Analyzing the poem (The Drought)
Have you ever thought of the effect of the water bottle you drink
on our environment, and that it might affect the availability of food you
have? Water bottles are made from plastics and many other materials
and to make them we need to release a huge amount of carbon dioxide
into the air. Which will cause global warming. Not all people are aware
of the effects of their activities on our environment. one poet that tried
to raise awareness of our future in global warming is Amy Helfrich, who
wrote the poem The Drought to convey the themes of how global
warming and our activities affect farmers and lands. Amy Helfrich used
personification, metaphors, and rhyme to convey the theme of how
global warming and our activities affect farmers and lands in a creative
and strong way. The poem type is a Shakespearian Sonnet which has 14
lines with a specific rhyme scheme and is made up of 4 quatrains and 1
couplet.
Firstly, the poet uses personification, which is providing non-
human objects with human characteristics to show a specific idea,
Helfrich used personification to describe and show a situation. For
example, in the line “that time will make a friend out of the rain” (line
8) the author uses personification to describe the importance of rain in
this situation and gave the rain the characteristic of a friend with the
land. However, rain can’t be a friend or have one because only humans
can. Also, in the line “ this season bitterness has starved his grains” the
writer used personification here to show how the season bitterness and
dryness starved his grain and made them die, she gives the
characteristics of starving on the grains to take the role of water
instead of food. Climate change is long-term shifts in the environmental
temperatures that cause seasons that are supposed to have rain to be
dry and make grains and other crops starve. So, the poet used
personification to convey the thought of global warming and climate
change’s effects on our future and environment.
Another device is metaphors which is a fine comparison in which
an author describes a person or thing using words that are not taken
literary and without using like or as. The poet didn’t use metaphors a
lot in the poem. However, she used it in (lines 1,2) “At dusk, he moves
among the dying plains of winter wheat and walks a sharped pace” the
author used metaphors here to describe the framer's sadness and the
difficulty of the situation of the farmer. The writer said that every single
step was sharp and painful, and he compared the step with sharpness.
Finally, as I said before, the type of this poem is a Shakespearian
sonnet which I concluded from the rhyme scheme in the poem. A
rhyme is the repetition of end sounds in two or more words or phrases
that appear close to each other in a poem. The writer had a rhyme of
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG in his line where he had 4 quatrains and 1 couplet.
For example, plains and veins rhyme together in lines ( 1 and 3 ) and I
conclude from this connection between these two words or lines that
the farmer’s life was connected with his land which made him go down
and feel the sadness deep inside him. Other examples are in the word’s
pace and face in the line (2 and 4) where they have the same end sound
‘ace’ and the word’s dust and trust in lines (5, and 7) and have the same
end sounds ‘ust’. Rhyme added the magical touch to the powm and
made it look like a one.
To conclude, Amy Helfrich conveys the theme of how global
warming and our activities affect farmers and lands through her fun
and creative way using different literary techniques like personification,
metaphor, and rhyme scheme. Her creative way of describing emotions
and situations helps the reader to understand and enjoy the poem.
