The Universe as Primal Scream Literary Elements

The point of view is the perspective of a neighbor who lives downstairs from the apartment occupied by the screaming children. No personal information is given about the speaker’s gender, age, ethnicity, etc.

The poem is written in free verse without any standard metrical form. It is, however, comprised of thirty-four lines broke upon into three stanzas of nine lines each with a final stanza consisting of just seven lines.

Metaphor and simile both are used to posit possibilities of what heaven may be like: “a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space…to greet us like a father or swallow us like a furnace.”

The poem ends with an example of alliteration highlighting the “b” sound: “begun to insist upon being born.” Assonance is used to connect the end of the third stanza to the beginning of the fourth stanza using the “ee” sound: “To sweep our short lives clean. How mean / Our racket seems”

The final image of the poem features an allusion to Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rather ironically, however, the allusion is not to the then-futuristic portrayal of space travel in the 21st century, but to the opening Dawn of Man sequence which takes millions of years ago at the moment that human evolution was kickstarted.

Metaphysical Poetry

The poem begins at exactly 5:00 PM in the present day inside an apartment building in an unknown city.

In adhering to the conventions of metaphysical verse, the tone of this poem is conversational with a heavy emphasis on colloquial language that shifts unexpectedly back and forth between lighthearted ironic humor and a considerably darker contemplative philosophical inquiry.

Protagonist: the Speaker. Antagonist: the unknowability of the afterlife.

The central conflict is an internal one within the speaker who is trying to reconcile the seeming insignificance of existence with the very real potential of never being able to learn it was utterly meaningless in the absence of any afterlife.

The climax is an anti-climax. The speaker is snapped out of her metaphysical reverie by the realization that the kids upstairs are still screaming and she still has no understanding of why.

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A biblical allusion to Elijah insinuates that the screaming from upstairs may be a message from children who are, like Elijah, prophets able to see into the future.

In the imagery “our dead in Old Testament robes” the reference to the Old Testament is an example of synecdoche.

The unseen and unknown forces of fate are personified as a “wizard” and “thief.”

Although the precise quality of the screams made by the children cannot be calculated, it is likely hyperbolic on the part of the speaker to suggest that “the good crystal” owned by their parents “must surely like shattered to dust on the floor.”

The meaningless of daily irritants when juxtaposed against the unknown of the relentlessly approaching inevitability of death is made viscerally small and quiet by describing it as a “hiccough.”