Good Bones By Maggie Smith

Within Good Bones by Maggie Smith we can begin to identify that the speaker in the poem is holding back a lot of what the speaker really wants to say. Looking further in the speaker begins to talk about how the world is malicious and an unforgiving place. Specifically in the section that states, “The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that is a conservative’s estimate, though I keep this from my children.” Maggie Smith uses the literary device circumlocutio to give the impression that the speaker is trying to mitigate the immorality of the world to her children. The speaker hopes that by not making a direct reference to how sinful the world is, her children will prosper in the grand scheme. This rhetorical device actually fits the