Throughout one's life, he or she may find themselves spending time with the wrong crowd. Fortunately, the most intelligent men and women will be able to distance themselves from these irresponsible and youthful groups and lead successful lives. But what about adults who never grew up? The unfortunate thing is that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have wasted their days while their lives fall apart. In the poem We Real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks tells of a group of people who made a series of bad decisions, which ultimately led to their untimely deaths. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Gwendolyn Brooks, an African American poet born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, is an accomplished poet whose works usually depicted the struggles and triumphs of the people who lived in her community. At the age of six weeks, Gwendolyn's family moved to Chicago; As a child growing up in Chicago during the Great Depression, it is likely that the bleak and hopeless environment in which Brooks grew up may have influenced some of her poems such as We Real Cool, a poem about a group of unemployed kids who die earlier than expected . In the poem, Gwendolyn tells of children who drop out of school, stay out late, drink often, and "die early." On a superficial level, Brooks actually tells a ballad in four short verses. These childish men are perfect examples of Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken". As the title suggests, these young people believe they are awesome, that they have made the decision to subject themselves to life's challenges and run away from them. They have chosen to take the easy path, following their peers into a life that is even less than mediocrity. Digging deeper, this poem reveals itself about living life in the fast lane and its consequences. Perhaps the poem is not just a story, but also a lesson in the consequences of ignoring one's responsibilities as a maturing adult. Although there are slight differences in the plot, it may be noted that the themes of this poem are similar to those of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, a story whose popular film came out only a few years before the publication of We Real Cool. As the entire lives of classic Neverland characters are spent beyond adulthood; Gwendolyn shows us that the real world doesn't work the same way; these young people in his story are the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, but unfortunately they are far from immortal and will have to face the consequences of their prolonged childhood. One of the most interesting aspects of We Real Cool is Gwendolyn Brooks' use of literary devices and the strategies she orchestrated when using them. In every stanza of the poem, every word is connected. In the first line, the repetition of the long “e” sound is a technique called assonance; furthermore, Brooks repeats the “l” sound in “real” and “cool,” using another technique called consonance. Moving on to the second line, Gwendolyn connects “left” and “school” with the “l” sound they both share in a literary device called oblique rhyme. In the second line, the “l” sound is once again used in alliteration with the words “lurk” and “late” in the third line; alliteration is also used in line four with the words "strike" and "straight" in lines five and six with "sin" and "Thin" and the "j" sound in the word "gin" is repeated in the words "Jazz" and "June". “June” also forms a basic rhyme with the word “soon” in line eight. A reader might wonder at this point what it matters that rhyme is used in the poem. However, there is one word in the whole./