Oh Who Is That Young Sinner Analysis

You should never judge a book by it’s cover, was a saying that was forenamed during childhood. It is thought that your physical appearance is the first thought that people will think and will judge you on it. In the poem “Oh Who is That Young Sinner?” by A.E. Housman, the author is watching someone get arrested for the color of his hair. He uses the sarcastic tone of the poem to show how deranged it is to judge a person for who they are. Next he uses the tone of feeling remorseful to represent the struggle the person has gone through to hide that physical feature. The color of someone’s hair is a metaphor for something that you cannot control. Looking at the stanzas of the poem, “Oh Who is That young sinner?” by A.E. Housman, the author uses a variety tones, and the theme of hair color to represent how awful it is to ostracize someone for who they are even though they cannot help that they …show more content…
The author started the next stanza with a sarcastic tone about the treatment of those with that color hair in the past: “Ti's a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his / In the good old time ‘twas hanging for the colour that it is; / Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fair” (5-7). When the author says “Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fair”, he’s using a sarcastic tone to represent how hanging is not a deleterious punishment for being who you are. Next the author uses the metaphor of hair color to represent how a person is judged for their hair color: “For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair” (8). The author compared the person’s hair to being “nameless and abominable”. Abominable means that something is very unpleasant, and upsets a lot of people. So basically someone’s hair or their identity is being compared to something that makes people feel sick to their