The Cry Of The Children By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Industrial Revolution was not a very easy time period for workers in England. They did not get paid very much, and they were not able to go outside very much either. All they did was stand up and do whatever they were told to do by their overseer. Whether it was making shoes or making coats, these children were forced into labor, and suffered greatly from it. The poem “The Cry of the Children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells the reader how hard children have it when working at a factory. This poem shows what goes through the minds of these kids as they spend all of their time working at a factory, nearly non-stop. Browning uses three different literary devices in her poem to show the reader how a child’s youth can be stripped from them completely because of child labor. These three literary devices being imagery, diction, and dialogue.

Browning uses imagery …show more content…
Browning uses diction in her poem mostly to describe the sadness of these children. A good example is that in stanza one, the poem describes a happy land where all of the animals are happy, “The young lambs are bleating...” and “The young fawns are playing with their shadows,” but one stanza later, this happy land shifts into a dark and sad environment. The way in which Browning uses diction in this first part of the poem is to contrast the rest of the world to what is going on inside of this factory in which the children are working. Later in stanza two, Browning finally begins to talk about life inside of this factory. “Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers…” is the last part of stanza two, and it mentions how these children are crying on the chests of their mothers. As I said before, the happiness in the first stanza is used to contrast the rest of the poem which is about child labor. Apart from imagery and diction, Browning also uses dialogue in her poem to take her message even