Summary Of Old Bones By Chloe Love

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In the poem Old Bones by Chloe Love, Love describes an ailing grandmother who succumbs to death. In the poem, the dominant image image is death and the overall metaphor is to not fight death when it’s your time for peace. Old Bones’ figurative language, juxtaposition of words, and rhythm help the reader to understand the dominant image, as well as the overall metaphor. Through these writing tools, readers are able to better understand the underlying message in the poem Old Bones by Chloe Love.
The poem Old Bones by Chloe Love contains many examples of figurative language, including similes, allusion, and symbolism, all which help the reader understand both the dominant image and the overall metaphor. In the fourth line of the second stanza, …show more content…

. . standing like a newborn horse.” This simile compares the grandmother’s frail state by showing how shaky and hard it is for her to stand. The grandmother is obviously not in good health, showing that it may soon be her time to visit the pearly gates. Love also alludes to death in the fourth line of the third stanza when she states, “. . . out her window she sees a dark horse.” Death is usually perceived as a dark thing. Not only that, but black is a color most commonly worn to funerals. Horses are symbols of innocence, and paired with the darkness of death, they are usually associated with pending departure of the physical world. This is confirmed in both the fourth and fifth stanza since she is described as too cold to warm hands in the 4th stanza and with crosses hands, a common pose for the dead at funerals, in the fifth stanza, which hint at the fact that the …show more content…

The poem Old Bones by Chloe Love holds multiple examples of this language tool within its stanzas, which help the audience to understand the dominant image, along with the overall metaphor. In line one of the first stanza, Love states that, "Sunshine warms old bones. . . " This is a juxtaposition since sunshine usually symbolized a new day and new beginnings, but when it is compared to old bones, it creates a juxtaposition. Love also uses juxtaposition in the last line of the second stanza when she describes the grandmother as, ". . . standing like a newborn horse." This is a juxtaposition because a newborn baby horse is young, but it is being compared to a older lady who can hardly stand. It is the juxtaposition of the beginning of a life versus the end of one, showing death, which relates back to both the overall metaphor and dominant image. The rhythm of Old Bones also helps the audience to uncover the overall metaphor and dominant image that the author hints at throughout the

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