Analysis Pages

Literary Devices in Wild Swans

Literary Devices Examples in Wild Swans:

Wild Swans

🔒 3

"House without air..."   (Wild Swans)

“House without air” also points to domestic life. The suggestion is that one loses touch with the world in the daily toil of life, “house” offering both metaphor and metonym for such a mode of existence.

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"come over the town..."   (Wild Swans)

Here, the narrator tells the birds to “come over the town.” This could signify that the narrator wants others to see the birds flying and experience what she has just witnessed. It could also mean that the narrator does not want to lose sight of the birds as she goes about her daily activities.

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"Only a question less or a question more; ..."   (Wild Swans)

This line states that the reader can see the narrator’s initial question— “And what did I see I had not seen before?—as rhetorical and dismissive or as a springboard for poetic imagination. Considering the question as rhetorical would be one question less. But imagining that there was something in the flight of birds that she had not seen before would give her new questions to explore.

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