Philip Levine: Poetry Literary Elements

"Burial Rites" is written from the perspective of a first-person subjective narrator.

The poem "Detroit, Tomorrow" is written in free verse.

The hot chocolate is used in the poem "The Gatekeeper's Children" as a metaphor to represent the luxuries that the upper class has access to but which are denied to the poor.

We find an alliteration in the line " it’s taken all the colors and left only the spaces" in the poem "The Gatekeeper's Children".

An ironic element is present in the poem "Detroit, Tomorrow" where the narrator describes the immense pain felt by the mother who unexpectedly lost her son. Even though she suffers immensely, no one around her seems to want to help her and the woman is left on her on trying to deal with the grief.

The poem "Burial Rites" is a meditative poem on death.

The action in "Detroit, Tomorrow" takes place inside the mother's apartment early in the morning.

The tone used in "Detroit, Tomorrow" is a neutral one.

The protagonist in "Burial Rites" is the will to live and the antagonist is death.

The main conflict in "The Gatekeeper's Children" is between the rich and the poor.

The poem "The Gatekeeper's Children" reaches its climax when the narrator describes the children of the servants and the children of the masters, who all live in the same house.

The title of the poem "Burial Rites" foreshadows the narrator's mention of his mother's death and the pain it caused him.

At the beginning of the poem "Detroit, Tomorrow" the narrator claims the mother does not know her son passed away. The last part of the poem reveals this to be an understatement when the narrator admits the mother found a day before about her son's passing.

The main allusion in the poem "Burial Rites" is the idea that death does not always have to be so painful a person feels unable to move past it. For the narrator, for example, the death of his mother, even though it was painful, was an event that ultimately helped him grow and develop into a better person.

The term house is used in "The Gatekeeper's Children" as a general term to make reference to the wealth possessed by the upper class.

We find a personification in the line "the hard ground accepts nothing" in the poem "Burial Rites".

We have a hyperbole in the poem "The Gatekeeper's Children" in the line "Between colors where the absence of rage and hunger survives".

We find an onomatopoeia in the line "the street’s so calm with no cars going or coming" in the poem "Detroit, Tomorrow".