Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices Essay (Article)

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Introduction

Under Milk Wood is a play for voices play which was written by Dylan Thomas. Thomas used poetic techniques while writing the play. The play is narrated by two voices, the voice of the blind Captain Cat as they all inform the audience of the dreams and lives of people from a small town as viewed by the narrators. The narrations are in a poetic form, as the audiences are informed by the villagers’ thoughts and dreams. At several points, the narration stops and the villagers enact their own behavior in a character that is similar to the narrations.

Poetic Techniques

The frequently used poetic techniques found in the play are alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, similes, compound adjectives and personification. An example of alliteration in Under Milk Wood is found in the phrase, “clip-clop” and an example of a use of assonance is “cows low”. Thomas frequently uses onomatopoeia within the play, moos, buzzes, boozed are just but a few examples. There are several similes that Thomas has used, “dusty and echoing as a dining hall in the vault”, “she swallows a digestive tablet as big as a horse pill” and “clocks shaped like Noah’s whiling Ark” are a few examples (Thomas, 1954). Thomas makes use of compound adjectives examples being, bible-black, dab-filled sea, sea-dark street, high-backed hygienic chair and beady-eyed. There is the use of personification in the play, “the lulled and dump founded town”, “the night moving in the trees”, and “the sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns” are good examples.

Characters

One of the characters the narrator talks about is Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard who has twice been widowed, first by the late Mr. Ogmore, a retired linoleum salesman and secondly by the late Mr. Pritchard, a failed bookmaker. Thomas depicts Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard’s character as lonely, miserable and confused as she continuously continues to make conversation with her dead husbands. Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard owns a guest house that she keeps spotlessly clean (Thomas, 1954). She is always having dreams of her late husbands as she soliloquies and imagines a conversation with them. At the beginning of the plays, the imagined conversation with her late husband is one of them repeating in an orderly manner as daily tasks.

This conversation is again repeated at night before she sleeps. She is thus portrayed as an over-orderly woman as she has set instructions for each one of them. This character is portrayed throughout the play. She eats starch-less bread and sips lemon-rind tea and again when she denies accommodation to the bird-studying gentleman. The first again informs the audience on how Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard belches in a small hanky and that she tries to “chase the sunlight with a flywhisk”.

Conclusion

Her blinds as the narrator inform us are germ-free. This analysis depicts a character that is obsessed with order and has a disturbed mind. She talks to her already dead husband and because of her obsession with order and cleanliness, even refuses to accommodate a potential tenant, yet the guest room is vacant. It is this obsession with a tidiness that has led to her loneliness which can be felt as she “wills herself to cold”. Though her husbands are dead the narrator portrays that they had lived in awe of her and they do not want to appreciate her loving words as they both hope that the “I love you” she mumbles in her dreams was meant for the other. They respond in terror and horror.

Reference

Thomas, D. (1954). Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation.

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IvyPanda. (2021) 'Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices'. 28 December.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices." December 28, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/under-milk-wood-a-play-for-voices/.

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IvyPanda. "Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices." December 28, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/under-milk-wood-a-play-for-voices/.

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