The author of the poem “Going” had a specific message that he intended to set across to his readers. To do this, the author used a number of stylistic elements that include foregrounding, imagery, symbolism, diction, synthetic parallelism and structure among others. This essay intends to give a brief stylistic analysis of the poem and describe how these devices have affected the meaning of the poem.
Basically the poem “Going” according to the essay is about a new era that is coming into a society, associating the poem with the theme “Change”, whereby this era has its own downsides and benefits, those which will both be endured by members of the society. The author makes his remarks on the upcoming era that he depicts as an “evening” this evening has never been experienced before by the members of the general society. Despite the upcoming era sounding impedeous on the society, it seems promising and comfort earning. A few notable changes will take place physically to give room for this “evening”, but the poet closes the piece with questions pertaining to the “evening” that comes up.
To keep his theme alive in the poem, the poet in the first stanza adopts “time” particularly evening for imagery in the poem. In support of this observation is the cautious use of the word “an evening” in line one of the first stanza in which the poet is giving a description of the arrival of this evening, which is said to be moving across fields advancing towards the people. The essay observes that the poet wrote the piece in the era of industrialization, where this era can be likened to the “evening” depicted in the imagery associated with the word. This is to say that the poet is describing the coming in of the industrial period, which will replace the farming era. This farming era has been symbolized by the word “fields”. The poet further more adopts synthetic parallelism to emphasize that this new era has never been experienced
References: Kintgen E. (1983) The Perception of Poetry , Indiana: Indiana University Press. Pope, R. (1995), Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies. London: Rutledge.