Title: At first glance, “The Death of a Toad” seems fairly comical, almost absurd. It is such an insignificant part of the minutia of life that it seems simply ridiculous that a poet would even write about such a subject.
Paraphrase: A power lawn mower catches the leg of a toad and mutilates it, forcing the toad to grotesquely hop across the “castrate[d] lawn”. Throughout this process the narrator provides imagery of the toad instead hopping in mystic, spiritual lands to a “final glade”. He then imagines the toad’s glorious death and imagines an afterlife for the toad in which the toad can experience “ebullient seas” and “cooling shores” in an amphibian ruled kingdom.
Devices:
- Irony - the backbone of the poem, irony allows Wilbur to glorify the toad yet at the same time, through dramatic irony also allows him to create humor and very light satire
- Imagery - the device which allows Wilbur’s irony to shine through. “Chewed and clipped”, “hobbling hop”, “banked and staring eyes”, are all violent and grotesque but are also contrasted with “a final glade”, “misted and ebullient seas”, and “lost Amphibia’s emperies”
- Rhyme - masculine rhymes with an AABCBC rhyme scheme creates a whimsical, sing-song tone which contrasts with the often times harsh, stark imagery
- Meter - referred to by Wilbur as “loose iambic”. Often choppy, with uneven, cacophonous sound which parallels the three legged toad’s also choppy, uneven, and bloody floundering across the lawn.
- Paradox - one of the most prominent, most effective devices used in the poem. In fact, it is really a poem of contradictions or paradoxes. First, the toad is dying, but it is only in death that we are really able to see the life of the toad. Then, the journey of the toad is elegant and royal, but at the same time we also know that the toad is only hobbling across a lawn to die. While the death of the toad seems glorious and epic, Wilbur uses dramatic irony to remind us that it is only an insignificant toad. Even the language and imagery of the poem is vivid and elegant but it is also harsh, garish and grotesque.
Attitude: The attitude or the tone is likewise filled with paradoxes. It is respectful and glorifying but at the same time violent and grotesque. Likewise Wilbur uses epic language such as “The rare original heartsblood goes” and the anachronistic “Amphibia’s emperies” which contrasts not only with the violent imagery but also with the modern image of the “power [lawn] mower” and “castrate[d] lawn”. In the end, this all combines to be a paradoxical, gently satirical, and self-aware attitude toward the poem.
Shifts: The shift after line two coincides with the shift from modern, harsh imagery to classical elegant imagery, the shift from the toad’s death to the afterlife journey. Later shift at line sixteen shows accomplishes the same thing except in reverse. Reminds the us of the dramatic irony and keeps the toad’s death in perspective.
Title: While at first the title seemed simply ridiculous, it is now more. It is still ridiculous, that it is a poem about a toad, yet in an ironic, self-aware style. Through this, Wilbur confirms our expectations of an absurd poem, but also defies them through his epic treatment of the toad in another use of paradox.
Theme/Total Meaning: The poem as a whole is meant as a subtle yet comic irony on the complexities of modern life as we can see through the very obvious use of irony. However, the paradoxes and self-aware nature of the poem are also hard to ignore. In this way, the irony is not only directed towards the death of the toad but also towards the audience, the poet, and the poem itself. In this sort of meta-poem, it could be read as Wilbur sort of mocking his own use of language in which in can manipulate words, sound, and literary devices to impact his audience and their perception of the poem.
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