Does John Updike Use Figurative Language In The Great...

It is common to take for granted the beauty in everyday life, but when this happens, it easy to miss the moments that impacts our lives forever. In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds” John Updike demonstrates the impact of one moment in the speaker’s life and uses the poem’s organization, diction, and figurative language to prepare the reader for the speaker’s concluding response about that moment.
To demonstrate the impact of a single moment in the speaker’s life, John Updike uses the poem’s organization to prepare for the reader for the speaker’s concluding response. Starting off the poem, Updike separates the first two lines from the rest of the five stanzas. He sets the scene with “playing golf on Cape Ann in October” (1) and then goes …show more content…
The speaker’s attitude towards this memory is best described as reminiscent and his use of figurative language characterizes this feeling. The speaker starts off by his comparison of “ripe apples… caught like red fish in nets of their branches” (3-4) and goes on to make comparisons in the nature around him, the flock appears like “a cloud of dots, like iron fillings which a magnet underneath the paper undulates” (16-18). The speaker also compares the flock to a rock stating, “a flock of starlings as much one thing as a rock” to contrast the erratic nature of the flock with the fact that the flock flies as a single entity. The speaker constantly compares the flock to describe its ever-changing nature finally deciding on “a lady’s scarf” (45), this is done to emphasize the beauty of the flock, and illustrate the organic nature of a billowing scarf and flock of starlings. The figurative language throughout all stanzas of the poem is used to portray the memory the speaker has of this moment as beyond literal. As the speaker reminisces on his experience, he connects the flock of starlings to various sources of movement using figurative language to explain that nature is every changing and in the end beautiful. This use of figurative language prepares the reader for the speaker’s conclusion that there is beauty in everyday life by comparing the flock to other forms of beauty whether it is the beauty in disorder like in the iron filings or the beauty of a transparent grey lady’s

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