Stephanie A. answered • 10/27/21
Tutor
4.5
(19)
MA and BA in English
The theme of the poem is death, and the process of death. It’s written in free verse (no specific rhyme scheme, rhythm, meter). This poem describes death as a stealth invader that lives quietly within the body (camps out) before suddenly striking without warning (To seize it by surprise) and ending a life.
The literary devices used include:
- Conceit: An extended metaphor running throughout the poem.
- How death travels through the body
- Seize it by surprise/through veins and arteries
- along nerves and muscle
- Discharging tissues and organs
- End Stopped Lines: Lines that end in a period.
- Line 6
- Enjambment Lines: Lines that run into the next line without punctuation.
- Lines 1 into 2
- Lines 3 into 4
- Imagery: Represents the senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell)
- Visualize the force of death moving through the body
- Visualize the body parts
- The touch sense of the heart going from a soft muscle to something hard (the heart calcifies to bone)
- Personification: Giving non-living objects lifelike qualities/
- Anthropomorphism: Giving human traits to non-human objects
- Treating death as a person on a camping trip (Death camps out)
- Death seizing the body by surprise, like it’s physically grabbing someone
- Death is discharging tissues and organs, like a manager discharges or fires an employee
- Death charges or runs through the veins
- Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds
- S: seize, camps, surprise, tissue, organs, charges, veins, arteries, nerves, muscle, discharging, calcifies
- Symbolism: An object that stands for something else
- A heart calcified to bone is a symbol for cold hearted, hard hearted, unfeeling
“How Death camps out in the body
To seize it by surprise
How it charges, then, through veins
And arteries, or along nerves and muscle,
Discharging tissue and organs,
So that the heart calcifies to bone."
