Life By Paul Laurence Dunbar Analysis

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American poet, playwright, and novelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the poem “Life”, Paul Laurence Dunbar expresses his view on the lives of the underprivileged and the struggle one goes through to get by day by day in order to survive the hardships of reality. Throughout the poem “Life”, Mr. Dunbar continues to expand on his idea that people’s pain overwhelms the joy of life but with the help of companionship it makes things a little bit more enjoyable. In more detail, Paul Laurence Dunbar demonstrates how without companionship our existence is a series of joys and sorrows in the poem, “Life” by using concrete and abstract diction/imagery. The author opens up the poem with the juxtaposition “A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, a minuet to smile and an hour to weep in” in which he is explaining poverty and how pain overwhelms our joy. Throughout the poem, Paul Laurence Dunbar uses abstract imagery in order to emphasize and create pictures for the audience on how life is filled with sorrows but becomes greater when we have
In the text he says “and never laugh but the moans come double” he states this in order for the audience to picture someone who rarely laughs because they know the sorrows will overshadow the joys in life. By doing so Mr. Dunbar is emphasizing the struggles many go through in life. In the text he also says “a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in” by doing so he is creating the image for the audience to see the struggle of poverty of people who have little to nothing that continue on with life but are filled with sadness. Paul Laurence Dunbar does this in order to highlight his point of which people need companionship because without it our existence would be a series of joys and