The Lanyard Literary Devices

The Lanyard written by Billing Collins underlines the childhood of the author and with the help of literary devices such as repetition which puts the emphasis on ideology of quantity versus quality. Collins is also making use of time and flashbacks to compare and contrast the adulthood and childhood and realizing how much he could have done and how much he did. The poem talks about the Collins’s childhood and how his mother would always take care of him, give him everything she could and in return she got the lanyard. No matter what his mother did for him, he will always give her the lanyard which he made with help from counselor as he says in humorous tone, “…and here is your lanyard, I replied, which I made with a little help from a counselor”(stanza 5). The author

There are couple instances of repetition used to emphasize the meaning in the poem and establish self-characterization. In the poem author tells us the story about how his mother was giving everything for him, starting from life to clothes, strength and hope until accomplished individual. Author emphasizes his mother’s love to him by repeating the hard work, sacrifices and time spent for him by his mother over three stanzas. Throughout the poem the author also repeats the word lanyard, while one might think that the reason behind it is because poem is about lanyard, there is a deeper meaning beyond that. In return to all the hard work his mother did, he gave her back one thing, a lanyard. The lanyard was highly appreciated by his mother and even though now he releases how little he gave her back, they were still even. The meaning for the repetition of lanyard is to put emphasize on quantity over the quality. While his mother gave a lots of things, it took only one thing from him to be even with his mother. Author wants to underline that it does not matter how much you give them back, it matters that you do and do it from your