In the poem “There But for the Grace” the poet writes about the role of chance in one’s life. Write an essay analyzing how the poet uses sound devices to convey a theme in the poem. Support your response with evidence from the text.

The poem " There but for the grace" was written by a Polish writer, Wislawa Szymborska after the World War II. This was meant to attribute their survival to luck and grace. In this poem, Wislawa Szymborska uses different sound devices such as assonance, rhymes, repetition, parallelism, etc. to convey the message in this poem.

In the first stanza of the poem, the line "It happened sooner. Later. Nearer. Farther." Is an example of parallelism and rhyme. This is to emphasize that circumstances can take different dimensions of occurrence. The first line stanza one, "It could have happened. It had to happen" is also an example of alteration, which is a sound device.

In stanza two, there is a continuous repetition of the words survival and because. Repetition is the sound device used here to explain that several reasons can be perceived for one's survival from a dangerous event which may not necessarily be so.

The repetition of the word "luckily" in stanza three is to attribute one's survival, for whatever reason, to luck. This is also the use of a sound device.