WB Yeats and Joan Didion use diction to represent the meaning or theme of a poem through distinctions in sound, look, rhythm, syllable, letters, and definition. WB Yeats uses words like “widening gyre” and “anarchy” to describe the rising of chaos. Joan Didion uses words like “revolution” and “missing” to describe the chaos that is sweeping across the United States of America. Yeats and Didion use diction to symbolize the pandemonium in their stories. In “The Second Coming” WB Yeats uses diction to indicate the rising portentous by using “Surely some revelation is at hand.” Joan Didion writes “Those left behind filed desultory missing-persons reports, and then moved on themselves” diction to denote the rising confusion.
Joan Didion and WB Yeats employ imagery to characterize the swift disarray in their work. Joan Didion uses “Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would now never learn the games that had held the society together,” to signify the teenagers wanting to find answers about their life. WB Yeats states “The blood-dimmed tide,” to imply the sacrificial killings to begin the anarchy of the world. Authors use imagery to help the readers imagine the story better and to create a packed mood. In “Slouching towards Bethlehem” Joan Didion uses imagery like “open revolution” and