ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Pictures. They're worth a thousand words.

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Unless you're able to make your way over to the tent sale at Living Spaces this weekend.

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What is the principle effect of the anaphora in lines 10-12?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Pretty straightforward question... if we know what in the world an "anaphora" is.

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We're picturing some kind of euphoria arising out of a love of anagrams... but something

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in our heart tells us that isn't quite right.

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If we don't know our terminology, we're going to be in heaps of trouble here.

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"Anaphora" is when you've got one or more words being repeated at the beginning of a

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couple of successive lines or clauses.

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Got it. Okay, now on to lines 10 through 12:

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And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well

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And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

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Looks like this poem has a case of the "And"s.

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Now we can zip through our answer choices and see which one best answers the question...

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Are all the "And"s there to create a tone of repetition?

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Well... they are repetitive... which is the very definition of anaphora...

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...but repetition isn't really a tone. It's more of a device.

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If it were a tone, however, then we could probably consider your little brother... tone deaf.

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Is it to emphasize that death is rightfully proud for many reasons?

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Poison, war and sickness? Seems like a pretty ugly laundry list of items to be "rightfully

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proud of". Nah, not this one.

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Is it to create a tone of admiration?

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For... Death? For reals? The author has clearly not jumped on the Grim Reaper bandwagon.

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Which, incidentally, if you ever see it coming, and the driver offers you candy... DON'T GET IN.

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It's also not to create a tone of respect, for the very same reason...

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...and so we're left with A -- to emphasize that there are many reasons for Death's impotence.

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In other words... he's rattling off a list of all the ways Death... blows.

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We couldn't agree more. Being alive is the bomb.

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