Imagery and rhythm and rhyme

In what follows, you can read about the imagery and rhythm and rhyme of “Eve of Destruction” by P. F. Sloan.

Imagery

It is very important to be able to discover imagery, metaphors and other language and stylistic devices in a song or a poem like “Eve of Destruction” by P. F. Sloan. If you watch Barry McGuire’s music video, you will see that it creates imagery through the elements it depicts: soldiers, guns, planes, marches, etc. Reflect on the producer’s choice to present the music video in black and white. Do you think it enhances the poem’s message that reality is grim and sorrow? Do you think the message would have been more powerful were the video presented in color?

Besides the imagery in the music video, imagery is mostly created through the associations between nouns and verbs: “bullets loadin’” (p. 45, l. 2), “bodies floatin’” (p.45, l. 6), “poundin’ of the drums” (p. 46, l. 5).

Similes and comparisons

An interesting simile – which is also a personification – can be noticed in Stanza 2: “Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’” (p. 45, l. 21)

Blood is personified and described as being “mad” and having a sense of its own.

Rhetorical questions

In order to convince the oblivious person whom he addresses, the narrator employs some rhetorical questions:

“And don’t ya understand what I’m tryin’ to say,
and can’t you feel the fear...