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Aliyah Annis

Ms.Cruz

AP Literature and Composition

11 September 2019

“Plants” Essay Revision

We exhibit the power to both protect, demolish, and manipulate natural plant life. Although we

consider plants to be inferior due to our ability to utilize them for our personal needs, Oliver Senior’s

poem ​Plants​ suggests that the audience overlooks the complexity of plant intelligence due to the fact that

they do not perform the exact same display of intelligence that humans do. Aggressive diction when

describing plants makes it possible for Senior to point out the inaccurate conception without shaming the

reader. The aggressive, militaristic diction also ​allows the reader to subconsciously view plant life away

from the powerless beings that they are generally seen as. Personification opens the door to developing a

higher platform for the plant, for it gives the plants human-like qualities due to the human-like

description. The reader can then unquestionably digest the concept that plants inhibit disregarded intellect.

Together, Senior develops an agenda to express lessons concerning the underestimating of life not similar

to those of humans.

When describing the common nature of plant life, Senior uses aggressive diction that correlates

with militaristic vocabulary. The opening line automatically states “plants are deceptive” (line 1). The

following stanza continues with describing plants as “imperialistic” (line 8) and “sure on conquest” (line

13). Senior then proceeds to describe traveling seeds as “parachuting” and “airborne traffic” (lines 20-21).

Such an overwhelming array of militaristic vocabulary contributes to Senior’s attempt to bring light to an

imperialistic nature of plant life to the audience. Imperialistic natures are tendencies normally reserved to

describe humans, not plants. Therefore, Senior is bringing light to a phenomenon that the reader did not
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previously associate to plants. By doing so, the reader can now view plant life as lives more complex and

valuable and thus understand plants were undermined before reading the Senior’s poem.

Personification works to bring an inanimate object or thing to a higher standard due to the fact

that it can perform human-like qualities. With the use of personification, Senior is having the audience

view plants as a more powerful intelligence than normally believed. For instance, he refers to flowers as

sneaky, strategical “special agents” (line 22) that seduce us into scattering plant property. Senior also

describes them to be “on a march” (line 11) and made to be “hitchhiking” on line 18. Flowers cannot be

literal special agents when the power of seduction, nor can they physically march or hitchhike. By

recounting them as if they could, Senior makes the audience transition from viewing the once delicate

being as a powerful, strategic one that inhabits the biological capabilities to infiltrate their surroundings

for personal benefit, thus enhancing the idea that they were overlooked organisms.

The use of diction and literary devices such as personification work hand-in-hand to emphasize

what relationship between humans and plant life the author wants the audience to digest. Through

militaristic wording and deceptive personification, Senior emphasizes that although we see ourselves as

superior beings, there are also other complex organisms (such as plants) that inhabit elaborate structures

worth recognition and should therefore not be underestimated because they exert intelligence differently.