Literature | Maribel Coronel

Essay on “ The song of the shirt”

In the poem “ The song of the shirt” by Thomas Hood is described the unjust

treatment of laborers. It impersonates a needlewoman living in poverty.

The writer uses a lot of rhetorical devices like in the two first lines of the poem

“With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red” in which I found

anaphora, parallelism and alliteration.

There is also parallelism in “In poverty, hunger and dirt” and “Band, and guest,

and seam” that is used to create rhythm in the poem. Furthermore, alliteration is

repeatedly used for example in “Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!,” “She sang the song of the

Shirt,” “Work - work - work,” etc.

The fifth verse starts with a rhetorical question “But why do I talk of Death?”and

follows with a simile “That platform of grisly bone, I hardly fear its terrible shape, it

seems so like my own'' that is used to compare the woman’s appearance with that of

death. Moreover the writer uses imagery “that shattered roof-this naked floor” to

illustrate the conditions in which the poor woman lives, that remain very clear in my

mind.

To conclude, the poem describes the life of a poor woman who works day and

night and her suffering worsens more and more for the bad treatment and conditions

of work. At the end, the first verse is repeated, possibly to communicate the cycle of

poverty.