Language and style
The language and style used by Elizabeth Jennings in the poem “Warning to Parents” are analytical aspects you should take into account as the author is known for valuing style and form in her poetry. In what follows, we focus on:
- Playing with the language
- Tense of the verbs
- Type of words used
- Style & mode of expression
- Sentence structure
- Irony
- The effect of the language and style
Playing with the language
The poet plays with language in a very discreet way, mostly through irony and through the way she ridicules parents’ desire to protect their children.
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Tense of the verbs
The poem is conveyed in the present tense, following parents through their actions as they unfold. The present tense also suggests repetitive, general situations, indicating that both parents’ desire to protect their children and violent instincts are something permanent: “do” (p. 142, l. 1), “are” (p. 142, l. 1), “discover” (p. 142, l. 2), “find” (p. 142, l. 6), “need” (p. 142, l. 12), “does” (p. 142, l. 12), etc.
However, the first two stanzas rely heavily on imperatives and conditionals. They suggest what parents think they must do (the imperatives) in order to protect their children from possibly (the conditionals)...
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Style & mode of expression
The style of the poem is ordinary, as the poet uses everyday vocabulary related to parenting and violence. The mode of expression is that of an...
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Sentence structure
The poem follows a regular sentence structure which is only occasionally disrupted by words and expressions meant to create emphasis:
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