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Use Of Diction And Imagery In The Cry Of The Children

Decent Essays

During the Industrial Revolution, children were often forced to work in factories for long hours. Children gave companies cheap labor and sometimes children had to work for 10 or 12 hours a day, even though they were only 7 or 8 years old. The factory work robbed children of their childhoods. Instead of going to school, playing, and enjoying the sunshine, these children were trapped by work. In the poem “The Cry of the Children” Elizabeth Browning reveals how these children were mentally and physically destroyed from child labor, and how the factory life leaves children mourning for a normal childhood. The author uses literary devices such as diction, imagery and dialogue to portray these themes The author uses imagery to show children …show more content…

Browning uses diction and imagery to express heavy emotion and create sympathy for the children, describing how they “cannot stop their tears” and that they are “weeping Into the playtime of others, in the country of the free”(11-12). The children are weeping because everyone other than them is growing and enjoying a fun free outdoor life, while they are in a small, cramped workspace environment and are being pushed their physical and mental limits by the factory. Even though they live in the “country of the free,” they are not free to be children. This leaves them mourning to be set free and to have a normal childhood and grow just like any other thing in nature. Browning demonstrates the desire of the children to escape the factory as they pray “Oh ye wheels ( breaking out into a moan) stop, be silent for today”(87-88). The kids want to be free so bad that they beg for the machines to stop and they can't stand the constant noise and movement without going outside to play. The children are trapped in the factories. Browning uses this very emotional and sympathetic dialogue to appeal to the reader to help these children get free of factory …show more content…

The author uses the literary device dialog to terrify the reader. The author describes the children as mentally destroyed when using the dialogue. The children reveal how mentally exhausted the are as “[They] fall on [their] faces, trying to go; end, underneath [their] heavy eyelids drooping,...all day, [they] drag [their] burden to tiring through the cool, dark Underground or, all day, [they] drive the wheels of iron, in the factories round and round” (65-74). The words “dark” and “drooping” shows the theme children are mentally destroyed by factory life because they are “drooping” with the weight of their work on them. Images such as ‘all day we drive the wheels of iron” displays that the children have no free time and are working very long hours, and show that they are mentally ruined by the long hours of work.. Another piece of evidence that the kids are being mentally ruined is the image that they are “spinning on blindly in the dark” which means that the kids are obviously working well past night time and while should be sleeping or actually working. “Blindly further shows exhaustion, as if they don’t even see the work in front of them anymore. They just keep working like robots. The author uses this dialogue and imagery to inform the readers of the troubles of being the working child faced during the Industrial

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