Tone Essay on the poem "After Auschwitz" by Anne Sexton
In the poem "After Auschwitz" by Anne Sexton, the speaker talks about her feelings after touring a concentration camp. The speaker writes about what humans are able to do to other humans and how horrible this specific time was. The speakers tone is mostly angry. During the poem, the speaker's tone becomes more and more angry and dark but at the end of the poem in the last two lines it also turns into a sad tone. These tones are created to confirm the bad things that happened in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Sexton's use of sentence structure, imagery and detail are key to create this angry, dark and sad tone through the poem.
The strongest tone that appears through the poem is an angry tone. One technique Sexton uses to convey this tone is sentence structure. The sentences in this poem are mostly quite short. The poem already begins with the key word in line 1: "Anger," From the very beginning of the poem, Anne Sexton is angry. Another examples in line 4 + 5: "Each day," "each Nazi" This is a great example how Sexton uses very short and hard sentences. It sounds just like the speaker spits them out as they would be something gross which tastes bad. It conveys the anger of the speaker and thus the angry tone about how the horrible treatment of humans goes on every day, again and again.
Another technique the author uses to convey the tone is imagery. Using that imagery the author makes the reader feel angry and also the reader can feel how the speaker's anger is getting bigger and bigger until it reaches its pinnacle in lines 26 - 29. As the author writes in line 26: "Let man never again raise his teacup.", she is so full of anger, so angry of all humans that it is almost a little bit scary although the tone is derived from something so innocent. She imagines this man sitting on a table or in a chair and drinking a tea and while she imagines that she gets so angry because she can't believe that a man is sitting there, drinking a tea, doing nothing while
The strongest tone that appears through the poem is an angry tone. One technique Sexton uses to convey this tone is sentence structure. The sentences in this poem are mostly quite short. The poem already begins with the key word in line 1: "Anger," From the very beginning of the poem, Anne Sexton is angry. Another examples in line 4 + 5: "Each day," "each Nazi" This is a great example how Sexton uses very short and hard sentences. It sounds just like the speaker spits them out as they would be something gross which tastes bad. It conveys the anger of the speaker and thus the angry tone about how the horrible treatment of humans goes on every day, again and again.
Another technique the author uses to convey the tone is imagery. Using that imagery the author makes the reader feel angry and also the reader can feel how the speaker's anger is getting bigger and bigger until it reaches its pinnacle in lines 26 - 29. As the author writes in line 26: "Let man never again raise his teacup.", she is so full of anger, so angry of all humans that it is almost a little bit scary although the tone is derived from something so innocent. She imagines this man sitting on a table or in a chair and drinking a tea and while she imagines that she gets so angry because she can't believe that a man is sitting there, drinking a tea, doing nothing while