One way that Eavan Boland evokes the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine is with hyperbole. Boland begins her poem with a series of dramatic and charged statements. She uses “worst” three times in the first two lines. It’s the “the worst hour,” the “worst season,” and the “worst year.” The emphasis on worst makes it explicitly clear from the get-go that things are far from well. The “whole people” at the end of the second line contributes to the hyperbole. The horror isn’t harming a few people or a handful of people; it’s impacting an entire nation—everyone is suffering mightily.

In the next two stanzas, Boland evokes the horror of the Great Famine by zooming in. She focuses on a couple—a man and a woman. The specificity of the image personalizes the tragic circumstances. It provides an up-close view of how the famine felled distinct individuals. The image of the woman’s frozen feet against the man’s breastbone amplifies the harsh, merciless conditions of this painful period in Irish history.

A third way that Boland evokes the horror of the famine is through juxtaposition. Consider how the poem could be read as a love poem, with the man and the woman playing the two people in love. Their love and dedication are magnified by how they stick together during a ghastly event like the Great Famine. By the same token, Boland further spotlights the inhumanity of the Great Famine by pairing it with the human capacity to love.