The Missing Piece

STUPID PENCIL MAKER

Some dummy built this Pencil wrong—

The eraser’s down here where the point belongs.

And the point’s at the top—so it’s no good to me.

It’s amazing how stupid some people can be.

-        Shel Silverstein

 

Apart from the apparent end rhyme and the obvious irony, “Stupid Pencil Maker” by Shel Silverstein is linguistically inadequate. Although Silverstein’s childish poem does employ a certain rhyme scheme and makes use of verbal irony, it ultimately cannot be considered a serious work of literature. The language used within a work of literature, most specifically a poetic work, should not be the language one would hear in an elementary school classroom, but rather language that uses both a diction and a syntax that creates an estranged system of text which one must pause to contemplate before fully comprehending what is being said. “ Stupid Pencil Maker” could very well be the voice of a first grade student expressing aggravation because he or she sat down to write a story but could not because “the pencil was built incorrectly”.  It is clear that the poem is meant to entertain a certain audience, but in reality the language of the work is an insult to literature. However, credit must be given where credit is due; Silverstein takes advantage of a meaningless situation by using it to exercise various literary techniques. The narrator criticizes “some dummy” for building the pencil incorrectly, and comments on “how stupid some people can be”, but in reality the narrator is the “dummy” because he or she is too daft to realize that simply turning the pencil right side up would solve the problem. Aside from the ironic nature of the poem, one must also take note of the aabb pattern of the end rhyme. It was wise of Silverstein to use this opportunity to bring into play another literary device, however Silverstein’s rhyming is less credible than that of other poets, for example William Shakespeare. It is far easier to create a rhyming pattern using common, unsophisticated language than it is to form a rhyme scheme using an advanced vernacular and a complicated syntax. Although Shel Silverstein’s poem makes use of various literary devices, the primitive language employed by these devices hinders the work from being valued comprehensively.