Prayer Before Birth Flashcards
Tall walls wall me
The alliteration and assonance highlight the torture, manipulation and entrapment he feels entering the world.
O hearme
The repetitive imperatives at the start of each stanza display his desperation for God to help him.
White light…to guide me
The religious imagery in conjunction with the metaphor show his attempt to get God to ‘guide’ him through the dangers of life
The cues I must take
The modal verb in conjunction with the metaphor display the lack of control he has over life.
Otherwise kill me
At the end of the poem, a sense of abruptness is created to show his fear coming into the world.
I am not born yet
At the beginning of the stanzas, he employs an anaphora to display the large amounts of dangers and corruption within the destroyed world.
