climax when the narrator describes the way in which the major character’s fate became more favorable.

In the fourth stanza of the poem ‘’Prayer’’, the narrator asks the deity he addresses to watch over the soul of a person who died until the narrator will be able to meet the person again one day. This stanza is thus used to foreshadow the narrator’s imminent death.

When in the beginning of the poem "Homage to Soren Kierkegaard’’ the narrator claims the man suffered a great deal in his life and continued to suffer until the end of his life is an understatement as the narrator later admits that the main character’s situation changed drastically in a short period of time.

In the poem "Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain’’, the narrator mentions a man named Apollinaire who has a steal plate in his head. This is an allusion to a wound a French writer with the name Apollinaire received during the war, a wound created by shrapnel which embedded into the writer’s skull.

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We find personification in the lines "I stood at the edge where the mist ascended,/ My journey done where the world ended’’ in the poem entitled ‘’The End of the World’’.

We find hyperbole in the poem "Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain’’ in the lines ‘’My glory is like a great bomb waiting to explode’’.

We find onomatopoeia in the line "Pipes clanking, water running’’ in the poem entitled ‘’Insomnia’’.