Figurative Language In Billy Collins 'Reading Myself To Sleep'

Figurative Language in a Poem “All late readers know this sinking feeling of sinking of falling/ into the liquid feeling of falling asleep then rising again”(13-14). Late readers know how it feels when falling asleep, the pull of sleep, and the want to keep reading pulling you out. Sleep acts as liquid because you can sink down into sleep or rise up and out, as if in the water. In Billy Collins’s poem “Reading Myself to Sleep” He explains how on one dark night, with only a lamp for reading, he lies in bed reading. He wants to keep reading but slowly falls to sleep. The author struggles to stay awake but succumbs to sleep.In the poem “Reading Myself to Sleep” by Billy Collins, figurative language is used to create a better understanding of the poem for the reader, including metaphor, simile, and personification.
To begin, a metaphor is used to further explain what the narrator is writing by comparing it with something not previously related to the topic.
During the night the author is slowly falling asleep. He compares falling asleep while reading to an endless rope. Collins writs, “There is no more gentle way to go into the night/ than to follow an endless rope of sentences”(7-8). The author, is using a metaphor to elaborate on how he was slowly reading his book and falling asleep. Collins uses “to follow and endless rope of sentences” because it creates the feeling of following a rope of words from his book. A rope of sentences implies that the words will never end and are dragging him into sleep. Those words help bring a realistic feeling to the reader drifting off to
sleep. Secondly, a simile is used as a comparison between two previously unrelated things or ideas. On the edge of falling asleep the author attempts to stop himself, wanting to continue reading. The author struggles to keep reading as he continues to sink deeper into sleep. Collins describes the feeling by writing “As if pulled from the sea back into a boat”(16). The reader is not literally being pulled from the sea, he is being pulled back from sleep. The words he uses suggests that he was falling asleep, but being pulled back by his desire to continue to read. Using those words he helps the reader visualize falling asleep and his struggle to keep reading. Lastly, personification is used to give human qualities to something that is not human. Collins describes a book telling him to have a good trip, as he starts to fall asleep. The book is the last thing he sees before falling asleep. The author uses personification to create a image by writing, “Is there a better method of departure by night/ than this quiet bon voyage with an open book to see you off,/ the sole companion that has come to see you off”(19-21). The book is personified because it cannot talk or tell you “bon voyage” as you drift off to sleep. The author makes it sound as if he the book is actually telling him to have a good trip. The author “travels” far away to a different world, a world of dreams.