The faded voices of the choir singers are muffled by a roaring explosion. The sounds from the crumbling building carried across the block. Worn bricks, detached from each other. Shards of colored glass shot into the air. Wooden stumps and rubbish clutter the pavement. Thick smoke and terrifying screams saturate the air. A mother's worst nightmare. In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, a mother tries to protect her daughter by sending her to church. However, in the end, the little girl's entire life is stolen. The dramatic situation in the poem is depicted and developed through Randall's use of descriptive imagery, dialogue, irony, and a tonal shift. Randall's use of descriptive imagery shows the mother's love for her daughter and creates the dramatic situation. “He combed and brushed his night-dark hair” (line 17). Through the careful combing of her daughter's hair, the reader can tell that the mother is extremely proud of her daughter's appearance. The quote also shows how deeply the mother loves her daughter. Then, when describing the girl's shoes and gloves, Randall chooses the color white. The color represents its purity and innocence. Descriptive imagery is also dominant in line 29 “She clawed at pieces of glass and bricks,” it allows the reader to vividly imagine the mother frantically digging through the crumbling remains of the church in search of the daughter she cares about. By clearly imagining the frantic mother, readers can sense how dramatic the situation is and the devastating emotional impact it will have on the mother's life. Descriptive imagery adds to the dramatic situation by allowing the reader to imagine the mother and boo... middle of paper... "Oh, here's the shoe my baby was wearing/but darling, where are you?" ?” The mother then realizes that the church was not a sanctuary as she had been led to believe, but a place of extreme violence. The irony of the situation is that in the end, the streets of Birmingham full of "clubs and hoses, guns and prisons" (line 7) were a safer place for the little girl than the local church. Irony adds to the dramatic situation by giving the reader a false sense of hope and then quickly taking it away. Pushing tears from her eyes, a frantic mother climbs up what remains of her beloved church. But he can't find the singer of his choir. Just a white shoe and a matching glove. In his poem "Ballad of Birmingham", David Randall uses descriptive imagery, dialogue, irony, and a tonal shift to bring emotion to the poem and draw the reader's attention to the dramatic situation..