Tone Of The Poem Back Road

Poems can make people feel countless ranges of emotions. The sonnet “Back Road” by Bruce Guernsey goes from a cold, melancholy day to something out of the ordinary. The story is almost similar to a joke with a setup, building up the scenario, expecting something to happen, then the punch line. The set up as follows the main character is driving and alongside the road, then sees children huddling together. Building on the picture of the story the poet mentions that it is a winter morning at the moment it is evident by the kids gathering for warmth. The driver slows down the car to wave to the kids. Then, unexpectedly, one of the children throws a rock at the man’s face. Most jokes live or die on the idea of subverting expectations. Readers would think everything is normal, then the twist happens. The poem was very effective at making the reader feel a certain way and then using clever imagery techniques to contrast between the somber and humorous tone. Then bring in irony as the final twist. Some readers may think it was not unexpected at all something was going to happen. Nevertheless, it is the way that he frames it in execution; succeeding in making the punchline effective. The tone of the poem, at the beginning, has a very somber feeling to it. It shows this by using …show more content…
The entire second part of the story is where it gets hilarious. When the main character sees the children, he “slowed to wave and the smallest, a stick of a kid draped in a coat, grinned and raised” (12-16) the audience’s expectations concur that the characters greet each other with a gesture next the story continues on. But in this case, instead of responding with a hand wave, the children respond using a snowball. It is funny because generically, people say hello or gesture with a hand wave to greet other. Normally people do not respond in an over exaggerated way, which in turn makes the setup