The Voice (poetry Analysis)

The Voice

Many people do not fully understand that the way you live life determines your personality or your character. Charles Baudelaire's poem, "The Voice", confronts the reader with a way to live and succeed. Baudelaire uses many poetic strategies that challenge the reader's way of life. Baudelaire explains that everything, including life, has its hardships. No one person can do everything perfectly with no effort put into doing it. "The Voice" by Charles Baudelaire uses symbolism, figurative language and the previously stated theme/message in order to persuade the reader to view life the way that he himself does.

Symbolism is a great technique used in this poem. It is a great technique because it creates images in the reader's head. These images let the audience associate them with different personalities. For example, a "big bookcase: a Tall Babel" (1) represents intelligence and the unlimited number of dreams to read and worlds to travel to. This association is used to represent the persona of the speaker. For an example of association, I associate this character with Rory Gilmore. Rory is a character who grows up in a scholarly world. She is most known for her tremendous collection of books. She is very serious about books and is also very caring. The speaker of the poem is then very much like Rory Gilmore: very intelligent, scholarly, and ambitious about the future. This statement concludes that symbolism is used to show the personality of the speaker and the way the speaker lived.

Another strategy used by Baudelaire is his ability to describe nouns and events in a way that lets the reader fully understand his point. Figurative language plays a huge part in this. For example, when Baudelaire states that "the world is but a large, delicious cake" (6), the reader understands that the poet is saying that the world has many positive things in it. Saying that the world is a "large, delicious cake" (6) also creates a content setting for the reader, scoring Baudelaire a couple of brownie points. Adding figurative language to a poem puts more emphasis on certain events. A poem with figurative language to me is like a big hyperbole: it's all a big exaggeration. A poem uses a specific event to emphasize a broad message and figurative language, as said before, puts more emphasis on the event taking place. Therefore, figurative language captivates the reader and persuades them to accept the message conveyed by the poet.

The most effective tool used that persuades the reader to agree is the subject of the poem. This poem deals with the fact that no one is perfect. A person can't do the following: put no effort into the activity. There must be effort in order for something to come out of the activity. This relates to the other message conveyed in the poem that states that no matter where