Meets The Big O Allegory

Shel Silverstein, known for his children’s stories and poems, “invited children to dream and dare to imagine the impossible”, while giving messages and teaching morals (“About Shel”). He often had stories build each other, such as The Missing Piece and its companion title, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, which “explore the concept of fulfillment” (“About Shel”). The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, is an allegory about a lost piece trying to find where it belongs; while encountering symbolic relationships, and having a life altering epiphany.
In the first, few pages, “The missing piece sat alone…/ waiting for someone/ to come along/ and take it somewhere” (Silverstein 1,3). Some come to rescue it, …show more content…
For instance, the Big O’s insightful advice to the piece that, “corners wear off…and shapes change” (Silverstein 63). This being the moment that vicissitudes the piece’s life: eventually motivating it to move forward, after being in one place, alone, yet again. The Big O serves the purpose of the piece’s advisor, motivating it to not only emotionally lift itself up, but physically to do so as well. The sound of the “liftpullflopliftpullflop” is the sound of the piece’s corners wearing down, which spearheads to its eventual epiphany that it can roll alone (Silverstein …show more content…
The repetition Silverstein applies during the piece’s transition from a lonely shard to a full rolling circle presents the metamorphosis it goes through. The piece “lifted itself up on one end…/ …and flopped over/ and then it was bumping instead of flopping…/ and then it was bouncing instead of bumping… and then it was rolling instead of bouncing…”, for once in its life, the piece was moving on it’s own (Silverstein 68, 78, 80, 82). With its newfound independence, the piece was able to catch up to the Big O, where they were able to roll together, as two independent entities (Silverstein