Sometimes a stranger offers to help, sometimes a person is forced to ask a stranger, but when the car doesn't start, it is likely that two strangers will meet . Linda Pastan's 1984 poem, “Jump Cabling,” reveals how the simple act of jump-starting a car can jump-start love. Through repetition, alliteration, simile, metaphor, and unique structure, Pastan creates an unusual poem that ties a common and banal event to romance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay “Jump Cabling” is a poem about a dead battery, a broken down driver, and the stranger who stops to help. Presented in eight lines of free verse, it is a monologue in which the speaker is never fully identified but appears to be a woman while the rescuer is presumably a man. Repetition and alliteration provide tone and rhythm, as well as some thematic connections. The word "when" is the first word in lines 1 and 2 and is repeated in lines 4 and 6. Although presented without a curious sense, the repetition of "when" in four out of eight lines gives the poem a wistful, expectant tone . The alliteration of the often repeated "when" with other "w" words such as "were", (4) "woke", (7) "why", (8) and "manner" (8) provides a smooth flow rhythm throughout the poem. In words such as “cars”, (1) “workings”, (3) “pure”, (5) and “energy” (5) the repetition of the “r” sound in twenty percent of the words, twelve out of fifty -two , seems to give the subtle background sound of an engine trying to start. In the Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, Ian Hamilton agrees that Pastan's work often records "everyday happenings" (Hamilton 400) using "harmonizing...metaphors." (Hamilton 400) This is evident in Pastan's treatment of "Jump Cabling". Along with the story of how to start a car, there is a general allusion to a fairy tale throughout the poem. This can be seen most distinctly in the simile “when my car like the princess / in the tale awoke…” (Pastan 6-7). Line 5 also states that the energy between the two cars is “pure” (5). Furthermore, in the last line the speaker, instead of saying “why not go”, says “why not cycle…”. (8) This choice of words seems more appropriate for a horse than for a car, the horse being the hero's usual means of transport in many fairy tales. What saves the poem from being overly sentimental and imaginative is another metaphor: the sober comparison between starting a car and a sexual or erotic encounter. The cars "[touch]" (Pastan 1), the mechanical aspects of the car are called "inner workings" (3), and the speaker suggestively says that the rescuer lifts "my hood" (2) rather than the car hood. When the cars are connected by cables, the speaker states that "[we] were tied together." (4) Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of “Jump Cabling” is its unique structure. The first seven lines of the poem show significant space between the first part of the line and the last word or two. This separation of these two groups of words is symbolic of two vehicles separated by a short distance as they are during the act of wire jumping. This is further supported by the last line which has no separation and, like a pair of jumper cables, joins the two parts. The meaning is that it also symbolizes the distance between strangers linked by a chance event. It should also be noted that the separation between words creates two, or perhaps three, different poems: the first part, the second part, and the whole. While the first part read without the second does not differ significantly from the poem as a whole, the second, or part.