A Guide to Stylistic Analysis: A Case Study of Daud Kamal’s “An Ode To Death”

Abstract

This study was aimed at finding the stylistics features used in the poem An Ode to Death. The researcher has explored the poem from five levels of stylistics namely phonological, graphological, semantic, morphological, and lexical. The researcher has highlighted the theme of death in Duad Kamal’s “An Ode to Death”. The poet has used different symbolic expressions and other figurative devices to prove his point of death’s inevitability and life’s fragility. The poet has also used strong imagery that creates clear visual scenery in the reader’s. The findings also show that the poet has used language in a finest way. The use of language in “Ode to Death” by Daud Kamal is so simple and ordinary that even a normal reader can comprehend the poem in a better way. The poet has not used any bombastic vocabulary for embellishment or style. The form of the poem is very simple and the theme of death is very clear from words like “pine tree”, “match-stick”, and “ashtray”. Readers can get the idea of decline and decay, and most importantly the idea of death from the aforementioned words.