Onomatopoeia
...on from action (swallowed, dipped) through involuntary sounds (moaned, sighed) to insensibility (dropped, slept). This pattern, as well as pointing out similarities, emphasizes the difference in the two events; the first is an uncomfortable blackout to escape from the pain of his wound. The soldier’s continued state of semi-consciousness is portrayed in the run-on line: and dropped through crimson gloom to darkness; … The second sequence of verbs contrasts with the first in its comparative confort (contented) and the end-stopped line suggests that the consciousness has finally allowed both body and mind to rest. The onomatopoeic words, then, form one strand in a complex interweaving of lexical, grammatical and phonological effects. More unusual uses of conventional onomatopoeia include those where the suggestion of sounds is unexpected: The woman in the block of ivory soap has massive thighs that neigh, great breasts that blare and strong arms that trumpet. This extract from The Woman in the Ordinary by Marge Piercy uses onomatopoeic words to suggest a figurative connection between parts of the woman’s body and certain sounds. The overall effect of there lines is one of enormous strength; her thighs are like great horses, her breasts, perhaps, have the power of high amplitude loudspeakers. Often the choice of a single onomatopoeic word has an extraordinary power to evoke the sound it conveys. This is true of one of the many effective words in Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the forth-corrupted lungs, … The production of a velar plosive, /g/, sound involves a constriction of the throat similar to the action of gargling and its repetition in the word (possibly three times for some accents of English) reflects the repetitive nature of the sound. The displacement of this word from its more usual setting in the treatment of sore throats is very effective. Owen uses it in the vivid and shocking picture of a dead soldier whose blood causes his throat to make an involuntary gargling noise. In addition to using conventional onomatopoeia in unusual and effective ways, poets of the twentieth centuries have created contextual onomatopoeia by exploiting auditory aspects of individual sounds and groups of sounds. One example of use of plosive sounds is found in this extract from Canticle for Good Friday by Geoffrey Hill: While the dulled wood Spat on the stones each drop Of deliberate blood. The regular dripping of blood is evoked by the plos...