Summary Of Death Of A Toad By Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Death of a Toad” recounts the injury and inevitable death of a garden-dwelling amphibian. The casualty of the piece is fatally mangled, yet manages to find shade as his final resting place. Through the manipulation of structure, as well as the use of both symbolism and emotionally charged diction, Wilbur contends that the peace experienced by the toad in death is preferable to life in the dystopia mankind has created. Wilbur chooses not to employ regulated meter throughout the poem. Without meter, the reader is given no discernable rhythm through which to interpret the poem. Similarly to when one discusses death, the nonconformist meter brews an air of uneasiness as well as a desire for an end to the discomfort. Additionally, the length of the second line in each stanza causes it to stick out awkwardly to the reader, just as the “chewed and clipped” leg of the crippled toad would. Enjambment as seen in the poem encourages a hurried pace from the reader as they tend to pause not at the end of each line, but at the end of each sentence. Accordingly, Wilbur’s forced haste emphasizes the rapidness of death before transition into monotony. …show more content…
Had humans not created power motors, the forlorn toad would not have endured as grisly a fate as detailed in the poem. As true as this holds on a surface level, it only becomes more poignant after interpreting the simple toad versus power mower as a confrontation between nature, machine, and, by extension, man. Although at first glance it seems as though man and machine have triumphed, in death the toad has found peace and escaped the unending turmoil accompanying a heartbeat. Thus, nature has once again proven