Analysis Of Everybody Has A Heartache By Joy Harjo

In life all humanity faces a struggle or heartbreak that seems almost impossible to make it through. In the poem Everybody Has a Heartache the author Joy Harjo discusses and introduces the opinion that everyone faces a heartache or blues. The author goes into detail about the different kinds of heartbreak that goes on in a variety of peoples’ everyday life. This poem was very interesting to me because the author chose very diverse and out of the normal heartbreaks for her characters to face rather than the normal heartbreaks that everyone can see. The author used several literary devices to establish an emotional connection with the readers. As a reader I felt that the poem had a combination of both a cultural and social framework. Our society …show more content…

In the poem the author introduces an emotional appeal by stating, “Whimpering: its’ okay baby, please don’t cry. Don’t cry. Baby don’t cry. And he never cries again” (lines 31-33). In this quote the author is introducing the man going through an emotional childhood dealing with his mother coming home with torn clothing and he uses alcohol to cope with his pain. The author wants the reader to put themselves into the position of the man with a damaged mother who was no liable to care for her own son, so as he grew older he used alcohol to cure the heartache he was having to face. Although the author uses almost entirely an emotional appeal to this poem she uses an ethical appeal by stating, “Good-looking girl-woman taps this on her screen”(line 42). The author is describing the character as being attractive and female, while character description is a very important role to play in the use of the literary device imagery Harjo is using. Lastly, and the most uncommonly used appeal is the author’s logical appeal, “I don’t know exactly where I’m going; I only know where I’ve been,”(line 74). In this line Harjo is stating the facts of the character along with every other human logically not being able to predict the future but we know where we have been before. The author ends the poem with a balance of all emotional, ethical, and logical appeals by stating, “we will all find our way, no matter fire leaping through holes in jump time, no matter earthquake, or the breaking of love spilling over the drek of matter In the ether, stacking one burden Against the other. We have heartache.” (lines 79-83) The author uses an emotional appeal to allow the reader to feel the reality of many people feel the same heartache in many varying ways. The author uses an ethical appeal by describing all the different experiences the individual might have to face, we still face a