REVISED Comparison Between “The Red Sweater” and “The Lanyard”

In my previous blog post, I didn’t really know what to talk about for the tone, and our class activities helped break up the tone shifts in The Red Sweater. In addition, I wasn’t sure what the focus of our comparison was, but now I know it’s essentially to compare tone and the poetic devices the author uses to communicate that meaning.

In both The Red Sweater by Joseph O. Legaspi and The Lanyard by Billy Collins, the poems have multiple tone shifts throughout the poem, creating similarities and differences between these poems.

Firstly, to start off, these poems both have an object in the title. In addition, the speakers are both children talking about their mothers. From several subtle details, the speaker of The Red Sweater appears to be at a mature age, and the speaker of The Lanyard is a man looking back to when he was a small boy. To compare the structure of both poems, both authors use enjambment to break their first lines. However, a major difference are the stanzas, because The Lanyard has a constant pattern of 6 lines in every stanza, while The Red Sweater only has one stanza break towards the end of the poem.

The tone of both poems are slightly different. In The Red Sweater, the author starts off the first two lines with a content and pleased tone. This is conveyed through the alliteration of “slides” and “soft,” which are both very calming words. However, in the next few lines, the tone shifts to a guilty and conscious mood, communicated through specific diction and descriptions of the mother such as “my mother worked twenty hours at the fast-food joint.” This drastic shift in tone displays how conflicted the speaker is. The child (gender isn’t specified in the poem) sees their mom work so hard to afford a sweater that “everybody in school is wearing,” and even notices how she owns a clean, new red sweater while her mom wears the same uniform that smells. In The Lanyard, the speaker starts off with a surreal or dream-like tone, where the subject was “ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room.” This is a hyperbole, exaggerating how bored the subject was. This tone shifts slightly to a grateful tone where he describes what all his mother has done for him (lines 19-25). His mother “nursed me in many a sick room… and taught me to walk and swim.” Then right after, he simply changes the tone with a short phrase: “and I presented her with a lanyard.” Using details to show how much his mother has done for him, the lack of details in the short phrase after creates a slightly ironing or humorous contrast. In the end of the poem, the speaker, who seems to be the boy when he’s older, seems to shift the tone to nostalgia, because he talks about the past and his affection for his mother.

In conclusion, both The Red Sweater by Joseph O. Legaspi and The Lanyard by Billy Collins both have drastic shifts in their tone, communicated through several poetic devices.