Figurative language in literature and communication

¶ … Speech in Anger, by Vallejo

The poem "Anger" by Cesar Vallejo and translated into the English by Thomas Merton is absolutely suffused with successful utilizations of various figures of speech. Vallejo uses not only the pure aesthetics of word combinations that seem to "click," he also uses several figures of speech to accent his ideas and essentially put forth a mood of urgency. Some of the most integral figures of speech used by Vallejo are anadiplosis, anaphora, and personification.

Anadiplosis is a rhetorical figure of speech that means to "double back" and repeat a word or phrase that appears at the end of a sentence or clause at the beginning of the next sentence or clause.

In "Anger," Vallejo employs the following verses, for instance: "Anger which breaks a man into children, Which breaks the child into two equal birds." Here, the word "breaks" almost ends the first verse, and then almost starts the next verse. True, this is not pure anadiplosis, but the effect is so strong that it is impossible to ignore.

The modified anadiplosis pushes the first part of the verse into the second part: the double use of "breaks" creates a sense of urgency by forcing the reader to veritably cascade into the next line. The reader loses himself or herself to the poem in that he or she does not have agency: The poem truly takes over through anadiplosis.

Another example of this anadiplosis follows in the next passage: "Anger which breaks a tree into leaves And the leaf into unequal buds." Here, the word used in quick succession is "leaves" and "leaf." Here, because of the urgency, we see the link between anger and the unequal buds. And "unequal," of course, is a word that coaxes anger in every situation, and really brings the concept home to the reader's life. Although the imagery is a bit abstract -- leaves, trees and buds -- the application of "unequal" and "anger" to our lives is quite basic and hits at a very visceral level.

The second important figure of speech employed by Vallejo is called anaphora. Anaphora is the repetition of the same few words at the beginning of several consecutive sentences for rhetorical effect.

Take the following lines:

"Anger which breaks a man into children,

Anger which breaks a tree into leaves

Anger. which breaks good into doubts

Anger which breaks the soul into bodies."

These lines are not consecutive, but they do all begin with "anger," which is also the name of the poem. Vallejo uses these four lines to act as the climax -- oddly enough, another figure of speech -- in the poem, and the genius of the poem is that this climax through modified anaphora is spread throughout the poem.

In fact, the modified anaphora with four lines beginning with "anger" can act as a poem in and of itself, as evidenced above. The resulting lines featuring anger in the beginning also all involve the words "which breaks" and draw links between words that are generally seen together, but in different ways.

Man and children are linked, tree and leaves are linked, good and doubts are linked and finally, soul and bodies are linked. However, the use of anger in each of these lines indeed acts like the dagger Vallejo mentions in his poem.

The modified anaphora both cuts the poem into pieces, and creates a climax throughout the poem, and succeeds in maintaining the sense of urgency and tension throughout.