Analysis of Literary Devices Used in “Ballad of

Birmingham”
literary devices are tools used by writers to convey their emotions, ideas, and
themes to make texts more appealing to the reader.  Dudley Randall has also
used some literary devices in this poem to discuss a heart-wrenching
historical incident. The analysis of the literary devices used in this poem has
been given below.

1. Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving

their five senses. For example, “And march the streets of Birmingham”,
“The mother smiled to know her child” and “She raced through the
streets of Birmingham.”
2. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same
line. For example, the sounds of /o/ and /a/ in “No, baby, no, you may
not go.”
3. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the
same line. For example, the sound of /s/ in “And clubs and hoses, guns
and jails.”
4. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the
same line in quick succession. For example, the sound of /f/ in “For I
fear those guns will fire”, the sound of /w/ in “Her eyes grew wet and
wild” and the sound /b/ in “But, baby, where are you?”.
5. Symbolism: Symbolism means using symbols to signify ideas and
qualities, giving them symbolic meanings different from literal meanings.
Here, “Church” is the symbol of safety and religion and “white”
symbolizes innocence and purity.
6. Irony: Irony is a figure of speech in which words are used in a way that
their intended meaning is different from the spoken or written meaning.
This poem is ironic because a church is usually thought of as a safe
place, free from all evils, but the explosion killed the child.  It shows that
her daughter would have lived if the mother had let her join the freedom
march.
7. Enjambment: It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to
an end at a line break; instead, it rolls over to the next line. For example,

“The mother smiled to know her child

Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.”
8. Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is
made between the objectsdifferent in nature. For example, “For the
dogs are fierce and wild”. Here ‘dogs’ are metaphors for the far-right
groups trying to suppress the American civil rights movement.