The Farewell

In, "The Farewell," Edward Field uses a serious and sad tone. She uses metaphors and onomatopoeia to show the reader what can happen to a person who is too trusting in other people. The poem starts by saying, "They say the ice will hold so there I go, forced to believe them by my act of trusting people," which uses the ice as a metaphor for something bad that the speaker encountered due to trusting people too much when they say it's okay. The poem continues with the speaker falling into the cold water after the ice cracks under his feet and he dies. In the last sentence, "'Goodbye my darlings, goodbye dear one," as the ice meets again over my head with a click," Field uses onomatopoeia to allow the reader to hear the "click" of the ice. Edward Field uses the metaphor of breaking ice to convey the message that a person shouldn't be too trusting in other people because they could end up getting hurt.