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How does "Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening" use language and figurative devices to create foreboding?
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"Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening" uses language and figurative devices to create a sense of foreboding through personification and imagery. Nature is given human traits, like "brooding" vapors and "drowsy" yet roaring waves, enhancing their ominous presence. Alliteration and stark imagery, such as "black shadow" and "repercussive roar," underscore isolation and danger. The poem's metaphor of life's "long darkling way" further emphasizes uncertainty and peril.
Smith creates an ominous sense of foreboding in her personification of nature, assigning it human emotions. For example: "huge vapours brood." Vapours are mists or fogs; we don't usually think of fog "brooding" or moodily contemplating life, as a human would. That the "vapours" might be brooding implies that they are purposely hanging in the air in a way that makes it difficult for voyagers to see.
Likewise, the waves are personified as "drowsy," yet, nerve-wrackingly, they "roar" as they crash against remote rocks. The sound imagery of ominous loud noises in the distance heightens our anxiety and underscores that the seeming "drowsiness" of the sea is an illusion.
The use of alliteration in the repeated "r" sounds in the first stanza places emphasis as well on words that increase our sense of the dangers of the ocean—the roar is "repercussive" or repeated, and the rocks are "rugged" and "remote,"...
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which conjures images of being stranded far from other people amid rough, rocky seas:
the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote
In the second stanza, images such as "black shadow" are ominous. Furthermore, while Smith offers us the seemingly comforting image of "fairy fires" lighting the way, this comfort is undercut by the idea that such lights have "misled the pilgrim." Our unease also rises because the thin ray of light is described as "dubious."
Finally, the last line, with the image of "life's long darkling way" (in which we are only guided by "wavering reason"), does not give us a strong feeling of security but instead implies that life is an uncertain and perilous journey—fraught with pitfalls.
This would mirror Smith's own experiences as a woman who had many children and left her abusive husband, thus requiring her to earn her own living at a time when opportunities for women were very limited.
Word choice and connotation go a long way toward creating a mood of ominous foreboding. The "vapours brood" over the shore, connoting darkness and concern, while the night is "mute," connoting a powerlessness. Both are personified as though they have intention or purpose.
However, the "repercussive roar" also seems to signal ominousness because "roar" is hardly a positive word. The "black shadow" is foreboding as well because both are often symbols of death. This is a stark visual image. There is the present danger of being "Misled" by "fairy fires." It is as though it is impossible to trust what seems safe, as the light is "dubious" and may lead one into hazards rather than to safe harbor.
Life is described metaphorically as a "long darkling way," as though such danger is always ahead of us—keeping us from ever feeling truly secure.
In the first line of the poem, Smith personifies the mists, or vapors, by describing them as "brooding." The word "brooding" implies that the mists are deep in thought, and maybe anxious or angry. By personifying the mists, Smith also suggests that the elements are alive, emotional, and, therefore, all the more ominous and dangerous.
Throughout the poem there is also a semantic field of language connoting darkness and foreboding menace. For example, the night is described as "dark and mute," there is a "repercussive roar" intermittently interrupting the silence, and a "black shadow" looms over the entire scene.
Smith also emphasizes the isolation of the sailors, and, therefore, their exposure to danger, in the alliterative phrase, "Of rocks remote," and also in words like "mute" and 'distant." These descriptions suggest that the sailors are isolated in a vast, ominous silence, and a ubiquitous and impenetrable darkness.