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Harwood's Use Of Figurative Blindness

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The formulistic construction and simplistic language echo a child’s understanding of the world, enhanced by the synecdoche “beak and claw”. Harwood’s repeated references to literal and figurative blindness through “daylight riddled eyes”, are metaphoric of the child’s ignorance. The child belief of “death clean and final not this obscene” is left reeling, highlighted through alliteration and grotesque imagery “stuff that dropped and dribbled through loose straw tangling in bowels”. Harwood’s use of imperative voice, father commanding “End what you have begun” is indicative of the child’s forced transition from innocence to experience. This direct quote sees the father placing in the hands of the child, the gun which has inflicted such obscenity

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