Just a Dream - Carrie Underwood (country)
Carrie Underwood, in her song Just a Dream, uses devices such as allusion, personification, and imagery in order to convey the speaker’s despair over the loss of her fiance and the fact that what should have been a wedding has turned into a funeral. In the first verse, she sets the scene with vivid imagery to describe the funeral. She describes the moment when she “put her veil down trying to hide the tears” and the sound of “the trumpets from the military band” to put the audience in her shoes. The speaker is “all dressed in white,” and the mention of this symbolizes innocence and purity. The allusion to the phrase “something borrowed, something blue” references a phrase that is commonly associated with weddings, and it emphasizes the fact that the speaker is now attending a funeral rather than a wedding. Personification is used to describe the moment when “the church doors opened up wide.” Alliteration is used in several lines throughout the song, and although the significance of this device is not completely clear, its recurrence must have some relevance, at least, to the structure of the song. During the chorus, the speaker pours her heart out and writes about the pain and sorrow she feels about the loss. She uses euphemisms such as “why’d you leave me” and “he’s not coming home now” as more gentle ways of writing about his death. Also, she uses a hyperbole when she says “I can’t even breathe” to exaggerate the extent to which the loss has shocked her. In the second verse, she elaborates on the description of the funeral. She makes a connection between imagery and a simile in the following lines: “And then guns rang one last shot / And it felt like a bullet in her heart.” These lines reveal the true pain that attending his funeral is causing her. Additionally, she uses figurative language when she says “she held on to all she had left of him.” She isn’t physically holding onto anything, but she is keeping the memories she has of him. These devices contribute to the theme of the song, which is that losing someone can deeply change one’s life and be mentally and emotionally demanding.
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