How Does Shakespeare Use Literary Devices In Sonnet 73
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Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
“Shakespeare's poem uses three major metaphors for death, but he surprises the reader in the end by flipping this gloomy poem into one about love,” (Lineberger, Jason). When first reading Sonnet 73, nature automatically comes to mind with the constant nature references: “yellow leaves… birds sang… twilight of such day… sunset fadeth…” However, when you read in between the lines, you begin to notice a decent amount of metaphorical phrases and references. Shakespeare, in Sonnet 73, intelligently states the inevitable idea of growing old by metaphorically stating the idea of getting old.
The literary device, imagery, is a strong device to use when writing. In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare uses this literary device to allow…show more content… He states that his age is like a “time of year,” in the first quatrain, meaning late autumn. The use of imagery here allows us to think of autumn because of the “yellow leaves… shake against the cold”. When the weather has entered the cold months, the colorful fall leaves have fallen completely off of the bare branches, and the birds have migrated away from their nests in the trees. Since the first quatrain talks about a winter day, the metaphor is describing the depressing state of old age, with its “bare ruined choirs,” leaving of the Spring birds, and the branches blowing in the cold. In the second quatrain, Shakespeare says his old age is like that of late twilight, “As far sunset fadeth in the west,” and “…by black night” (SparkNotes).. These metaphors reference to the idea of taking away the remaining light in a day by “Death’s second self”. The second quatrain then changes the metaphor into the idea of nighttime and emphasizes the gradual fade of young age, instead of the cold change of old age: “black night” takes away the light steady as “by and by” (Sonnet 73…show more content… The couplet may contain no metaphors, however; it still follows logically with the three quatrains. The first two quatrains emphasizes how no one loves twilight because it will soon be night, so then they look forward to a new morning. But after the third quatrain, the couplet is possible because he denotes the idea of his death by “…leave ere long”. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, has three main metaphors: autumn leaves in quatrain one, twilight in quatrain two, and dwindling fire in quatrain three (Shmoop Editorial Team). However, the couplet allowed him to introduce the theme of love to emphasize the beauty that life has to offer (Shmoop Editorial