"Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Messy Room" by Shel Silverstein

Categories: Free Essays

No two things are the same. This applies to poetry as well. 'Where the Sidewalk Ends' and 'Messy Room', two poems by Shel Silverstein, are two completely different yet similar works. This is because not only are the theme of the poems different, but also the use of imagery and repetition. But with all their differences, they are still alike in more than one way. Between the two poems, the themes are very different.

In the rhyme verse poem 'Where the Sidewalk Ends', Silverstein talks about a magical place that only the children know of and a place represents childhood, its innocence, and its different way of looking at the world in first person point of view.

This is done in lines 14, 15, and 16 'And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go/For the children, they mark, and the children, they know/The place where the sidewalk ends.' In the free verse poem 'Messy Room', Silverstein talks about a heavily disorganized room described from the point of view of a speaker who is horrified at the lack of responsibility of the unknown owner of the room.

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In the poem, he states 'A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed/And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall/Whosever room this is should be ashamed!' These lines show the extent to how dirty and unorganized this person's room is. With all their differences come similarities between the poems too. One thing similar about them is that they were both made by the same poet, Shel Silverstein.

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Another similarity is that they are both written in first person point of view. By knowing the differences and similarities between the themes of both poems, you are a step closer to understanding them and finding out their meanings.

'Where the Sidewalk Ends' and 'Messy Room' by Shel Silverstein both use imagery to describe what they mean. In 'Where the Sidewalk Ends' it says 'And there the grass grows soft and white/And there the sun burns crimson bright/And there the moon-bird rests from his flight/To cool in the peppermint wind' The descriptions in the lines create a vivid image of the place. According to the descriptions, the grass is soft and white and the sun is a deep color of red while the wind is cool.

Updated: Nov 01, 2022
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"Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Messy Room" by Shel Silverstein. (2020, May 04). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/where-the-sidewalk-ends-and-messy-room-by-shel-silverstein-essay

"Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Messy Room"  by Shel Silverstein essay
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