Central Purpose Meaning

1. Speaker/Audience

1.1. Who is the Speaker? Poet?

1.2. Dramatic creation?

1.3. Attitude towards the subject?

1.4. Audience?

2. Imagery

2.1. Significant images?

2.2. Image clusters?

2.3. Categories?

2.4. Image logic?

3. Irony/Paradox

3.1. Overstatement?

3.2. Understatement?

3.3. Types of Irony: verbal, dramatic, situational, Socratic

4. Allusions

4.1. Source of Reference?

5. Sound

5.1. Rhythm?

5.2. Meter?

5.3. Changes in pattern?

5.4. Repetition?

5.5. Inversion?

5.6. Alliteration?

5.7. Rhyme?

5.8. Assonance?

6. Occasion

6.1. Birth? Death?

6.2. New year?

6.3. New century or age?

7. Structure

7.1. Narrative?

7.2. Lyric?

7.3. Logic?

7.4. Compare/Contrast

7.5. Problem/Solution

8. Form

8.1. Traditional? Sonnet?

8.2. Free verse?

8.3. Prose poem?

8.4. Stanzas?

9. Figurative Language

9.1. Type of metaphor?

9.2. Similes?

9.3. Personification?

9.4. What is suggested by comparison?

10. Diction

10.1. Denotation/Connotation

10.2. Well chosen or stinking words?

10.3. Sentence length?

10.4. Sentence Structure?

10.5. Active/Passive?

11. Symbol/Allegory

11.1. Allegorical events?

11.2. Characters?

11.3. Symbols?

11.4. More than I suggest meaning?

12. Setting

12.1. Time?

12.2. Place?

12.3. Situation?