Death of a Toad

The Death of a Toad Style Analysis Richard Wilbur, the speaker in this poem, uses a stream of structure, syntax, diction, and imagery characterized by a patchwork of present thoughts, feelings, and sensory perceptions to reveal rather vividly a horrific scene of death. It is rather simple to gain a sense of the attitudes he has of the death of the toad by piecing together the random details of all the things that actually occurs …

…in environmental pleasures from the garden where it once was rich with life. The death did not add to the genuine emotion of times past: they replaced it. The author appears to contemplate this fact, experience remorse over it, and wonders of what is now missing in the lawn. He doesn’t accuse anyone of wrongdoing in death via lawnmower. He merely recalls the richness of days past with a mingling of zest and “ribbits.”