“What I've done” by Linkin Park

I chose “What I've done” by Linkin Park. I chose it because it has a very clear meaning throughout the song, and has quite a few different poetic devices to show this.

The song is about how we have destroyed the planet, to build more and more buildings in places like the countryside. It describes how this man is in regret of his past, and wants to get rid of his bad conscience, and will do anything for it. I thought this could relate to the romantics, who wrote poems to show how they feel about the ever-growing revolution of machines and technology, and tried to fight against it.

It has a simple rhyming scheme of A B A B, but does change throughout the song, for example on the last verse it goes A B B A C C. It gives a diversity of rhyming and a certain rhythm to it that makes it “catchy”.

But, it also uses poetic devices to fill these verses. For example, it goes: “Because I've drawn regret, from the truth, of a thousand lies.”This is contradictory, as you cant draw the truth from lies, but he draws regret from that. It is also hyperbole, as he said he has told a thousand lies. It goes on to say: “While I clean this slate, with the hands of uncertainty”. This really means that he wants to clean his life up, and not this slate, which would be his life and an example of personification. It is meant not to be taking literally, so in this case would be an example of irony. And to say with the hands of uncertainty, he is doing it in