Onomatopoeia
An expression of feeling through sound. Most people express feelings by talking or acting a certain way. When using onomatopoeia one relates feelings to sounds, such as hearing the ocean waves along the coast, to hearing a gunshot. Both sounds are and can be expressed differently from one person to the next. Onomatopoeia is mostly used in poems, novels, and short stories. When an author uses onomatopoeia, s/he tries to give the audience a vocal and visual sense of the story. For example in these lines from Eliot’s “Dry Savages”:
- When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
- To fruit, periodicals, and business letters
- (And those who saw them off have left the platform)
- Their faces relax from grief into relief,
- To the sleep rhythm of a hundred hours.
These few lines are mostly onomatopoeia, the rhythm used in the second line describes the clickety-click of wheels on rails.
Works Cited
- Cuddon, J.A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 1998.
- Webster, Merriam. Encyclopedia of Literature. 1995.