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Essay on Killing Chickens

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Killing Chickens
Betrayal and loneliness are two of the hardest emotions to encounter in life. Nevertheless, at some point everyone will experience and be forced to deal with them. This is made even harder when they are caused by someone you love and trust. In Meredith Hall’s “Killing Chickens”, she uses various literary devices such as metaphor, simile, and imagery as she processes her husband’s affair and describes having to kill chickens. Hall’s literary nonfiction is based on the happenings of a specific day that was truly hard to handle after being deceived by ones she loved:
I was killing chickens. It was my 38th birthday. My brother had chosen that morning to tell me that he had caught his wife – my best friend, Ashley – in …show more content…

‘Better hide my surprise.’” Just as Hall identifies the chickens and her children, she explains, “I turned her on her floppy neck again and again. Corkscrewing her breathing tube, struggling to end the gasping.” Just as Hall is making many attempts to kill the chicken, she is unable to do it until it finally gives in. This is the same way her husband has been treating her for the past ten years with all the rumors and suspicions until finally she reached a breaking point. The author uses a number of different literary devices to describe the hardship she feels such as metaphor, simile, and imagery. The author revels that her life and the chickens are not very different. “I felt her body break deep inside my own chest” (6). The way the chicken has to be killed after being loved for so long is the same way Hall feels about being with her husband for so long and then having him cheat on her and leave her. “Guilt and fear tugged me like an undertow” (7). The chickens are being killed by the one that loved them and in the same way; Hall is killed by the one she loved: her husband. The author uses a numerous number of vivid imagery to describe the struggle she is going through with her husband leaving and her having to kill the chickens. “Her shiny black beak opened and closed, opened and closed” (5). The rumors and suspicions that the author’s husband was cheating on her would come and go, until it reached a breaking point

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