Literary Devices

This lesson explains the literary devices in W.H. Auden's “The Shield of Achilles”: the two stanza forms, allusion to Homer, ekphrasis, contrast, refrain and repetition, irony, imagery, symbolism, synecdoche, comparison, epithet, syntax and tone, with line references and their effects.

Auden's devices work together to create one effect: a calm, almost reporting voice describing a world of horror. A light, irregular stanza for Thetis's hopes alternates with the stately rhyme royal of the shield's scenes. Allusion to Homer and the tradition of ekphrasis supply the standard against which the modern world is judged. Repetition, contrast and irony drive the pattern of hope and disappointment, while bare imagery, symbols such as the barbed wire and the posts, and the figure of eyes and boots for a whole crowd carry the themes. Flat syntax, compound epithets and the absence of direct speech, questions and exclamations create a detached tone. The lesson explains each device with line numbers and shows how to write about its effect.

For each device below, note what it is, where it appears and what it does. In an exam, naming a device earns little unless you also explain its effect.

1. Form and structure. The nine stanzas follow the order Thetis, shield, shield, Thetis, shield, shield, Thetis, shield, Thetis. The Thetis stanzas (1, 4, 7 and 9) have eight short lines, mostly of five to eight syllables, with sparse, irregular rhyme, a light, song-like quality that suits hope. The shield stanzas (2, 3, 5, 6 and 8) are in rhyme royal, seven lines of about ten syllables rhyming ababbcc, a stately form that Chaucer used for Troilus and Criseyde. The closing couplet of a rhyme royal stanza delivers its final blow, as in the logic that ends in grief (lines 21 and 22), the three prisoners at the posts (lines 36 and 37), the loss of dignity and humanity (lines 43 and 44) and the boy's ignorance of kept promises and shared sorrow (lines 58 and 59). Each stanza is a single sentence ending in a full stop, and the poem has no direct speech, no questions and no exclamations. Effect: calm formality set against brutal content, which is the source of the poem's irony.

2. Allusion. The poem rests on an allusion to Book 18 of Homer's Iliad. The title announces the shield, stanza 9 names Thetis, Hephaestus and Achilles, and the reader's memory of Homer's balanced picture of work, justice, festival and dance beside war supplies the standard of comparison. The missing dance floor of stanza 7 (line 51) reverses a particular scene on Homer's shield. The three prisoners and three posts of stanza 5 may also echo the Crucifixion, a reading that is often suggested. Effect: the old world becomes a measuring rod, so every scene on Auden's shield registers as a loss.

3. Ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is the vivid description of a work of art within a poem. Homer's account of the shield is the most famous early example, and Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Auden's own “Musée des Beaux Arts” are others. Auden's poem is ekphrastic with a twist. We never see the shield directly. We see it through Thetis's hopes and through a narrator's report, and where Homer's shield celebrates the whole of life, Auden's accuses. Effect: the poem becomes a comment on art itself, asking what a truthful picture of an age would show.

4. Contrast and juxtaposition. Contrast is the poem's basic method: hope against reply, classical against modern, ritual against execution, dance against weeds, a stately form against ugly content. Contrast also operates inside a stanza, since the joke of line 32 is placed inside brackets, like a throwaway remark, in the middle of a scene of execution. Effect: the loss is felt without any comment from the poet.

5. Refrain and repetition. Stanzas 1, 4 and 7 open with the same clause about Thetis peering over the smith's shoulder (lines 1, 23 and 45), and each turns on the word 'but' (lines 5, 27 and 50, and again line 52). This is anaphora working as a refrain. Single words are repeated too: 'sign' in lines 10 and 15, the number in line 14, 'column' in line 20, 'three' in lines 36 and 37, 'quick' in line 49 and 'died' in line 44. Effect: the pattern builds an expectation which each reply breaks, and the repeated words create rhythm, such as marching columns, a skipping dance and the emptiness of huge numbers.

6. Irony. Situational irony: the shield made to please a hero shows the world that endangers everyone, and Thetis hopes for beauty and sees horror. Verbal irony: the 'logic' that ends in grief (line 22), the ordinary onlookers who watch an execution in silence (lines 34 and 35), and a cause justified by figures (line 17), as if justice could be calculated. Dramatic irony: readers who know the Iliad know that Achilles is fated to die soon. Effect: the poem criticises its world without raising its voice.

7. Imagery. The images are visual, kinetic and auditory. Visual: the leaden sky (line 8), the featureless plain (line 9), the dust (line 20), the pale prisoners (line 36) and the weeds (line 52). Movement: marching columns (line 20), the quick dance (lines 48 and 49), and the stone and the bird (lines 54 and 55). Sound and silence: the faceless voice (line 16) and the silent crowd and onlookers (lines 19 and 35). There is also the heat of line 33. Effect: the shield's images are bleak and drained of colour and warmth, in contrast with the sensuous images of Thetis's hopes, such as the flowers of line 25.

8. Symbolism. Symbols invite interpretation, and these readings are common. The shield stands for civilisation and for protection. The wasteland, the plain and the weedy field stand for moral and spiritual emptiness. The barbed wire stands for confinement and persecution, and the three posts for sacrifice. The bird stands for freedom and life, and the boy for the future. The missing altar (line 28) and the missing dance floor (line 51) stand for lost ritual and joy. Effect: concrete objects carry large ideas without any need for explanation.

9. Synecdoche and metonymy. In synecdoche a part stands for the whole. The crowd of line 14 is represented by its eyes and boots, one part for watching and another for marching. In metonymy something is named by an associated thing, and the voice of line 16 stands for the authority behind it. Effect: dehumanisation. People become organs and sounds, and power becomes a voice with no face.

10. Simile, oxymoron and paradox. Line 8 uses a simile, comparing the sky to lead through the word 'like', so the sky becomes heavy, grey and oppressive. Line 18 matches the voice's tone to the landscape with an 'as ... as' comparison. Line 7 contains an oxymoron, since a wilderness is natural by definition, yet this one is man-made. Line 44 contains a paradox, since the victims cease to be human before they cease to live. The word 'axioms' in line 57 is a metaphor from mathematics. Effect: each figure compresses a large idea into a few words.

11. Epithet and diction. Stanza 9 gives each figure a descriptive epithet in the Homeric manner: the smith by his lips (line 60), Thetis by her breasts (line 62), and Achilles by a string of words for his strength, hardness and killing (lines 65 and 66). Compound words in lines 3, 25, 29, 51, 52, 60 and 66 give a classical flavour. Two registers clash. The classical, ceremonial vocabulary of lines 25 and 26 (libation, sacrifice, heifers) meets the modern, bureaucratic words of statistics, officials, sentries, arbitrary and logic (lines 17, 32, 33, 31 and 22). Effect: the clash of vocabularies shows the clash of two worlds.

12. Syntax: negatives, lists and run-on lines. Stanza 2 piles up negatives (lines 10 and 11), so the plain is defined by absence. Most of its lines end in a comma, giving the stanza the feel of a list or inventory. The lists of stanzas 1 and 4 (lines 2 to 4 and 24 to 26) are rich in nouns and suggest abundance. Stanzas 5 and 6 run on from line to line with few pauses (enjambment), so events seem to move forward relentlessly. Effect: the grammar itself reproduces the emptiness of the plain, the abundance of the hopes and the routine of the camp.

13. Tone and point of view. The narrator is in the third person and omniscient, and the Thetis stanzas follow her hopes. The names are withheld until stanza 9, and the poem has no direct speech. The tone is detached, flat and ironic, with restrained understatement, such as the plain statement that rescue never arrived (line 41). Effect: the horror comes from the contrast between the calm tone and the subject, and the poet's refusal to comment leaves the judgement to the reader.

14. Sound. The repeated word 'quick' in line 49 gives the line a skipping rhythm like dancing feet. The repeated hard c-sound of line 20 (column, column, cloud) suggests the tramp of marching. The rhyming couplets of rhyme royal give a sense of finality. Effect: sound supports the sense of each scene.

How to write about a device. (1) Name the device. (2) Give the stanza and line number. (3) Explain the effect on meaning or mood. (4) Link it to a theme. Always say what a device does, not only what it is.