the weary blues
... and continue living his life without the pain he is going through. The tone of "The Weary Blues" is quite gloomy and miserable. This matches the unhappy theme of the poem. Sound patterns play a key role in this poem. They enhance the already dull mood by way of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme patterns. Consonances are similarities between end words. Assonances are similarities in vowel sounds. Onomatopoeias are imitations of sounds in words. Consonance is found within the first line of the poem. "Droning a drowsy…" brings a hard 'd' sound to Line 1. This hard 'd' sound can be thought to set the beat to which the rest of the poem is read. Another place that consonance is apparent is in line 5, "…pale, dull pallor of an old gas light." The sticky 'l' sounds are difficult to produce off of the tongue quickly; therefore, these words slow the poem down. This is typical of the blues. The slow sounds of blues music are incorporated in the words of this poem. It seems as if the words with the 'l' sounds get extra emphasis, as well, because they are so difficult to pronounce. Added strength through word sounds helps boost the poem's glumness. "The Weary Blues" has a sort of nasally sound to it as well. I think this is because of the assonance of the long 'a' sound. This sound pattern can be found, for example, in lines 5 and 6, "He did a lazy sway…/ He did a lazy sway…" and again in line 13, "He played that sad raggy tune…" The long 'a' sound here produces a sound that is drawn out which adds again to the theme of loneliness and isolation in the poem. Onomatopoeia is another sound feature in "The Weary Blues." Onomatopoeia, or "the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named" as defined by the Oxford Dictionary's American Edition, is found a several places throughout the poem. Examples of this onomatopoeia are the words "croon," "moan," "rickety," "thump," and "echoed." "Thump, thump, thump" is found in line 23 and it is also a place of internal repetition. This onomatopoeia and internal repetition really push the beat of the poem. Each of these words are stressed, adding strength and power to this area of the poem. The onomatopoeia of the other words in this poem gives "The Weary Blues" an even greater feeling of a blues-like melody. The musical sounds produced the onomatopoeic words bring the sense of the actual blues being playing by the old piano man. The rhyme schem...