16 pages • 32 minutes read
A Sunset of the City
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The form of the poem is inconsistent. Each of the six stanzas has a different number of lines, which, without a prescribed meter, creates an uneven pacing, as if the speaker is giving each new thought a different amount of weight in her mind. Because the majority of stanzas end with a pair of rhyming lines, however, this creates rhyming couplets to punctuate the speaker’s thoughts. Stanza 2, though it contains rhyming lines (Lines 7, 9), does not end with coupled rhymes; the stanza’s “thought” therefore carries into Stanza 3, as the speaker compares her experiences as an aging woman to the change in seasons from summer to fall.
Unlike the stanzas that end with two rhyming lines, however, the poem’s final stanza is its own line with no rhyme, which suggests that the thought is incomplete. Combined with its ambiguity, the final line’s lack of a matching rhyming line suggests that the speaker either expects someone else to complete the thought or that she herself is still pondering the idea; her question remains unanswered.
Extended Metaphor
The poem is built on an extended metaphor—also called a conceit—describing the speaker’s experience with aging. She first positions youth as a metaphorical summer, which means that now her life is “summer-gone” (Line 10). She is no longer desirable, and her beauty is waning. Now, there is “a real chill out” (Lines 6, 13) as the “fall crisp comes” (Line 13). The speaker’s personal “fall” illustrates her approaching the winter of her life and her ever-closer death. The speaker’s awareness that “there is winter to heed” (Line 14) underscores the coldness of her life and her isolation, as there “is no warm house” (Line 15) for the speaker now. By using an extended metaphor, Brooks can address a topic that is still taboo in many ways. Women’s mixed feelings about aging usually go unexpressed, so a metaphor that uses an almost Romantic connection to nature allows the poet to elevate her subject and give it value.
Repetition
The poem has four major instances of repetition, which all have the effect of showing the flow of the speaker’s thought process and the connections that she is making.
The first example is the repetition of the phrase “It is a real chill out” (Lines 6, 13). While the thought initially seems to be the same, the differing contexts mean that each line has a slightly different emphasis and meaning. Line 6 emphasizes the reality of the chill, that it is the “genuine thing” (Line 7). The emphasis in Line 13 is on the chill itself, as it is both a physical description of the night and a reference to the metaphorical autumn the woman is experiencing, as described in the second part of the line. This repetition, then, allows for an unraveling of the speaker’s thoughts on her topic.
The next example of repetition comes between the previous one, with the phrase “it is summer-gone” first appearing and then repeated in Line 10. Here, the speaker emphasizes the absence resulting from this metaphorically seasonal change. Summer, or youthful desirability, is no longer present, and the speaker feels its absence.
The third example of repetition is unlike the others, as it is the close repetition of individual words instead of phrases. The speaker says, “I am cold in this cold house this house / Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls” (Lines 17-18). The double use of the word “cold” connects the speaker to the house—the house ultimately symbolizes the speaker—and the repetition of the word “house” (Lines 3, 15, 17) emphasizes its importance. The lack of punctuation between the initial phrase and the second phrase further blurs the distinction between the speaker and the house. She herself, then, is made of “washed echoes” (Line 18) of her former self.
The poem’s last prominent example of repetition, the speaker’s statement that “I am a woman” (Lines 19, 20), offers the speaker’s conclusion about the cause of this seasonal change. Her simple statement of her gender explains the woman’s new invisibility and exclusion as she ages.
Unlock all 16 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
