A Comparative Essay by Marcus Debruin

A Comparative Essay by Marcus deBruin

A poem is a metrical composition containing feelings or imaginative descriptions. The poems Old Man (written by Jessica Siegal) and Winter (written by Judith Nicholls) experience death in two different way, one death by age and the other by a storm. Both poems Old Man and Winter have similes and repetitions.

Jessica Siegal used metaphors and similes to describe her poem. Metaphors like “tangled like old yarn” is describing his beard and how messed up it is, “gnarled and cracked his face” is describing an old tree. Similes like “once as sturdy as a mountain, now fragile as a twig” is saying he was once strong but now weak. The way Jessica’s metaphors described the Old Man fading away and questioned the timeline like a frail tree and concluding with death in the end by “Before you too crumble into dust”.

Judith Nicholls used personifications and rhyming to describe this poem. Personifications to give Winter human traits for example Winter crept, Winter prowled and Winter raced. Judith also used rhyming like oak with spoke and breath with death which is adding to Winter’s human traits that she did create. Judith through the personifications made the claim that anywhere Winter went that death would soon be there.

Judith and Jessica both used figurative language and repetition in each of the poems they created. Judith used the bad ways that Winter touches anything to conclude with death while Jessica use of figurative language to describe how death can come to the Old Man for example; Judith in Winter stated that “at his back was death” and Jessica in Old Man mentioned “How long will this go on? Before you too crumble into dust?”

Through both these poems Jessica and Judith described death in very different ways with different language techniques both effective to bring their points across.